I will play my role for the broader collective first, and I will refer you to pages 47 and 48 of the alternative federal budget, published yesterday as well.
Quickly, we have three recommendations that were brought together by the broader civil society folks. First of all, it's to allocate $1.5 billion immediately to the Canada housing benefit to help 250,000 low-income households afford their rent. That is moving forward an expenditure that I think was intended for 2020. Second is to enhance the national housing co-investment fund with an additional billion dollars in grant money for new build. Third is allocating $1 billion annually to build new supportive housing for vulnerable populations. Those are very explicit, clear recommendations for immediate action on housing.
As to the question of competitive advantage, I think this is critical. Any discussion of competitiveness can go down at least two different tracks. There are values and choices involved here, going back to the competitive advantage of medicare and other social programs.
For example, let's look at the automobile industry in this country. Do we believe we would have been able to thrive for decades without the competitive advantage that medicare provided in the context of the development of the Canadian automobile industry? Certainly going forward, we have to remember that lesson and understand that building that kind of social infrastructure is critical to competitive advantage.
There are very different narratives around what competitiveness means. For me, a fundamental question is about values and choices: what you're willing to accept, what you're willing to externalize from that viewpoint. Are you willing to leave poverty, exclusion and inequality, for example, as externalities, and make decisions around tax policy regardless, or do you understand that these are critical values and objectives that we have as a society?
Moreover, there are ways, which, for example, the alternative federal budget explores annually, to come up with a fully costed, reasonable plan that can accept and advance those values, and at the same time maintain and build competitive advantage. It's really a question of values and choices that one has to make, in addition to the very clear competitive advantages that come explicitly from medicare and a future pharmacare program, and many other social programs as well.