Mr. Speaker, my colleague has put his finger on something that is a major problem. When I refer to social housing, I mean all kinds of social housing, rent to income, cooperatives and so on.
He referred to the problems of the homeless in Toronto, like everywhere else in Canada, it is the same thing in the Montreal region, and pointed out the frequent connection with mental health problems and multiple drug addictions. That is self-evident. When I said that the Liberal government and its then finance minister, now the Prime Minister, blithely slashed federal transfer payments for health services, did it help the cause of homelessness? Of mental health? Of multiple drug addiction?
In Montérégie, for example, with its large population, there are two youth addictions workers. A recent Government of Quebec report states that the youth addictions problem is growing but there is no money to solve it. Why is that, do you think? I have already referred to the shortfall in the Quebec government's coffers since 1994 of $14 billion, precisely for such purposes.
In a way, my colleague has shot himself in the foot. In trying to add something on social housing, he highlighted the problems in health and the lack of funding to resolve them within the Quebec and provincial governments.