Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will not be supporting this motion for lots of reasons, one of them being that the words the minister said were actually taken out of context. I have gone back to the quote that the colleague has raised. The minister actually said that he recognizes that this has “added pressure”. Saying “added pressure” means that there was pressure already existing in the housing sector in our country. As far as I'm concerned, the housing minister has been working towards addressing that pressure that exists in the housing system of Canada.
These are also files that directly lie on the different provinces across the country, which are currently mainly led by Conservative premiers. The housing accelerator fund has been a system that we've been using to support municipalities. We're working with municipalities directly to give them money to build housing faster, housing that is green, and to make sure that people get affordable housing in our communities. Where are the provinces across the country on that? These provinces are led by Conservative premiers.
For this motion to point out all the comments that our colleagues have made, comments that have been misinterpreted.... There is a comment here that says the minister has said his department has agreed that they're responsible. That is not what was said, and that is misleading. That is misleading to this committee. It's also misleading for Canadians to think that housing shortages are caused by immigrants. That's not factual. Housing crises are caused by the fact that we're not building more on the land that we have in our provinces. Maybe we need to have conversations with the Conservative premiers to tell us why we're not building fast on the land that we have. We are addressing that through the housing accelerator fund, through the different initiatives that we've put forward through housing to make sure we have more housing, not just for immigrants but for all Canadians.
To another point that he made on the international caps, the cap is specifically to international students. We've studied this in our committee here. We've talked about where the challenges were, and we're taking action and actually responding to some of the motions that they've brought forward.
This motion is very misleading. They are choosing wording that is specifically pointing to immigrants being the problem. I will be voting down this motion.
Thank you.