Mr. Speaker, my colleague has identified the issue in her community. In my riding, which is a rural riding, we are seeing a vacancy rate of less than .01% because of the spillover of the housing crisis in Vancouver. There is nowhere to live. The mayors and councillors in the communities in my riding are saying that the free market is not going to resolve this and that we need non-market housing. They cannot build it without the support of senior levels of government. They are saying that it is an urgent crisis. They need help, and they are calling on Ottawa to get involved and come up with the critical investments they need. In fact, one needs to earn about $140,000 a year to buy a medium house in Parksville or the Comox Valley. The Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce has said that affordable housing is the number one issue.
The free market is not working. We need non-market housing. In the 70s and 80s, the non-market housing mix was about 10%. We are at 4% right now. We can look at cities like Vienna, where over 40% of the housing market is co-op housing. Clearly, the free market is not going to create enough supply. Certainly, people who live in our communities cannot afford it. The people who are maybe going to buy that supply will be the people who have enough money. Inequality is just going to continue to skyrocket, and we are not going to have people owning homes in our communities.