Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. Indeed, the CMHC report underlines the critical and urgent need for the supply of new houses to be increased, and that’s why the government brought forth — as I reported in this chamber and I will not on elaborate further — a suite of new measures to tackle this crisis by putting Canada on track to double the number of construction of new homes over the next decade.

I will only say, in an echo to Senator Plett, prior to my political life, I was in business and was involved with real estate. Those of you who have experience in real estate know there are many factors that go into an entrepreneur’s decision whether to build or not to build, and those have to do with many factors that help explain, to some degree, why we are having a challenge in this country in building sufficient houses and homes to meet the increasing demands.