Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be speaking in support of the motion and I would look at the three tasks or the demands that we are putting forward in this motion, Mr. Speaker, as the areas that I would like to address. I think my statement reflected my deep concern for the first requirement, Mr. Speaker, and that is that we take on a much more urgent basis the sunset of the funding program that we have had in place with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation from $33 million, Mr. Speaker, this year in long-term mortgage assistance and O and M, and we're going to see that drop, I think in the neighbourhood of about $25 million by 2010. By 2030 it will be in the neighbourhood of, I think, about $15 million. Then, of course, I think it will go to nothing. This is one of these sorts of quiet things that will happen in the background, Mr. Speaker. It's going to be hard for us to notice them on a year-by-year basis as we see the revenue statements coming through from the government, from the Housing Corporation. There will be a little bit every year sliding off the table from CMHC. That is why it is so critical now that we turn our attention to innovative ways to replace that.

In addition, as the Minister has indicated, he's going to be having another meeting with another housing Minister. I think we've been doing this for a long, long time, but that has got to be on the table, as well: restoring the federal government's commitment to investing in public housing. But I think it would certainly be careless of us and na‹ve to expect that it's simply going to flip over overnight and we will be on the same generous program that we have been before. We're going to have to be looking for ways to be more independent, more self-sustaining in our housing financing, and I think it's going to take more than just looking for pots of money that we can dig into.

I think we need to change a lot of our thinking about conventional housing designs. My colleagues have spoken about some of those things this afternoon, I won't go into it, but our ability to think ahead, far ahead to a future that will be extremely expensive purely for energy consumption, Mr. Speaker, should be way up on our radar screen when it comes to how can we make housing not only accessible, but affordable too.

Mr. Speaker, the second demand in the motion looks at the reduction of core housing need. This is one that I think applies very much to the Housing Corporation. It also applies to a number of other agencies within our government, Mr. Speaker. Core housing is essentially a formula by which we determine a family's situation, fiscal health, other considerations, and this then triggers, through various policies, our ability to offer assistance or provide assistance to a family. The standards that we have set right now, I think as the motion indicated earlier, suggest that there are 2,260 households who are in need of core housing. The Housing Corporation in the business plan of 2003-06 -- I would say again, Mr. Speaker, that this is about an 18-month-old plan, but it's the most current one we have before the Assembly -- set a target of decreasing the percentage of families in core need from 20 percent to 19 percent. That's only a one percent reduction in the number for housing in core need. I think, Mr. Speaker, it far undershoots the need here. It is simply a one percent reduction, and it doesn't say over what period of time, by the way, only a one percent reduction that does not indicate that we have a Housing Corporation that sees the urgency and the need to really do something and make a difference out there. That is why this motion calls for a 10 percent reduction in the number of families in core housing need by 2007. We've put a time frame on there, we've put a more aggressive target. In fairness to the Housing Corporation, they are not the ones entirely responsible for this. So this is a signal to all of government to work together to help our families become healthier and better housed.