Thank you to the minister for his opening comments and for acknowledging the fact that the housing crisis is caused by successive Liberal and Conservative governments walking away from building social housing and co-op housing. In fact, it was the Conservatives that cancelled the co-op housing program in 1992. The Liberal government cancelled the national affordable housing program in 1993.
For 30 years, successive Liberal and Conservative governments relied on market forces to provide the housing Canadians needed. It's been, frankly, a massive failure. We have record homelessness, rents have skyrocketed, young people are priced out of the market and we have the housing crisis we are faced with today.
As the minister indicated, in 2017 the Prime Minister announced the national housing strategy with much fanfare—I actually remember this—and even proclaimed that adequate housing is a basic human right. However, the Liberal government's slow walk to roll out the funds resorted to double-counting to inflate the numbers. It was slow to renew the operating agreements for non-profits and co-ops, resulting in more loss of subsidized social and co-op housing units.
The auditor has issued damning reports on the situation. I won't belabour all of those points because it's all on the public record.
The minister admitted that we have a deficit in social housing stock. Canada's social housing stock is amongst the lowest in the G7 countries, at a mere 3.5%. We need to actually enhance and increase the social housing and co-op housing stock. Currently, in the national housing strategy, the development of social housing is pegged at 16,000 units per year. That's not going to do it. It's not going to meet the requirement and the housing needs that Canadians have.
My first question to the minister is this. Will he commit to increasing the social housing stock, where rent is no more than 30% of total income, to at least two million, so that we actually have a fighting chance to meaningfully address the housing crisis?