Mr. Speaker, thank you for this opportunity to speak to the issue of social housing.
I will also extend my gratitude and respect for the member opposite. She gives good competition to the member for Saskatoon West for sustaining an important dialogue in the House and in the country. I have attended many of the seminars and public events with her to push for strong housing policy.
I am glad she raised the issue of indigenous housing, as it is not contained in the bill that was presented. I am assuming there may be more NDP promises coming on indigenous housing. I do not believe for a minute this is the end of the parade of opportunities to discuss different housing policies.
However, two days ago in the House, the member's party said that the repair of housing was not the same as housing. In other words, the fact that we have repaired 157,000 units over the last three years, with new investments as part of the national housing strategy and our budgets, was dismissed as not being housing.
I also heard the member for Kootenay—Columbia say that there were complex needs to house people. For example, sometimes they need housing and supports to stay in that housing, housing and a subsidy to make that housing affordable.
Would the member agree that a multi-layered approach is the right approach and that sometimes when we make a million investments in housing, two or three of them have to land at the same address in order to make that housing viable for the person in question? In other words, we need to fix housing, subsidize housing, build housing and support housing, not just simply construct affordable housing, in order to make our housing system work.