Mr. Speaker, I say to the member opposite that I feel very keenly that the government has not yet done enough in terms of the housing needs of the people living in remote communities.
I hear where she is coming from. She has my sympathy. I hope the government will continue to look in this direction to find ways of bringing adequate housing to Canada's remote communities regardless of whether they are on reserve or off reserve aboriginals.
I come from a riding very close to the city of Hamilton. Hamilton must be the capital of social housing in Canada. Huge tracts of social housing were built in the 1980s and early 1990s on Hamilton Mountain. This basically emptied the 19th century housing in the downtown core and transferred the population from downtown Hamilton to uptown Hamilton.
Essentially in the lower city there is block upon block of empty apartment buildings, empty storefronts basically because the people have been moved to brand new social housing on the mountain.
I suggest to the member opposite that perhaps what is wrong here, where the government should be going and where I think this actual legislation has a beginning is that it is not really a question of spending more money. It is spending money wisely.
There is no reason in my mind that the existing housing stock in Hamilton could not have received some government assistance, either directly or indirectly, so that people could be housed in the city's core rather than transferring them to the suburbs.
Surely what we are really talking about here is a reallocation of resources and not necessarily more money.