Madam Speaker, quite simply, here is the problem: The government's affordable housing measures are a drop in the bucket given the challenge that Canadian households are facing. Household debt in this country, largely made up of mortgage credit debt, has skyrocketed from about $1.9 trillion the first year the government was in office to $2.6 trillion in the most current year. That is a $700-billion jump in household debt. The government can come forward with all the affordable housing programs it wants, but they are a drop in the bucket of the $700 billion in additional mortgage debt and other forms of household credit debt that Canadian families have had to take on because of the government's mismanagement of housing finance.
We are focused on the root causes of the problem rather than on using band-aids that will do little to deal with the housing crisis in this country.