Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
Thanks to our guests today.
Just for some background, I'm a former municipal councillor. I was sitting around the municipal council table this time last year. When we talk about housing, I'm bringing a pretty particular lens to things.
I am going to follow up on Ms. Lewis's line of questioning, which I think was an excellent line of questioning, with respect to infrastructure.
I want to start first by addressing some criticisms that Build Canada Homes has been receiving, particularly the criticism that it's just adding to bureaucracy—that we already have programs that can do this work. Bureaucracy, in this question, kind of has a negative connotation. We're hearing from some people that the work of catalyzing homebuilding could be undertaken by other existing programs.
I recognize that the pace of homebuilding the government has planned is quite unprecedented. I want to give you a chance to tell us how you respond to that type of criticism—that Build Canada Homes might be redundant or simply unnecessary at best and actually could be detrimental or wasteful at worst.