Madam Speaker, in 2017, Quebec was supposed to receive $3.8 billion under this national strategy, shared equally between the federal and the provincial governments, but nothing much happened for three years. There was money for renovations and for building new housing units, but as members have mentioned and as we have talked about a lot today, a lot of funding was earmarked for making housing more affordable.
However, one of the big problems is the definition of the word “affordable”. Often, federal programs are loans that are based on the fair market value in a particular community or region, when really, they should be based on the ability of households to pay. That is the problem right now.
The strategy was announced, we did not get any funding for three years and now we are making do. The crisis is acute, and the funding needs to be distributed more quickly.