Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the National Housing Act.
This bill will enable Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to continue underwriting home mortgage loan insurance within the legislative limit. I put the stress on the words "loan insurance" because when I listen to my friends from the Reform Party it sounds as if they feel that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is essentially giving loans. This is loan insurance. As a result, that responsibility of the government to come in and cover when someone defaults is minimal.
I want to go back to 1987 when I was first nominated to be the Liberal candidate in my riding of Broadview-Greenwood. I said to my supporters in a room in the Slovenian Hall on Pape Avenue that one of the things I was going to try to work on was bringing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation out of mothballs. We had just come through three and a half years when the Brian Mulroney Conservative government had effectively parked the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. In some instances, they not only parked the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, put it in mothballs, but they also devolved a lot of responsibility for housing to the provinces.
I am one of those members in this House who believe the national government has a major role to play in the economy. I
never did share in the dismantling of the national government that Brian Mulroney and his colleagues engineered over 10 years. Even to this day, I have debates and differences with some of my own colleagues as we sell off, dismantle, and in some instances literally give away Government of Canada assets, Government of Canada instruments. I sincerely believe that by giving these instruments away or dismantling them we will lose our capacity to run this very large country.