Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to rise in the House this evening to seek clarity on the issue of affordable housing and the answer I received some weeks ago by the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development.
We need to address the housing crisis that currently exists in every city across Canada.
Indeed, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has identified the lack of affordable rental housing as a crisis in this country that affects not just big cities and not just small towns but also rural municipalities from coast to coast to coast. This is the reality in Canada and is the subject of the question I asked the minister around affordable housing and the crisis, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are in core housing need.
The answer we got, which was rather laughable in my view, was that the government is building some and renovating some.
When we look at the budget that was just released, what we see is that in the last year of the economic action plan there were no investments in affordable housing, not one dollar.
In this budget we also see cuts to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
We also know that we will see further cuts to social housing. However, it is not just social housing; it is middle-class families who cannot afford to buy a house.
To a previous question I asked the minister, the answer that came back was that the affordable housing issue had been solved because interest rates are low and people can buy houses, as if that somehow magically solves the problem of affordable housing.
Whatever the government and the minister have said about affordable housing and the government's commitment to it has rung utterly false, not just in the House but right across the country, because the facts have not changed, as one of our colleagues across the way likes to say. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are in core housing need, and the government does not have a plan.
A few weeks ago, we presented a national housing strategy. One of the key issues included in that was for the government to convene a meeting with all the stakeholders on the housing issue. It would not cost a lot, especially if the government does not go too wild on the hors d'oeuvres. It should include provincial ministers, those in municipal affairs who are responsible for housing, aboriginal communities, non-profit and private sector housing providers and civil society organizations, including those that represent groups in need of adequate housing, in order to try to understand and come to terms with an overall strategy that would actually deal with housing instead of just the spin we get from the government.
It is not just me saying this. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has underlined this as one of the key issues affecting all its members from coast to coast to coast.