Thank you, Randy, for the work you’re doing, thank you for advocating for Edmonton, thank you for everything you do across the country to create jobs and get people ready for the jobs of the future.

David, thank you so much for welcoming us here today and showcasing the incredible work you're doing, not just building communities, but building affordable communities for people across the city, across the province, across the country. Christel, thank you for everything you do with the city.

Amarjeet, it is such a pleasure to be here with you today making this big announcement. You and I have worked together many, many years on serving Canadians, on delivering in ways that are having a real impact on people. I can't stand here on this cool day without remembering a very cool day in November 2017, when you and I announced the National Housing Strategy.

One of the challenges we're facing right now with this housing crisis is over the past decades, the federal governments of different stripes stepped back from the business of ensuring that housing was properly built right across the country in affordable ways, meeting the supply needs, meeting the growth of the country. So in 2017, with then-Minister Amarjeet Sohi, we launched the National Housing Strategy. Over the past years, we’re talking about a $2.4 billion investment just in Alberta that has created and restored and refurbished and enabled more than 100,000 homes across Alberta.

And many of those programs, whether it's the Rapid Housing Initiative, whether it's the Reaching Home program against homelessness, whether it's the Apartment Construction Loan Program or the Affordable Home Program-… Fund, the Affordable Home Fund, which actually led to this place, has all been about building more locations, building more units for people who need it, people right across the country.

This place here at Edgemont Flats, we announced in June of last year, $80 million investment for 330 units that are… over 60% of them being affordable, a number of them deeply affordable as well, that are going to allow families to move in this coming summer and have a place to stay, a place to build a future, a place to grow. That's what housing is all about.

And we have been, over the past years, working extremely hard on building projects like this, but it still wasn't enough, there was more we needed to do. And what we needed to do was change the way housing is built in this country, right across the country. So, yes, we're continuing to invest in specific projects like these to get things done, but we also wanted to change the rules of the game so cities could build more housing right across their properties, right across their territory.

That's what the Housing Accelerator is all about. We put $4 billion on the table, have now signed over 50 agreements specifically with cities, that is changing the way zoning happens, changing the default zoning so people can build more units on a single property. Changing the density rules so that you can create much greater density, specifically around public transit, so people can walk to public transit and get into work cheaper. Moving forward on accelerating red tape processes so developers can move forward quicker on building the homes people need. Utilization of public spaces in all sorts of ways that is going to enable more housing to come.

So, the Housing Accelerator agreement with the City of Edmonton is for $175 million, that is going to get more homes built faster. And there's more…

(Applause)

Yeah, that’s worth an applause!

But there's more to do. Yesterday, we were in B.C. with a B.C. Builds program that I hope is going to be taken up right across the country, where the federal government stepped up to match $2 billion of funding from the province, with $2 billion of funding from the federal government, to start building affordable rental homes in the hearts of cities so that firefighters, tradespeople, nurses, teachers can actually live in the cities that they are working in, to increase their quality of life. So, between the Housing Accelerator and more programs, we're rolling up our sleeves to deliver on the housing challenges that Canadians are facing, by building more supply, by supporting them and buying new homes with the first-time savings account, and a range of other methods as well.

We’re here to invest in housing here with the Housing Accelerator Fund for Edmonton, $175 million that will get homes built faster, but also with other programs that will deliver the affordability and economic growth that families are counting on. It’s good construction jobs, but more importantly, it’s good homes for people who will be able to build a life, a career, a future here in this beautiful part of our country.

With that, I'm really, really pleased to be here. Across the country, the Housing Accelerator Fund has unlocked at least 600,000 new homes over the coming years, but the reality is there'll be much more because, like I said, we're changing the way housing gets built in this country, and that can only happen when different orders of government are fully working together.

The partnership with the city on this one, the leadership of nonprofit and developer partners that are creating these things, the provinces, in some cases, are there as well for investments. We need to continue to respond to the needs of a growing ambitious workforce and population, and that's exactly what we're here to do today.

Thank you very much, everyone.