Mr. Speaker, no government in the history of this country has invested more in housing than this government. The national housing strategy, which was launched in November, which was promised in last year's budget, will produce $40 billion in spending over the next 10 years.

I know there is a concern that there is no money coming this year, but that is just not true. In our first budget, we quadrupled the transfers to the provinces. In fact, we did it in such a way, and made eligible repairs, that close to 100,000 homes across the country have already been touched by those investments in housing, which were spent in the first year of our mandate and in the second year of our mandate, and are being spent right now.

Yesterday I heard the leader of the third party talk about how there was no housing money being spent for the next two years. Again, that is absolutely wrong. In fact, the national housing strategy, with a $5-billion commitment over the next 10 years, is being spent this year, starting in April, and those dollars are specifically targeted for capital investments, which include repairs.

The reality is this. We have doubled the spending on homelessness. That happened in our first budget and is now being locked in for the next 10 years. We have quadrupled the money being transferred to the provinces. We are about to embark on the Canada housing benefit, which is going to deliver subsidies to families and is going to have a substantial impact on the number of people who receive housing in the next 10 years.

The government started spending the day it took office. It has increased that spending this budget. It has added a further $1.25 billion to spur the construction of affordable and below-market affordable rental housing in major cities that are experiencing a housing crisis. There is no part of the housing spectrum, from homelessness to supportive housing to social housing to co-operative housing to low-rent and private support for new rental housing to low-income home ownership, that is not touched by the $40-billion housing strategy.

To contrast this with the party opposite, it promised to spend $6 billion over four years, not $40 billion over 10. Our approach is not only more aggressive, it is delivered sooner. In fact, we will spend more on housing in the last two years of our mandate than the Conservatives proposed to spend in their entire mandate if they had been elected.

Our program is not timid. It is aggressive. It is progressive, it is imaginative, and it is supported by virtually every single city across this country. In fact, what the mayors asked was that we accelerate the extraordinary investment so that they could get to repairs sooner. The national housing strategy actually allows them to borrow the 10 years of money up front and fit it into their capital programs so they can spend it this year and use it in an imaginative way, with different financing, to get the results they want sooner.

This housing policy has been built with cities for cities, and most importantly, by cities. Our work with the FCM has been phenomenal.

I will address the issue of indigenous housing after the second question.

Adam Vaughan

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Adjournment Proceedings

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