Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to speak but after hearing the outrageous comments of my friend from Kings—Hants I felt compelled to do so. Transport is my game but I have a night job, trying to look after some of the interests of the government in Canada's largest city. There are 4.6 million people in the greater Toronto area. We are particularly sensitive to the plight of the homeless in that city and in other cities across the country. I take umbrage at my friend for saying there is nothing in this budget to deal with homelessness. He obviously has not read the budget.
I believe this is the first time there has been a specific mention of this plight in any document of a budgetary nature in Canadian history. I think that took great courage on the part of the Minister of Finance. We at the federal level or at any level of government do not want to own this issue.
This is an issue that has to be dealt with by all levels of government. All Canadians have a stake in dealing with the plight of the homeless across the country.
Let me tell the House what this government has done in the past to deal with this issue. We have the youth employment strategy. We have the RRAP to fix up residential housing. We have made facilities such as armouries available in Toronto and in other cities.
In this budget $11.5 billion has been allocated for health care. Thirty per cent of the homeless on the streets of cities like Toronto are people who have mental illnesses and who can be institutionalized. It is up to the provinces. It is up to people like Mike Harris, their soul mate, to say we now have the money, the money has come through health from the federal government, we can deal with this issue.
One last point is that the Mulroney government put the cap on the old Canada assistance plan. What that meant to the wealthiest provinces like Alberta, B.C. and Ontario was that they were restricted in the amount of money they spent on social services. We are lifting the cap on the CHST and that means Mike Harris and everybody else can now start to treat the homeless as a priority, as they should.