Madam Speaker, I really enjoyed my colleague's speech. He seems concerned about the well-being of his constituents, and that is very commendable.
He talked about the cost of living and the cost of housing. We know that things are not easy right now in that regard. I talked about it earlier in the member's statement that I made. In Quebec alone, 600,000 people will experience hidden homelessness at some point in their lives. That is 7% of the population. Right now, there are 6,000 homeless people in Quebec alone. Those numbers grew during the pandemic.
What we need to do is build housing. I was talking to an economist from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation recently who said that, if we allow market forces to run their course for the next 10 years, 500,000 housing units will be built in Quebec alone. However, 1.1 million housing units are needed.
Our Conservative friends are always saying that we need to cut spending, but somewhere along the way, the government needs to intervene to build 600,000 housing units if we want to address the issues of affordability and availability.
How do we do that?