Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on this topic.
As I had predicted, we now know that the Conservatives will vote against it, and this bill, which I think is a good one, will not go through, which is unfortunate. As I said earlier, this could have been avoided had the NDP supported us back in 2005 when we had a strong affordable housing program.
I do congratulate my Conservative colleague for his speech, but I must say that the Conservatives' performance in the area of housing has been absolutely pathetic, notwithstanding his words. Let me explain why I say that.
First, the member mentioned the Constitution. It is true, as stated in a Conservative document in 2006 called “Fiscal Imbalance”, that the Conservatives said explicitly that housing should be purely a provincial matter, and he echoed that thought.
The Conservatives do not like federal involvement in housing, by their nature and ideology, and their performance reflects that. It is true, and I accept it, that during the two years of the economic action plan there was a little blip in housing, but now it is over and it has come dropping down like a stone, by hundreds of millions of dollars. Nothing whatsoever has been committed beyond 2014.
We have the CMHC long-term 35-year mortgages coming due this year, next year and for 10 years to come. As those come due, the subsidies that are geared to income will disappear. There are 200,000 such people now needing that support over the next coming years. That support will gradually wither away to zero. Also, when co-ops want to refinance their mortgages, they are treated by CMHC in a more negative manner than the way they would be treated by an ordinary commercial bank.
I do not really mind what the member has said. The facts are there. There was a little blip during the two-year economic action plan, but other than that, federal support for housing is dropping like a stone. It is en route to dropping to zero, which is consistent with what the Conservatives said in their fiscal imbalance document in 2006, so none of us should really be surprised by that.
We have a worthy bill. It is not one-size-fits-all, as the member said. Discussions with stakeholders would probably produce many sizes, depending on the different needs in different regions of the country. However, it will not come to be because the Conservatives do not want anything to do with housing and will vote against it.
That is all I need to say because the outcome and the reasons are clear. A good project that would have helped many Canadians will not come to pass, as long as we have a Conservative majority government.