If I may take a first stab at that, we had a housing economist here in Canada, Duncan Maclennan, who actually worked for the federal government for a short time but left in frustration. He's now back in Scotland. He has done detailed work along the lines you are talking about in regard to the interconnection of the various forces and looking at housing as a serious economic issue. He has done that work for the Australian government. He has done it for the U.K. government and the Scottish parliament and so on, but was never asked to do that for Canada. I think we're behind the ball on that.
In the United States, there are a lot of economists who spend a lot of time looking at that. If I may say so, Mr. Kennedy, since the recession came on, which was of course triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis and rooted in the failed housing policy of the Bush administration and the idea in the administration that everyone could become a homeowner, even people with no income and no assets.... They devised an instrument to make that work. It seemed to be good to be true and, in fact, it was too good to be true.
So a lot of work has been done by economists before and after the burst of the bubble in the United States, but we're a bit behind here in Canada. I think yours is an important question. If I understand your question properly, part of what you're asking about is how many people can comfortably be accommodated within the private ownership and rental markets and, therefore, how many we don't need to worry about, in the sense that they'll get the good housing they need. And then, what group may not be able to be accommodated within the private ownership and rental markets without some sort of support or assistance?
I'll make this final comment—and perhaps others might want to jump in—that one of the early housing experts in Canada, Humphrey Carver, from the University of Toronto, suggested in 1948 that he could see no scenario in which everyone could be accommodated within private ownership and rental markets without some form of assistance from the government. I think his observations in 1948 are certainly true today.
So part of the question is this: what does that piece look like that will deal with the people who are not able to afford either ownership or private rental housing?