Mr. Speaker, a report released yesterday from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness indicates there are now 235,000 homeless people in Canada.
As that number grows, the government's response is to cut funds for housing. In Toronto, half of the people who go to sleep in a shelter every night are children. It is bad enough that the government has cut daycare, now it seems not to care about night care for the city's most vulnerable.
What is worse is that this very same report shows that despite a budget surplus on the horizon, even more cuts for housing are in the forecast.
Instead of reducing funds for housing, the government should increase funding for provinces and for municipalities, and it should solve this crisis now. If the only way the government thinks it can solve a problem is by cutting taxes, why will it not cut the taxes on private sector developers who are trying to deliver rental housing? Why is that tax not addressed in the omnibus bill?
This country has an affordable housing crisis. It also has a housing affordability crisis, in particular out west. The government is silent. I remind the ministers opposite—