Thank you for the question and for the maritime shout-out.
I grew up, studied and started my career in the Maritimes. I have many good connections back home, and we have many projects in our pipeline in the Atlantic provinces as well.
There would be an opportunity to focus Build Canada Homes on the value of non-market housing by defining “affordable housing” in the enacting legislation for Build Canada Homes. What are the targets? How do we define affordability? If Parliament wants to have that level of focus, it can do so through the legislation. Otherwise, you will be relying on policy and regulation to direct Build Canada Homes to focus on non-market housing and affordable housing.
The other thing that's really important for the delivery of affordable housing and co-operatives is that we really need to see long-term stability and predictability in funding and in the financing framework. Whether it's private housing or affordable housing, we can't fund housing a fiscal year at a time and through programs that only run one or two years at a time.
We have a significant pipeline of qualified demand through the co-op housing development program, so we would like to see similarly stable, long-term, consistent funding parameters for Build Canada Homes as well.