Mr. Speaker, listening to the Conservatives talk housing policy is like the Monty Python sketch with the parrot. They insist it is a housing policy. No, it is not. They say, “Yes, it is.” No, it is not.
If someone says to Conservatives that people are on the street or that people are being de-housed because they have cut subsidies to co-ops, they say, “No, they are not". If we say that they are not building any housing, they say, “Yes, we are.” They are not. It is not funny, but that is the Conservatives' approach to housing.
They do not have a housing program, do not think they need one and do not want one. In fact, over the last 10 years, they actually evicted people and grew the number of homeless people on the street. They grew the backlog of repairs in public housing while they refused to co-operate with provinces, municipalities and indigenous governments to deliver housing programs.
I will give credit to the NDP members. When they talk about housing, they are talking about housing. When the Conservatives talk about housing, they are talking about pipelines. On that issue, they also get their numbers wrong. When more than 700,000 Canadians are subsidized and the affordability of their housing is sustained because they may have disabilities, may not be able to work because of mental health or addiction issues, or may have income issues because they are veterans and are on fixed incomes, which they cut, by the way, and the subsidies are not sustained, which are real dollars helping real people, people are evicted, homelessness is created and affordability is taken away. Are the Conservatives not sorry for cutting the operating subsidies for seniors residences in Alberta, which is one of the biggest cuts they made?