It's really important to work with partners at different levels of government. Some of the greatest leaders in terms of reforming the way Canada is going to build homes are municipal government leaders—their mayors, their councillors. There are others who do need to be pushed, but we still need to partner with them, and there are others still who've never dealt with a housing crunch like they're facing now and don't have the muscle memory to know how to respond but very much want to and maybe need a partner from a funding perspective to help share best practices. Depending on the community you're dealing with, the circumstances are different.
The housing accelerator fund is a great example. It's not the only one, but it's a great example of how we can leverage municipal co-operation and partnership by putting real money on the table that's going to incentivize change. Municipal councillors know what it's like to have a little extra cash to invest in the infrastructure they need to have livable communities and communities that can actually have the capacity to accommodate more housing developments.
If I look back in the spirit of comparing what's actually being put on the table, the housing accelerator fund is $4 billion across Canada. That's going to help. We now have in excess of 500 applications that have come in. Compare that to the difference that would be made under the Conservative plan, with a $100-million contribution that's going to be split between only 22 or so communities and is also going to require.... It ignores the fact that sometimes communities need the investments in infrastructure they're threatening to cut if they're going to meet the targets they're now setting. It makes no sense.
If we actually work with municipalities, find the good leaders out there and incentivize the changes that they're already pushing, but then find the ones who are laggards and push them to do more, I think we can actually squeeze more productivity out of every federal dollar and create an ecosystem not just for the next couple of years but for the next couple of generations. We'll have a different way that people build homes, because it will be legal to build the kinds of homes that are required to solve the crisis. It will be faster to permit the kinds of homes that will be built and that will help solve the crisis.
If we work with municipalities, push ones to go further where they need a push and work with the leaders who are already there by incentivizing change, we can make a major difference.