Mr. Speaker, I will not take the entire 12 minutes complete my comments.
I was speaking about the situation in my riding and the 1,100 homeless people who are there each and every night and the growing situation in Toronto which I know is being experienced by other cities. Homelessness continues to be a significant and major problem.
It is all linked. All shelter is linked. It does not much matter whether one can buy a $2 million home in my riding or a $500,000 home or if one is in a motel unit. It is all linked. That is what this bill attempts to address.
It may be obscure to some people that things like bundling insurance is somehow linked to homelessness. When a package of $100 million in mortgages can be bundled and sold off to investors, that makes a pool of $100 million available to lenders so they can in turn lend to other housing situations. We increase the pool. That is what this bill does.
It may be obscure to some that reverse mortgages are somehow a very limited form of shelter. If you are elderly, if you have equity in your home and if you do not want to move, being able to stay in your home over a period of time through a reverse mortgage is a very useful thing to be able to do.
This bill speaks to direct assistance to housing projects. This bill speaks to lending to charitable corporations so housing can be provided to those people who are most in need of it. In my riding we have federal co-op houses. There is not a person in the Chamber who would not like to live in that kind of housing. It is good housing and it is provided through the auspices of the Government of Canada.
This is a good bill that deserves the support of all members. Is it enough? It is never enough. Will it address the problem of homelessness in its totality? Of course it will not. It does move toward eliminating homelessness in my riding of Scarborough East, in the city of Toronto, in the province of Ontario and in the nation. This bill, along with the measures announced in the budget to provide $3.5 billion in health care funding, $2 billion in additional cash funding to the CHST and in Ontario's case an additional $900 million in catch-up money, speaks to the commitment on the part of this government to address the crisis in our largest city and in all cities.
This government has responded and it is responding enthusiastically to those issues.