Mr. Speaker, I sincerely thank the member for this question. It is a great question. It gives me an opportunity to clarify, if he has misunderstood what Conservatives are saying when we talk about the housing boom or the hyper-inflation of real estate values.
It is not good for Canadians. It is not good for the city of Toronto or the city of Vancouver. It is not good for families who need a place to live. However, it helps the government's bottom line when we have runaway asset inflation and the activity that goes on around that, whether it is from construction or from the taxation on all the transactions that occur with these massive house prices. It helps generate revenue to balance, or in this case not balance, a budget. It certainly does not help Canadians who aspire to home ownership.
Conservatives do not cheer for real estate inflation for its own sake. I merely point out that of all the economic factors that have gone into the revenue side of the government's budgets, it has not hurt them.