Mr. Kitchen, you and I talked a little bit earlier about the affordable housing agreements with the provinces and the federal government. You had indicated that you would prefer to see more federal restrictions to make sure there's accountability for the money.
How would you propose we have that conversation with the provinces when they argue for the exact opposite? I can certainly tell you, in the case of the Province of Quebec, out of all ten provinces they were the last one to sign the last affordable housing agreement. They didn't like the conditions, because we, the federal government, wanted accountability measures. We wanted to know how that money was going to be spent and we wanted to know if some of it was for capital, to build new housing, and we wanted to know if some of it was going into rent supplements.
Actually, I'll give Quebec credit. They've got an excellent rent supplement program that they've run for years. It should be a model for the country, as far as I'm concerned. They're doing some good things in housing in that particular province, which I'm more familiar with, like I am with Ontario, but this is the dilemma we're in at the federal level.
You can write Minister Finley all the letters you guys want. She's in a really difficult position, because she's got ten governments she has to negotiate affordable housing agreements with, all of which quite often are saying very different things.
Have you got any advice I can share with the minister as to how British Columbia would sign a deal that had really strong benchmarks set by the federal government?