Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will note in particular that in Canada—and I think we've heard this clearly from all of the witnesses here today—housing inflation is homegrown. Bloomberg reports that Canada has the second-most inflated housing bubble in the world. The average family must spend two-thirds of their gross income on monthly payments for the average home in Toronto or Vancouver, which, according to Demographia's calculations, are, respectively, the world's fifth and second most unaffordable housing markets.
I look at the papers we're getting. I have a deficit here as far as the actual numbers go. We're looking at the data here, which actually says we need 1.8 million more households in Canada.
Mr. Perrault, I'm going to ask you this question. I was at a housing conference you hosted some time ago, when you noted that 72% of Canadians own their homes. That was a very good thing, but then you jumped to the conclusion that we need more rental housing in Canada.
Well, let me give you a reality perspective on downtown Calgary, where we do have greater than 10% vacancy in our rental housing. We also have more towers going up, being funded by more money coming from we don't know where. This is part of what's building here. We do not have a shortage of housing; we have a shortage of certain kinds of housing, those being single-family homes.
If the solution is to build more houses and we're jamming a whole bunch of new construction costs and limited labour into building a product that is going to have to jump through a bunch of hoops here, including governmental hoops, are we not going to be contributing, in that case, to even more housing inflation?