Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon to my colleagues.
Minister, thank you again for coming to HUMA. I want to say I very much appreciate your grasp of the file, your knowledge of the file and certainly your passion, which comes through in spades. We need somebody like you to address one of the major challenges our country is facing, so thank you for that.
I want to talk to you, Minister, about the historic $4-billion investment in housing through the accelerator fund. Over the course of the pandemic, we've seen thousands of Canadians move from bigger cities to smaller centre cities like my beautiful riding in Saint John—Rothesay, and they're coming there in search of affordable housing. As a result, I think all of us have seen rents increase, which leaves renters, particularly seniors and families, without access to housing they can afford. Home prices have risen rapidly and become unaffordable for many first-time homebuyers.
We know the root of the problem is a lack of adequate supply of affordable housing to meet this unprecedented, rapidly increasing demand. We know that the municipalities will play a vital role in addressing this supply shortage, but smaller cities—like my city of Saint John—lack the administrative capacity to take action on housing that larger cities have. We have heard about the importance of this fund being flexible and take into account that the needs of cities like Saint John will be different from larger cities. I know when witnesses testified, our mayor, Donna Noade Reardon, talked about the challenges that cities the size of Saint John will face.
Can you speak to how the accelerator fund will address the distinct needs of smaller centres like Saint John and take full advantage of the funding we can offer? Thanks, Minister.