Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his work on poverty issues over many years in the province of Ontario and across Canada.
He will agree with me that there has been report after report on poverty in Canada. All those reports call us to action, but they also stress the importance of a national housing program to eradicate poverty.
There have been many reports in the last few months about the need for affordable housing, for social housing, for programs to deal with homelessness, such as the preliminary report from the UN special rapporteur Miloon Kothari and the report put together by northern agencies on homelessness and women in northern Canada. Report after report have stressed the need for affordable housing and still we do not have a national housing program in Canada.
We used to have a housing agency that did excellent work. It was very creative and was known around the world. Canada Mortgage and Housing was known for its housing development work. Sadly, it has been gutted by Liberal and Conservative governments over the past decades. It does not do that kind of work any more. We need to get back to that again.
In question period today, the member for Sault Ste. Marie asked questions of the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development on the need for a national housing program. The minister said that the government was doing something. It is doing something with the money the NDP fought for in the last Parliament and in the last Liberal budget.
Could he talk a bit more about the importance of a national housing program to Canadians and as an anti-poverty measure in Canada?