Mr. Speaker, in response to the need to build 500,000 homes per year, the Prime Minister promised to build at a speed not seen in a generation. Today, the housing industry projects a nearly 20% decline in construction over the next three years, while Stats Canada reports that home ownership among young people is at the lowest level it has been since just after the Second World War.
Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that housing momentum is vanishing. Housing professionals, and Conservatives I might add, have been warning for years that the greatest threat to building more homes that Canadians can afford is in fact government fees and delays, so what has the Prime Minister done? Well, he spent the last year building the fourth federal housing bureaucracy, an agency that the PBO estimates will only add 26,000 units of the millions we need over the next five years.
Here are my suggestions for the Prime Minister: stop building bureaucracy, cut the government delays, cut the fees, cut the taxes, and get out of the way so builders can build and Canadians can afford a home again.