It is so great to be here. Toronto is our biggest city. It's a world class city. It's an incredibly vibrant place where every neighbourhood is unique, whether it's here in Leslieville or in Mount Pleasant, in The Annex, The Beaches, Scarborough, North York, Cabbagetown and I could name so many others. Young people come to study here in some of our best universities. Others are here to pursue the careers of their dreams. Families from around the world come to Toronto to build a better life. It's a great city and if we want to keep it great, we have to make homes more affordable. People who come here need to be able to afford to build a life and a family. People who were born here need to be able to succeed in the communities where they grew up. We're facing a shortage of housing right now, whether you own or rent, the prices of homes have become way too high. And that is why we created the Housing Accelerator Fund to build more homes of all types faster.

Today we’re announcing an agreement with the City of Toronto as part of the Housing Accelerator Fund. This is an agreement that will help build tens of thousands of homes faster in the coming years.

And when we launched the Housing Accelerator Fund, we told municipalities they could access these funds with bold plans to eliminate red tape and remove barriers, and that's exactly what this agreement today with Toronto does. Through this funding, Toronto will make it easier to get projects rolling by simplifying re-zoning requirements and modernizing regulations. It will also update old zoning rules. It will expand existing affordable rental programs and it'll build more homes near transit. With today's agreement, the City of Toronto will fast track 12,000 new homes over the next three years and well over 50,000 new homes over the next decade. We're making real progress today with the 16th Housing Accelerator Fund Agreement. You've been busy, Sean.

This week, we also made announcements in Winnipeg, Mississauga and Burnaby. Last week, I was just with Sean in Vancouver for their big announcement. The agreements that we’ve concluded since September to speed up construction will help build more than 380,000 homes faster over the next 10 years. We’re also investing in affordable housing, we’re encouraging construction of rental apartments.

The promise of Canada is to improve the quality of life for every generation. And to secure this promise, we need to keep working hard with serious solutions, and that’s exactly what we’ll continue to do.

Canada is the best country in the world. Let's keep working together to make it even better.