Madam Speaker, the member opposite said that one of the things the NDP would use reclaimed tax dollars for was for the federal government to once again spend money on housing. I appreciate that. I was on the front lines protesting back in the early nineties when a Liberal Party cut transfers to the provinces and transferred authority to spend on housing to the provinces. Some provinces, like B.C. and Quebec, picked up the responsibility and invested in housing. Other provinces, Ontario in particular, did not.
However, I was also there when the federal government re-entered the housing market in 1997 with additional billions of dollars. More importantly, I ran for Parliament and was part of the government that two years ago doubled the amount of money going into homelessness and added $4.8 billion for housing and now has put $40 billion into housing. Those dollars are starting to flow this very year. I appreciate that the NDP members do not think that it is happening, and I cannot convince them that it is, but I can point to projects in Vancouver, where we were cutting ribbons, quite literally, last week, where federal dollars are being spent..
I have also heard it referenced that the NDP does not like the fact that it is a 10-year program. They think it comes after the next election. There are two years left in the mandate. It is a 10-year program. Eight years come after the next election. I cannot change that. Is the NDP really serious that they do not want multi-year funding for housing, that they want only short-term funding for housing, and that multi-year funding investments do not work?
Second to that, are the NDP also insistent that—