In our opinion, it's not an expenditure but rather an investment to foster economic and social development. Investing in social housing, particularly during a crisis such as this, enables significantly more jobs to be created while resolving major problems such as poverty.
The federal government played a very significant role in the development of social housing after the Second World War. There was the creation, among other things of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. As I mentioned earlier, Brian Mulroney's Conservative government unfortunately withdrew from this in 1994, and that decision had major impacts on Canadians, particularly low-income households.
As was mentioned, the most recent budget includes investments to allow the creation of nearly 800 units in Quebec, but this is very little. In the Saint-Georges de Beauce region alone, 1,700 households spend more than 30% of their income on housing. The vacancy rate is 0.6%, although experts agree that a balanced rate would be approximately 3%. One small municipality in Quebec shows us what is happening throughout the province. Yet, the budget will only allow us to build 800 units throughout Quebec. In our opinion, this is not an expenditure but rather an investment.