Mr. Speaker, very simply put, no, I do not agree with the member opposite. I do not agree with his assessment of the problem. I do not agree that the free market is actually going to solve the problem he is talking about. I think we have seen evidence of that with the federal government under Conservative leadership. It made no investment in housing for over a decade under Stephen Harper, and we saw the problem get worse and worse.
Our government stepped up under previous leadership and created the national housing strategy. I have evidence in my riding of 220-million dollars' worth of investments across my region that have repaired 1,838 housing units and built 1,236 new units, with 29,000 more over the next decade built into housing accelerator agreements, as well as 137 new shelter beds and 177 supportive and transitional housing units. That has all been built in my region.
I have seen first-hand that delivering investments in my community through the federal programs that our government has put in place have made a substantive difference for people in my riding and the ridings adjacent to mine, with the exception of the Conservatives' ridings because they never advocate for those funds. They actually talk down those investments in the House every single day and vote against them, and then they do not actually stand up to help their communities by getting those investments into their communities, which is a shame and actually making the problem worse. I would suggest that Conservative members use the programs and initiatives the federal government has put in place to help solve the problems in their communities instead of complaining about them.
Our government has stepped up with Build Canada Homes, which has gone even further. It is a new approach. It is a new strategy. It is not based on central planning. It is based on what Canadians have told us across the country, which is that we need to build at scale. We need to adopt and embrace the new modernized construction methods that can really decrease the cost of housing. We have cut taxes. We have encouraged municipalities to move faster on approvals. We have used and leveraged federal lands to help get more housing built, and we are removing the cost of acquisition on that land and property to build those properties.
We are doing all of that. We are also buying Canadian. There is the desire, which I think is shared by all Canadians, to utilize materials that are Canadian and use a Canadian workforce to build those homes. We are actually using every lever we can think of to decrease the price for the average consumer.
The fact is that the market would not solve the problem. It is not building enough affordable and deeply affordable housing. That is exactly how we got into this mess over 30 years. Our government has done the lion's share of work with no help from the Conservative Party, which is a shame. The Conservative Party says we should just do nothing. Getting out of the way is basically synonymous with saying to do nothing and that the market will solve the problem itself. It will absolutely not do that. I fundamentally disagree.
It is not socialism to have temporary government intervention. Intervention is responsible government. It is listening to the public, being sensitive to their needs and responding to those needs with smart policies that are going to get at the root causes of the problem. That is exactly what we are doing.