Mr. Speaker, last Friday I put a question to the minister responsible for social housing about the unfair way Quebec is being treated with respect to social housing.
I wanted to ask him whether he was aware of the fact that Quebec has had a potential loss of $100 million per year for several years. On a per capita basis, Quebec should receive at least 25 per cent of CMHC spending, but at the present time, it gets only 20 per cent. One hundred million dollars annually is a
lot of money. If we were to calculate this on the basis of need, Quebec should receive as much as 29 per cent of the CMHC budget.
So a shortfall of $100 million annually for Quebec is a lot of money, and that is a conservative estimate. In fact, this is all part of the government's attempt to get another $25 million or $26 million out of the pockets of people who live in so-called social housing. The government intends to raise rents by 20 per cent. It looks more like the government has no social housing policy at all.
Funding for social housing has been frozen since the Liberal Party came to power. Quebec is not getting its fair share, and now they want to raise the rents of the neediest group in Quebec. Would the government like to clarify this? Would it at least admit that this is unfair, and would it like to explain what it is doing with respect to social housing? Does this government have a social housing policy?