Madam Speaker, I share the focus and certainly the analysis that the best way to fight poverty is with a good, strong housing program such as the one we have through the national housing strategy. I have a couple of questions, but first I want to correct the record on this.
The last two years, federal transfers to the Province of British Columbia, to BC Housing, were $551 million, not the $30 million referenced by the member opposite earlier but $551 million. Five hundred million dollars is an interesting figure because that is the grand total of what the NDP promised in its platform in the last campaign to spend on affordable housing: $500 million for the entire country, not B.C. but the entire country. Just like the motion the New Democrats proposed today, they were going to front-end load it, which meant that in this year that party was promising to spend zero dollars on affordable housing. On homelessness, the boost was only $10 million and they complain that our boost of $100 million is too small. They promised 10% of that.
Why did the member opposite, knowing that the housing crisis was as bad as it was, sign on to a platform that was going to do nothing in this year to solve it?