Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to support this motion in a very cautious way. Mr. Speaker, I believe that housing needs to be fair and competitive as well as safe. To hear that we have poorly maintained social housing and to find out that we have housing -- and I've seen it firsthand, Mr. Speaker -- that needs serious attention, to me that's very concerning, especially when we are the landlord of social housing, we have a moral obligation to address this. But we have to sort of cautiously support this because when we talk about the reluctance of people are unaware of asserting their rights or bringing these issues forward, I mean, Mr. Speaker, people do have to pay a bit of personal responsibility to these issues. Now if they feel because of some type of reprisal, well that's wrong and that we should make sure we deal with that in an open and fair way. But people do have a small responsibility to ensure that they bring forward these concerns. We have MLAs; everyone knows who their MLA is in communities. We have mayors, we have band councillors and chiefs and whatnot, so we need to work together to bring these issues to light if that's the problem.
Social housing, to change it roughly from 32 percent down to 18 percent, Mr. Speaker, I give my cautious support to that as well. I will say that people need to ensure that
they're living in a standard that seems acceptable and reasonable. If all their money is going to social housing rent, then we have to address that through some type of means. If that means make fair and reasonable adjustments, I will agree to that. But let's not just broad brush that and say drop the rent. So we have to be cautious when we examine these things.
I've always believed in giving people a helping hand, not a handout, and this certainly speaks to the opportunity to re-examine this issue a lot closer to ensure we're doing that. I constantly keep in mind that we need to make sure our social housing is fair, safe and reasonable, Mr. Speaker. By not giving people an opportunity who are now good bread earners, who are bringing in a good income, to give them an opportunity to finally get on their own two feet, I think is wrong. I think we need to ensure that people getting on their own two feet are given a boost and a bit of a nudge for opportunity, Mr. Speaker.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I think that I'm going to say that I support this motion with a small proviso that we proceed cautiously, but we have to be sensitive to the fact that if people are not living in safe and healthy homes, then we have to make sure we do something immediately. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause