Mr. Speaker, we are speaking in the context of the aftermath of the U.S. financial crisis and, in order to avoid what happened there, we need to avoid doing what the Americans did. They turned their mortgage system into a social program over a 30 year period, during which the government first invented sub-prime mortgages, encouraged banks to offer them, ensured those mortgages through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and then, ultimately, compelled by force of law financial institutions to provide those sub-prime mortgages to literally millions of Americans who could never dream of repaying them. This represented a $4 trillion government invasion into the private sector that distorted the entire U.S. mortgage market and had the effect of lending millions of dollars to people, who could never repay the money, so they could live in homes they could never afford to buy.
I wonder if the hon. member would agree that we need to be vigilant to ensure that CMHC and other arms of the Government of Canada never grow into the enormous interventionist beast that the American government became, which brought about the U.S. financial collapse.