Mr. Speaker, I am rising to follow up on a question on housing that I asked the government just a few short weeks ago. It has become trite in this country to say the obvious, which is that the average salary no longer buys the average home. In fact, in my part of Ontario, the price-to-income ratio is about 10 times. That means it takes 10 times the average salary to purchase the average home in my part of Ontario. In other words, it is nearly impossible for young people, the next generation, to save enough, work hard enough and plan enough to own a home.
The most recent announcements by the government's latest housing bureaucracy, the Build Canada Homes bureaucracy, stated that the agency has signed agreements in principle for about 10,000 new units. The most recent statistics are up to March. I looked at the Build Canada Homes website today to add up anything since March 20, and it has added a few thousand more. The total, by my count, is about 14,000. To be clear, those are agreements. They are not shovels in the ground, let alone actual houses that young Canadians can buy and live in. We have seen similar announcements that appear to be smoke and mirrors.
We will remember, last September, when the Prime Minister stood in front of a fake stage set of modular homes just outside the city for a housing announcement. We learned after the fact that it was entirely fake; the houses were disassembled and sent somewhere else in Canada at a cost of about $32,000. For the history buffs in the room, that is a literal Potemkin village. At the same time, the government has promised to reach 500,000 new homes per year. To date, they are at about 14,000, with the promise of 500,000, and we can predict into the future based on the CMHC analysis that says that for 2026, housing starts across Canada will be just under 250,000, less than half of the stated goal, and we will see declines in housing construction in 2027 and 2028. In other words, we are going backward, not forward, and we are not building at any great speed, contrary to what the Prime Minister may have Canadians believe.
My question to the government tonight is this: Does the commitment to build 500,000 new homes per year remain the government's solemn promise?