Mr. Speaker, I appreciate and respect the passion with which the member opposite brings his voice to this debate. However, let me assure him that the transfer to B.C. was well over $30 million last year. In fact, one transfer alone in Victoria, which will bring the city of Victoria, according to Mayor Helps, down to functional zero in homelessness, was $31 million from the federal government. That is one project.
If we add to that, funds for a project in Nanaimo, through the innovation fund, not an indigenous housing fund per se, went to the friendship centre. We built one of the most amazing projects on the west coast, in fact across the country. It is a 26-unit passive housing. It is providing housing for elders, youth aging out of care, families and kids going to university in Nanaimo.
I can assure members as well as the modular housing program just unveiled in Vancouver last week, again with federal money, there are substantial investments.
The member may want to talk to the provincial government to find out that half the money it announced came from the federal government. In our first year of office, we tripled transfers to provinces on housing. In fact, our spending on housing went from $2.3 billion under the Conservatives to $5.86 billion in our first year of office. The next year it grew to $8.6 billion, and it is growing to $40 billion over the next 10 years.
If the situation facing renters is so critical, could the member explain the B.C. government's decision yesterday to increase rents by 2.5% after taking the recommendation of 4.5% from the bureaucracy? How is rent going to be controlled in B.C. if the NDP government in B.C. is approving 2.5% rent increases?