Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member for Delta—Richmond East on bringing forward this bill. It is a very positive initiative which is sorely needed in today's housing market. I congratulate him on that, and the member for Edmonton East for congratulating him for that. I also want to congratulate the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River for initially contemplating this initiative and for all the work he has done on this and the eloquent way in which he described the need for this bill.
The main reason I wanted to speak is to say that I hope that the Conservative members in particular during their caucus meetings tomorrow morning will pass on to others in government this spirit of goodwill and the need for housing that they have outlined in speaking to this bill. I hope that they will encourage the government to move on some other fronts in the same spirit. It would be contradictory to take one step forward with this bill in addressing a very serious need and then to take another step backward on a different issue.
The member for Delta—Richmond East has disagreed with his government and the Prime Minister and has voted against them before. He could do it on some of these areas, too, if the need arose.
The point is there are people who are really in need of housing. There is huge housing crunch. We have some programs that have been successful in helping to deal with that. Certainly not all of the problems have been dealt with and more has to be done, but I am not asking for that at the moment. All I am asking is that those successful programs be allowed to continue while other initiatives are contemplated, or that these initiatives be expanded.
I am talking about three programs. One is the national homelessness partnering strategy. It has been hugely successful. The government extended it a year. The second one is the residential rehabilitation assistance program which helps people, many of whom could not otherwise afford it, including seniors, fix up their homes. This program is absolutely critical. Now that gas prices have gone up so much, they are going to need every bit of help they can get to survive. Making their houses more energy efficient would be helpful. The third program is the affordable housing initiative which provides people who otherwise would not have the ability the possibility to own a home.
These three programs still have a chance. That is why I am encouraging the Conservative members to bring this to their caucus meeting tomorrow. These three programs are still producing results, but they will expire at the end of March 2009.
For any program, there is a huge machinery of government. There are local committees in place that do excellent work to help implement these programs. Decisions are made months in advance of their implementation. We are getting close to the time when they are going to need to know. They are going to have to make decisions. Huge amounts of money are not needed, and in fact, the amounts are very small in the large scheme of things, to complement this excellent bill and to help some people into housing. I would encourage the Conservative members, when they go to their caucus meeting tomorrow, to urge the finance minister to simply announce that he will extend these programs at least at the existing level of financing until other successful initiatives are added.
These programs have proven to be successful. They are helping alleviate the housing crisis in Canada. The Conservatives have not cancelled them, which is good. They may not have done anything wrong, but I am just bringing this forward because there is an advanced timeline in the machinery of government. Unfortunately, there are so many rules that people have to follow that they have to know in advance whether these good programs will continue so that there is not a break in them. For instance, there is one shelter in our area which is funded by one of the programs. If that shelter had to close, imagine what would happen to the people who would have no place to go in a climate where there are many consecutive days at -40°.
Again, I compliment the member for Delta—Richmond East on the fine way in which he has brought forward this initiative. I hope he gets unanimous support.
However, I encourage him to encourage the government to build on the three programs that are really helping people who otherwise would have no chance of having a shelter over their heads and who continue to have some hope through the assistance that those programs are providing to some of them.