Mr. Speaker, my apologies. I shall certainly go through the Chair.
People will remember the number of people who walked away from their mortgages back in the eighties. The government, CMHC, had to pick up the tab. That is what will happen in this case if there is a market downturn.
To say that there is no cost to the government is completely wrong. There may not be today, but with the volatile interest rates and with the Quebec situation the money markets are very unstable. There is an excellent potential that this could end up hurting Canada, hurting the government, and costing us money.
Another point in the bill that concerns me is paragraph (b), which refers to "any additional amounts authorized by Parliament for the purposes of this section under an appropriation act or any other act of Parliament". This concerns me, because I am not sure whether additional funds would come back to this House or whether in fact we are talking order in council. That concerns me greatly. If it comes back to this House, that is fine. If it goes to cabinet, that is not fine. Then we are not sure what is going on behind closed doors.
I would like to conclude by saying that I do not believe this government is listening. We are broke. CMHC is already in to the tune of $100 billion. We object to putting Canadians further in debt. That is the reason Reform will oppose this bill.