Madam Speaker, I appreciate the fact that my NDP colleague brought up this great piece of journalism by Alex Ballingall, entitled “Did the federal government really help 1 million Canadians find housing?”
I am going to go back to it. At the end of the article, Jeff Morrison, the executive director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, is noted as saying that “much of the government spending since 2016 is from the renewal of so-called ‘operating agreements’”. He goes on to say, “Most of this is just stuff they were already doing”, referring to previous governments.
A government document from CMHC, made public in November, showed that for $5.7 billion, the government was only able to build 15,000 affordable housing units and renovate 150,000 other units. Talk about overspending and under-delivering, which has been the point that the New Democrats and Conservatives have made. How could the member defend that?