Mr. Speaker, it is always a good day when we talk about housing in the House and I want to say a couple of things. It is fair game to quarrel with the words I used to describe the language around the program that we have produced, but the numbers are real. The numbers are very simple: $5.7 billion to date has been invested by our government in public and social housing and that includes 14,703 new constructions. Those numbers go up day by day. It includes 143,684 repaired household units. That keeps people in housing. It is not a fetish.
Second, we have also provided subsidies and this is really important. The biggest part of any federal housing program, the most important part of federal housing programs is the subsidy to make the units affordable and we have, to date, provided supplements to 783,928 households. Again, those numbers go up as we renew and extend co-op operating agreements beyond two years, now to 10.
Additionally and finally, it is important to note that housing people requires supports sometimes, especially for addiction or mental health issues, or seniors who are getting frail and have accessibility issues. We need to support people in housing and the HPS program in particular has supported 28,864 individuals who are homeless.
Totalled up, out of the $5.7 billion we have announced in budgets, we have delivered one million investments into households across the country. Where the rhetoric comes in, if we look “rhetoric” up in the dictionary, it also means effective political communication, not just the popular meaning that has been used to criticize me today. Where we have to understand how our system works and why complexity is such a critical part of it is that these supports for Canadians layer into people's lives depending on how the core housing needs are presented.
For example, if people are in a co-op and aging, they may get no rent subsidy currently because they are not on fixed income, but when they move to fixed income, RGI subsidies kick in. We built the unit with public housing money and we are now subsidizing them, so that is a second investment to support their new housing needs. If at the same time they suddenly become so frail that they have accessibility or mobility issues, we may renovate that unit while we subsidize it, after we have bought it, to become accessible. Now they are being provided with three layers of subsidy at a single unit of housing.
Members may say that is three times counting. It is not. It is three different ways of supporting people and the important part about that is the renovated building and the building itself will be there for the next Canadian who needs it, so it is a permanent investment into accessible and sustainable housing. However, the other side of this is that there may be more than one family member in that household. Most often, Canadian families on average have 2.5 people per house, which means we have reached well over one million Canadians with our housing program with our $5.7 billion investment.
We have been trying to break down how to explain that $5.7 billion on a riding-by-riding basis and make it real for Canadians. If the use of the word “rhetoric” confused people, I definitely apologize. The reality is, and the truth is, and the facts are that more than one million Canadians have been supported, more than one million investments have been made in specific housing units across this country, and we are proud of the complexity and the comprehensive approach to housing that we have put in place.
I would also argue—