Madam Speaker, I want to say just a little bit about the situation in my riding, where a third of people are tenants and over 40% of those tenants spend more than a third of their income on rent each month. In the last year, we saw an average of an 8% increase in rent in the community. While the published vacancy rate is 1%, in fact for affordable housing, it is 0%. What are these people supposed to do? That is my real question. For those people who cannot even afford to rent, certainly buying is beyond a possibility. The average person in my riding just cannot afford to buy a place at all.
The government says that it has a housing strategy, housing partnerships and is doing all these things. However, we can look at the investment resulting from the Liberals being in government over the last three years. When we ask neutral authorities, such as the parliamentary library or anyone else, to look at spending in my riding, the amount spent on affordable housing, or housing of any kind, by the government is zero.
How does the hon. member explain all the good things the government has said, but the result in affordable housing is none?