Madam Speaker, why is it important to look at the results? The last nine years provide us with some good evidence of what happens when there is a government that is focused on trying to signal concern about certain issues but is not actually concerned about the results.
As I mentioned, I have been doing a lot of work on the issue of abuses in the area of indigenous procurement. It is a situation where the government wants to look like it is achieving a certain target in terms of procurement from indigenous businesses. It has achieved that target by padding the numbers with a lot of joint venture arrangements or companies that are not actually indigenous-owned and indigenous-controlled. This allows it to say it has reached its target. The AFN is saying it is more like 1% of contracts, even though the government says it has met its 5% target.
When there is a government that is not interested in the results but is interested only in looking like it cares, people are trying to find workarounds to say they have achieved the target, they have checked the box, rather than being concerned about the results. On housing, again, it is very clear that the conversation with the government is all about how much it is spending and not about how much Canadians have to spend. The acid test of a housing policy is how much Canadians have to spend.