Mr. Chairman, I have what I hope will be considered good, constructive advice for the Minister, and that is this: since the object of the increased rents is, in part, to encourage higher income people to go into home ownership, to build their own homes, buy their own homes, et cetera, I would like to respectfully suggest to the Minister that it is more
than just the cost of the food basket and the cost of clothing that is relevant here. What we also should consider is the cost of construction and the cost of operating a unit.
I think an improvement to the zoning of communities would be to work in an index that has already been developed by the Minister's other department, the Department of Public Works, which I will call the cost of construction index. I'm probably misnaming it. But I would say if you're going to be fair -- and I'll reiterate the principle of fairness -- and expect them to build and maintain units, then you should be building in factors like the cost of power, the cost of oil, and cost of building materials, the cost of maintenance and those kinds of factors. I think that would make a far better, fairer, more equitable formula.
Mr. Chairman, I call tell you that many of these communities on this list developed by Social Services, would not be in the same categories if we factored in the cost of building construction and maintenance. I think that would be a real improvement in the formula and I would like to ask the Minister if that has been considered, or if it could be considered in the fine tuning of this new rent scale. Thank you.