Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in the House representing the riding of Davenport in Toronto on this very important issue. This is one of the most important issues that people in my riding face. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has noted that the lack of affordable housing, the shortage of rental housing, is the number one issue affecting municipalities from coast to coast to coast. That includes large urban centres, small towns and rural municipalities.
I rise this evening on the issue of housing because we continue, during question period, to get answers from the government regarding its lack of a plan for affordable housing. We have the Minister of Finance hectoring Canadians and telling them that their household debt is too high. He does not go into one of the reasons that their household debt is so high, which is because of plummeting wages, but we will leave that for another day. He says that Canadians need to reign in their household debt. At the same time, the Minister of Human Resources says we have solved the affordable housing crisis, that we have solved the crisis of the lack of affordable rental stock in Canada, because interest rates are low and Canadians can simply buy a house.
That answer just does not cut it. I am here tonight to allow the minister—or the minister's associate, as the case may be—to provide an answer to the House and to Canadians for whom the issue of affordable rental housing is not just an esoteric question but a question of daily struggle.
In January, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities came up with a three-point plan, which it presented here in Ottawa. This was a really pragmatic approach to the lack of rental housing. The federation had really taken a look at it; it had taken a look at the way the government is oriented toward market solutions, and it came up with three proposals. One was the building Canada rental development direct lending program to stimulate investment in new market-priced rental units. The second was the rental housing protection tax credit to preserve rentals and stop the serious erosion of existing low-rent properties through demolition and conversion to condominiums. The third was the eco-energy rental housing tax credit to encourage and help landlords to retrofit their buildings. These were three very practical, very prudent, very sensible suggestions.
There was not a single word about this in the budget. Therefore, I would like to ask the government why there was silence on the most important issue facing Canadians from coast to coast to coast, affordable housing? Why was it left out of the budget?