Mr. Speaker, this government's action in connection with social housing is easily stated: no action. It is as simple as that.
In the last federal election campaign, the government committed to between $1 billion and $1.5 billion annually for five years. However, this is totally ignoring the fact that the government pulled totally out of funding new social housing in Canada between 1993 and 2001. This withdrawal deprived those in substandard housing and the homeless of approximately 160,000 social housing units, more than 40,000 of those in Quebec.
At this time, Canada Mortgage and Housing has an accumulated surplus of $2.4 billion, and this should be up to $6 billion by 2008 if the trend continues. The main reason for this surplus is that, since 1998, almost all of the proceeds, and in some years all of them, from insurance activities were allocated to capitalization rather than the creation of new social housing.
In 2001, 17.6% of renters paid 50% of their income for housing. According to the popular action front FRAPRU, at the present time 111,000 Quebec households are allocating more than 80% of their income to housing. In spite of a surplus that for this past fiscal year alone added up to $9.1 billion, the government is doing nothing about social housing. That is the situation.