Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to respond.
The exercise that took place last week was not entirely surprising. You and I, both having been elected on the same day in 2015, have been through this exercise a few times. What I do find surprising is that, as an individual member of Parliament, you have the ability to vote with your conscience, vote whichever way you choose. Most often, as members of different parties share the world view of their party, they will align with that party, but not always. You, in fact, have a reputation, Mr. Long, for going your own way on occasion, and I credit those who have the ability to understand when their community's interests demand that they vote in a certain direction.
One of the things that I found curious about the exercise last week was that despite the fact that there might, for procedural reasons, be a desire to break things down line by line and frustrate the proceedings in the House, there's nothing requiring a party or a member to vote a particular way on any of those line items. In fact, it would be entirely reasonable to say, let's break it all down so we can signal what we do support and what we don't support.
However, when I was reviewing the texts of the motions as we were going through the voting exercise, to see that the Conservative Party had decided that they didn't want to invest in affordable housing was a surprise—although, if you actually do a little bit of research, you'll find that their leader has very brazenly said that Canada should get out of the housing business, as reflected by the position they've held while in government not to invest in affordable housing.
To your opening point, I should say that no party is without sin when it comes to a failure to invest in affordable housing. On the Liberal Party of Canada's part, there were years in which we formed government and we, too, didn't invest in affordable housing in the way we ought to have, and we are living with the consequences today.
However, when I see a continued desire to oppose low-cost financing to build more apartments in this country, direct grants to build more affordable housing, supports for emergency shelters for women and children, supports for veterans who are homeless, supports for indigenous housing to help people who are separated from their home communities, and even more innocuous items that shouldn't be partisan in nature around flood protection for residential areas that will allow us to protect housing that exists or potentially build in different areas, that confounds me.
What I expect happened is not attributable to malice but perhaps to partisanship. When there is a desire to say “no” based on who is proposing a measure without an analysis of whether that measure would help people, I would suggest that it signals a downward trend in the discourse and level of engagement that our constituents deserve.