Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to hear the debate on this one today, but I definitely had concerns when the past housing minister came to this committee and wasn't willing to admit that the Liberals had undertaken a market-driven program to try to get housing built in this country and had totally walked away from social housing, as had the Conservatives.
There was a comment today from the Liberals about Dream Unlimited. I brought it to this committee that Dream was awarded money from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Dream is a group of three different companies with publicly traded TSX shares. One of them is a REIT with a portfolio of over $13 billion. We're talking about that being the solution. Now that it's getting a GST rebate, it's actually willing to build some rental housing. It's insulting.
When I was sitting as a municipal councillor, I brought forward the motion on the GST rebate that went to the FCM. It's been in the FCM policy book for a long time, and now the Liberals are saying this is revolutionary. They need to have a fire lit under them, because they don't seem to understand the critical nature of what we're dealing with here.
Many of us who are in the Confederation Building and who go back and forth from the West Block would have seen the person outside today saying that winter is coming and we need to address homelessness. Encampments are growing.
I have a friendly amendment that I hope the Conservatives and the committee will be open to. I move that after “recognizes Canada is in a housing crisis”, we add the words “that requires urgent action by the federal government to end homelessness”.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll ask for a friendly amendment. If that's not the way we'd like to go, I could move a firm amendment, but I'm going to first ask if the mover would be open to a friendly amendment.