Housing is a solvable problem and we're all going to solve it if we work together. Canada has done it before and we're going to do it again.

It's also great to be here with Mayor Josh Morgan, who knows we need to build more homes, faster, here in London but also right across the country, because we're facing a shortage of housing right now. And that's why prices of homes have become far too high. It's not fair to young people who feel like cities are turning their backs on them. When housing is that expensive, young people feel like cities don't want them, they feel like they can't succeed. But if young people can't succeed in our cities, then where can they succeed? That's why we're addressing this.

Housing in big cities around the world has already become out of reach for many, many, many, in places like New York, Paris, London, San Francisco, but we're not going to follow those examples.

Les familles, les jeunes, tous les Canadiens s’attendent à ce que leurs leaders travaillent ensemble pour s’attaquer aux gros enjeux comme le logement. C’est pas la première fois qu’on retrousse nos manches pour construire plus de logements au Canada, on a réussi à le faire dans le passé, et on va réussir encore si on travaille tous ensemble.

When we launched the $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund, a fund to build more homes faster, we told municipalities that they could access those funds with bold plans to eliminate red tape and remove barriers.

On a été clair qu’il y a trop de réglementation municipale qui rend ça difficile de bâtir des logements pour nos communautés. On a été clair que les règles locales doivent changer et que les gouvernements locaux doivent être plus ambitieux, et on va être là pour soutenir leurs ambitions.

So, here we are today with a very first agreement under the Housing Accelerator Fund. After we launched the fund, Mayor Josh Morgan and his team got to work. When we saw that Josh's plan was ambitious and serious, we said, okay, let's get him funding so he can fast track the building of more housing here in London. Josh, the Accelerator Fund was created to build more homes, faster, and of all the mayors across the country, you were the fastest to step up with an absolutely visionary proposal.

We put out a framework of ambitious things we needed to see from municipalities in order to access this funding, to look at all the various barriers that are slowing down the construction of housing supply at a time when it's needed, and we asked the hardworking people at City Hall and in the mayors offices to step up to see what were those barriers that we could eliminate, how we could get shovels in the ground faster, how we could get people into homes, particularly affordable homes, particularly homes near transit infrastructure as quickly as possible.

So, based on Josh's success and the announcement we're making right now, I want to challenge other mayors right across the country to step up with their proposals, too, so we can get building more homes, increasing supply and lowering the prices for families.

La promesse du Canada c’est d’améliorer la qualité de vie à chaque génération. Ces temps-ci, le monde traverse un moment difficile. Plus que jamais, il faut continuer notre travail pour s’assurer que la promesse du Canada tienne.

The promise of Canada, it's one that says that every generation gets to benefit from the hard work of the previous generation and succeed even more, but for far too many people, that promise of Canada seems under threat. And that's where Arielle and Peter and Sean and I and our entire team are focused on securing that promise of Canada. The promise that when you work hard, you can get ahead. That's what it's all about. We're focused on building more homes by working with all orders of government, with Indigenous communities, with labour, and with private and nonprofit partners, because that's what it'll take; everyone working together.

I look forward to our caucus retreat this week to continue this work, and we'll have more to say very soon on our plan to make life and housing more affordable for Canadians. Canada is the very best country in the world, let's keep working hard to make it even better.