Mr. Speaker, over the past few years, negotiations have been taking place between the federal and Quebec governments regarding social housing. The federal government said it was withdrawing from social housing, but it has not given back the money that it has collected in taxes for social housing. It has not lowered taxes accordingly.
Quebec is quite prepared to sign an agreement and to take over that responsibility provided it has the means to fulfil its obligations. The Quebec government estimates that the province's needs for social housing account for 27% of Canada's overall needs, this with 24% of the country's population. However, Ottawa is only offering 18% of the money, which means there is a significant gap.
We must absolutely invest in that area because way too much money is being paid in rent by people. Some families spend up to 50% of their income on rent, while they should normally not allocate more than 25% of their income to that item.
Under the agreement with Quebec, this represents an amount of $400 million. This means that for the whole country the government should invest $1.5 billion. Based on our budget forecasts, we are anticipating new spending of $18.5 billion, without any deficit. As for the government, it is anticipating at this point that new spending will total $10.9 billion.
The amount of $1.5 billion could easily be allocated to social housing if, again, there was a political will to do so. I know that women organizations estimate the amount to be $2 billion over a five year period. At yesterday's meeting we agreed that our economists, both theirs and ours, would meet to determine whether it is $1.5 billion or $2 billion. It will then be a matter of reorganizing other requests, but there is enough flexibility with an amount of $147.9 billion to settle this urgent problem. I fully agree with the hon. member for Québec that we must take action regarding this issue. Again, this is something that could be corrected in the mini-budget if this government would listen to ordinary people, to the men and women who pay taxes in our society but who are not getting the services to which they are entitled.