Madam Speaker, I thank all my colleagues who spoke today to my bill, Bill C-227. In particular, I want to thank my colleagues from Spadina—Harbourfront and Les Pays-d'en-Haut for their comments.
I want to touch on a few things here quickly. The first is that one of the privileges I have had in my life, in addition to being here, was serving as a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for about four years. I served most of that time as the housing critic for my party. One of the things I learned during that experience is that housing, more than any other issue facing our country, demands collaboration, co-operation and teamwork between levels of government. It is simply not possible to say one level of government by itself is going to fix the housing crisis or make any difference for anybody, especially for young people.
Cities set bylaws. Cities do zoning. Provinces provide affordable housing and deal with homelessness. The federal government, in my view, has a critical role to play to set policy, set strategy and put forward a system so that, in all corners of this country, from Victoria to Halifax to Nunavut, and all the places in between, young people have hope for the future. We will not achieve that if we simply go into our silos and say, “The federal government only does this, while the province only does that and the city only does that.” That is one of the reasons we have ended up in the situation we are in today.
I also want to touch on one other comment that was made during the debate. My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe called the bill useless. That is offensive. It is not offensive to me, as I have thick skin and it does not bother me, but I will say that it is offensive to the young people across this country whom I spoke to over the last number of months while developing this bill.
I visited people at the University of Ottawa two weeks ago. Dozens of students in their late teens and early twenties whom I spoke to came up to me afterwards and said, “This is interesting. What can we do? How can we help?” They came to my office here on the Hill a couple of days later, filmed videos with me and put the message out there that the government is interested in solving the housing crisis for young Canadians. It is offensive to the young Canadians I met at Saint Mary's University in my hometown of Halifax and the students in Nova Scotia who are interested in making sure that they are part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. That is the essence of what I have put forward today.
My colleague from Brandon—Souris has a background very similar to mine in the provincial legislature in Manitoba. He talked about red tape reduction measures, which is an interesting step forward.
What I would ask is that all of us work together to bring this bill forward to committee, sharpen it and make it as good as possible so that young Canadians have hope and a vision for the future, so that all those people whom I have spoken to over the last number of months feel that the federal government and all parties have their back on this issue, because I know, on this side of the House, we have their backs.