Finance committee  I agree with that assessment. The non-profit sector that is providing housing for the most vulnerable in our society often doesn't have very robust balance sheets. It's dependent on various levels of government for support. I can imagine that it is very difficult to engage in som

Finance committee  Yes, definitely this would be helpful, I think, and not only federal lands, but also municipal, provincial and territorial lands. I think there are many opportunities in support of affordable housing to use either surplus land or land that is not being used to the greatest intens

Finance committee  Currently, our insurance in force is $404 billion.

Finance committee  The total is $460 billion—

Finance committee  Thank you, Chair. In response to Mr. Poilievre's question, the reason I hesitated when he first asked the question is that—

Finance committee  I know those two numbers, but there's duplication, because some of the mortgages are—

Finance committee  I don't have that number on hand, but we can certainly get that for you—

Finance committee  In a supply-constrained market, you have to be very careful about measures that impact demand. If CMHC is asked to provide policy advice, we would take that into consideration when providing our advice.

Finance committee  I'd like to give my colleague Bob Dugan a chance to respond, because it's his group that's actually doing the study and it's probably best that you talk directly to Bob. Bob, could I ask you to speak about the supply view that your group is working on?

Finance committee  I'm very sorry that you're getting this feedback from the development community. CMHC has been quite busy delivering on the national housing strategy. There has been huge demand for some of our mortgage insurance products, especially from the development community, and we've be

Finance committee  Throughout the last two or three years we've gone through a number of process improvement initiatives that have actually decreased our turnaround times by over 50%. Is that good enough? No, we need to do more, but when you're thinking about our underwriting process, we're always

Finance committee  I agree with that. I think I would also highlight that the fiscal environment now is very different from 30 years ago. There's been a dramatic change in the cost of housing and the cost of land in our cities. Those are things that really affect housing costs and really make it di

Finance committee  The reason I can't give you the number of dwellings is that it's not just a matter of building houses. Housing is complex, and affordability can be met certainly by building houses, which is very important, but there is also a need to think about how much people are paying for th

Finance committee  It's an aspirational goal, but if you look at our annual reports, there are targets established according to different programs we have that we feel are moving us towards that goal.

Finance committee  When you're thinking about the housing needs of Canadians, you absolutely need to take into consideration our immigration targets. I think we all share the belief that immigrants are good for our country and really provide support to our economic development. As we think about th