Madam Speaker, before I begin my question tonight, I would like to take a moment to say that Kelowna lost a great community leader, Gerald Geen, on June 7.

Gerald was an orchardist, horticulturalist, teacher and realtor, and he gave back to and served our community in many ways. I knew Gerald to be intellectual and generous, a class act who always had a grin and a sparkle in his eyes. My heart goes out to his wife Kay and all his family and those who knew him. He will be dearly missed.

Now, to the question at hand, I am here tonight to speak to an issue that is important to residents of my community in Kelowna—Lake Country and to all Canadians, and this is Canada's housing crisis.

I would like to quote some numbers from a recent RBC housing affordability report, which stated that as of October 2023, a household earning a median income needed to spend 63.5% of it just to cover the cost of owning an average home. In 2015, that number was 39.3%, and that is lower than even the long-term average of 41.4%.

Upon looking at the chart for the Vancouver area, I see that it is about 140% of household earnings for a single detached home. In Vancouver, it now takes 106.4% of a median household income to own a home. These numbers are staggering. It is no wonder that young people across Canada are losing hope of ever owning a home.

Since 2015, rents have doubled, mortgage payments have doubled and the amount that someone would need to save for a down payment has more than doubled. The CMHC states that housing starts are down and will continue to be down for the foreseeable future.

As well, we now hear that chronic homelessness is up 38%, and the federal housing advocate referred to homeless encampments as “a physical manifestation of exactly how broken our housing and homelessness system is” across Canada. The Liberals put Infrastructure Canada in charge of the government's program for reducing and ending chronic homelessness. However, Infrastructure Canada has not adopted reducing or ending chronic homelessness as a performance indicator for its homelessness program, which is listed as one of its core responsibilities.

We are conducting a study right now at the housing committee. Many witnesses have come and spoken to this committee. One example is a roofing contractor expert, who said that costs are through the roof. Many other witnesses have laid out how the Liberals' housing plan to build 3.87 million homes by 2031 is not achievable and that the numbers are not reasonable.

We know that the Bank of Canada has confirmed that Canadians will see a steep jump in payments as millions of Canadians renew their mortgages over the next few years. This just makes it more difficult for people to keep their home or for those who want to get into a home. This is an important issue that we need to keep talking about in this place.

Tracy Gray

$552,931.00