Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I don't want the conversation to focus solely on the CMHC. I do know that we have arranged for the CMHC to come back to this committee one more time. We did have a study, and there were some recommendations that I hope we can discuss at that time when the CMHC comes back. One of those was the efficiency of the application process and the responsiveness to the clients. I think that's an important question that we should be hearing about when we come back to that.
I'd like to go back to the fact that we have a number of approaches to solving the affordability issue. In my riding of Newmarket—Aurora, because of the GST waiver that is currently under debate, I had a developer contact me and say that he was going to go ahead with 390 new rental units that had been in the hopper for over two years now but the business model didn't work. Now, with the GST waiver, the business model does work, and my community's going to have 390 new units.
I want to go beyond that and talk about an example of collaboration between governments and how important that is. In 2020, through the rental construction financing initiative, the government was able to advance a $79-million construction loan that resulted in 216 units in my riding. In 2023, we also announced a $77-million loan under the same program to finance an additional 175. This emphasizes that it isn't always giving money away, in terms of the reduction of the CMHC. It's also working together with the developer, with the municipality and with the financing organization to cover and manage the risk during the construction period.
Can you explain how the funding of the rental construction financing initiative will help families and build more housing?