More than half of Canadians are within $200 of not being able to pay their bills
As more and more young Canadians find themselves living in their parent’s basements, newly released data from Statistics Canada shows that residential construction investment has declined for a fourth consecutive month, falling 4.5% in just the last month. This includes decreases of 5.8% in Ontario and 3.2% in Vancouver, two of the most overheated housing markets in the world. This means that there is a year-over-year decrease of 20%.
Single family home construction investment fell 5.7% to $6.2 billion in June, with declines seen in eight provinces. Year-over-year, this number balloons to a 24.1% decrease in investment since last June. 8 out of 10 provinces saw investment fall.
Multi-unit construction declined for the 8th straight month, now at its lowest level since September 2021.
The final numbers for the second quarter of 2023 paint a bleak picture for residential construction. In the last three months, residential construction has fallen 8.2%, with single family housing seeing the largest decline since the second quarter of 2020 (the onset of COVID-19) and multi-unit construction declining for a third straight quarter.
After eight years of this Liberal government, life costs more, work doesn’t pay, and housing costs have doubled. The Trudeau Liberals refuse to confront the bureaucrats and gatekeepers that prevent housing construction. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals will not come anywhere close to building the 5.8 million new homes that are needed to solve the housing affordability crisis.
Inflationary spending caused a spike in interest rates that could result in a disaster for struggling Canadians already saddled with massive mortgages.
Rents, mortgage payments, and down payments have doubled. It used to be that people would need 25 years to pay off their mortgages. Now it takes 25 years just to save up for a down payment.
Despite spending 82 billion of your tax dollars on his failed National Housing Strategy, under Prime Minister Trudeau housing has never been so far out of reach.
In fact the Bank of Canada’s latest interest rate hike, bringing rates to the highest they have been in 22 years, is a direct response to the $60 billion of fuel that the Trudeau government poured on the inflationary fire with their budget this 56t......spring.
Canadians are suffering, but this government still has no plan to balance the budget or make life more affordable for Canadians by cutting inflationary taxes.
More than half of Canadians are within $200 of not being able to pay their bills. Half of Canadians already say their mortgages are unaffordable. Canada already has the highest household debt in the G7. We are on the edge of a debt disaster.
Trudeau must provide a plan to balance the budget and axe his inflationary tax on gas, groceries and heating.
Common-sense Conservatives will axe Trudeau’s inflationary taxes, bring home lower prices for Canadians, and get them out of the basement and into homes they can afford.
Marty Morantz is MP for Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley.
