Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vancouver East for raising a number of the issues associated with the budget, with which I too find fault. Her riding of Vancouver East has many of the same social problems and challenges with which my riding of Winnipeg Centre deals, not the least of which is a complete dearth of affordable social housing.
This is not by accident, but by deliberate policy, first by the Mulroney Conservative government, which killed most of the social housing programs. I was the president of a housing co-op at the time. During that era, most of the access to federal funding disappeared. Then when the Liberals were elected, they killed off the last remaining streams of money for affordable social housing. In fact, we can trace this negligence toward affordable housing through three successive federal governments.
I visited her in the riding of Vancouver East and the downtown east side recently, and a study was published at the very time of my visit. It made the business case for affordable housing, in that it cost more per person in social services for a person on the street and without housing than it did to provide social housing. Could she expand some on that study?