I believe we need to have a healthy housing system as a whole to address homelessness and housing affordability. As I mentioned in my earlier remarks, 95% of the housing in Canada is provided by the private sector. There is a huge demand for housing in Canada, particularly in our large cities. There have been impediments for the private sector to provide the housing that is needed.
The purpose of the accelerator fund is to provide incentives to municipalities and other local actors to clear away some of the barriers for some of those supply responses to take place.
At the federal level, because we have a system that is free market-oriented, this is one way we can use federal fiscal powers to create incentives and changes at the local level.
Housing is a very local problem, and there are unique challenges in cities and communities across Canada. The purpose of the fund is to be flexible enough to provide funding to help local officials and politicians break down local barriers and bring on supply much more quickly than they have in the past.