44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, as the saying goes, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again”.
This morning, I am pleased to discuss housing, because it is a major problem of our time. It is not important how the topic came up this morning. An hour ago, I learned that I would be speaking for 10 minutes on housing and on the report that was tabled by the committee on which my colleague sits. I am very pleased to speak on this issue, as I believe it is fundamental.
I often say that there are three fundamental issues in this country. They are important priorities.
First, there is the language crisis. We have talked about that. Bill C-13 was introduced a little while ago. We will see if it works, but that is a major issue. French is disappearing across Canada and in Quebec. It is an important problem we will have to continue addressing. We must be vigilant, take action and face the problem.
Second, there is climate change. I do not think I need to say anything about that. It is a global problem. We saw it recently with the wildfires. It is important. Even if we cannot directly link the current wildfires to the broader climate crisis, everyone knows that they are related. Unfortunately, we have a government across the aisle that has absolutely no idea how to deal with the problem. It continues to spend shamelessly and scandalously on the oil companies. I will say this again: Last year, the oil companies made $200 billion in profits. It is indecent that this government continues to send money to oil billionaires who will ensure that climate change continues and gets worse in the coming years. It is outrageous.
Third, there is housing, the issue we are talking about today. All of these issues are related. The housing crisis is not an intellectual conceit. I will explain where we are now, what the issue is and what our goal should be. As my colleague mentioned, all other levels of government should also be working on the problem. I agree with him. Everyone should stop whatever they are doing and work on the housing crisis. It is one of the major crises of our time.
According to the CMHC and Scotiabank, in the next 10 years, Canada will have to build 3.5 million housing units. That is astronomical. What we need to deal with the crisis is a Marshall Plan.
In Quebec alone, 1.1 million housing units need to be built in the next 10 years. We know that the private sector will build 500,000 units. If we do nothing, 500,000 units will be built. Condos and houses are being built. There are developers with money who are building housing units. There are people with money who can purchase a $1-million or $2-million condo. There are such people, but when it comes to the housing crisis, those are not the ones we are talking about. People with money will always be able to buy things.
We are talking about those most in need, disadvantaged people, indigenous people, women who are victims of domestic violence and single mothers. These are the people we are talking about. Canada has passed a motion stating that housing is a right. Canada admits that housing is a right and that should not be subject to speculation. If it is a right, we must act accordingly. We must take action.
I was saying that in Quebec, the private sector will build 500,000 housing units. This means that in Quebec alone, over the next 10 years, 600,000 housing units will need to be built. We will need to build 60,000 housing units per year to address this problem. How many are we building? What is the result of this great national housing strategy that was launched five years ago?
Let us look at the results of this strategy after five years. It was launched in 2018. Where are we after five years? The outcome is pathetic.
They have renovated housing, according to the CMHC itself. I remember it, because I was in the House two or three weeks ago in committee of the whole. There was the Minister of Housing, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, the head of the CMHC and senior officials. They came up with lots of figures. They tried to be specific, consistent and smart, and they tried to advance the file. It was moving along. How many figures were produced? No one among the housing geniuses across from me on the other side of the House has contradicted me. No one has challenged the figures that I will give now.
Some $80 billion have been put into this strategy. What is the result after five years? That would be 100,000 housing units built and 100,000 renovated from coast to coast. I said it in English so that everyone would understand. We are talking about 200,000 housing units across the country. In Quebec alone, we need 60,000 housing units per year.
How does that work? In the last budget, we would have expected people to wake up. They know it themselves. The Minister of Housing admitted it. He knows the figure of $3.5 million that I quoted, since he quoted it to me one Monday evening in the House. They therefore know it and are well aware of it. They cannot claim ignorance, because they know. What is being done? What action will be taken?
Now, we know, the great strategy is a failure. Usually, in life, when we try something and it still does not work after three, four, five or eight years, we take action. Year after year, the builds are not there. The issues are not being addressed. The CMHC knows it. Their figures indicate that there will be fewer starts in the coming years. How will these issues be addressed?
Since the Minister of Housing is aware of the situation, I would have expected this year’s budget to include significant measures and something coherent. I imagine the minister carries some weight in cabinet; at least, one would hope. At some point, when they were putting together the budget, he could have stood up and said that he wanted the $20 million being sent to the oil companies to be allocated for housing. He could have said that. In principle, a minister is supposed to defend his own, his less fortunate and his files. However, there is no plan.
As I have already said in the House this year, it was outrageous to see what was done in the budget. Of the 300 or 400 pages of measures in every area, how many pages were there on housing? One would think there were eight, 12 or 24 pages. No, there was one single page on housing, the major issue of our time. Imagine the complete inaction on this issue, the utter failure to address the problem.
There are solutions. Let us talk about them. There is one solution I prefer. I know that many people in the House know about it and know that it is important; even some of the people in government know about it. It is one of the solutions that almost all housing advocacy organizations across Canada are bringing forward. My colleague spoke about it earlier. It is one of the recommendations in the committee report. The Government of British Columbia has proposed it. It is a housing acquisition project.
We know that it is difficult to build housing at this time. There is a labour shortage and construction costs have spiked. What can we do, then? Let us use existing housing. Let us buy housing and make it affordable over the long term, say over 10, 15 or 20 years. Let us give to our organizations and to people on the ground; let us give to the people who know what the needs are on the ground.
I am currently touring Quebec to talk about housing. People know what the needs are and are passionate about this issue. If we give them the means, they will address this issue and will work on behalf of those most in need in our society. We have to fund our organizations, those that know the lay of the land, those that know the issue. We could do that with an acquisition fund.
This is what they did in British Columbia. They created a $500‑million acquisition fund to enable organizations to acquire housing and get those units off the market. This is one of the major solutions proposed by all organizations across Canada. This is what needs to happen.
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- Jun/13/23 11:38:16 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the federal government is awash with cash. I do not want to go into that debate, but we have to do it. We are going to have that debate. The Bloc Québécois is trying to show, and it will do so over the coming weeks and months, that the fiscal imbalance is still very real. The federal government is using its surpluses to encroach on provincial jurisdictions.
There is money over there. It just needs to be invested in the right place. I am not saying that the federal government should buy houses. I am saying that the federal government should create a program and free up some money so that the provinces can set up programs and take action on housing right away.
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- Jun/13/23 11:39:44 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right, this is a comedy show. Please tell me the members opposite are joking when they say that they have done the most for housing. Ask anyone who is serious about this issue and they will find that laughable. The crisis has never been so severe.
Just this morning I was reading an article in the Journal de Montréal about a 63-year-old couple in Quebec who, for the first time, are going to sleep in their car with their two dogs. They have never experienced anything like this in their lives. There is no such thing as $1,300, $1,500 or $1,800 housing. If there were, it would be directly subsidized by our taxes. Programs are offering affordable housing for $2,000 a month in Montreal.
To say things have never been better sounds like a tag line for the Just For Laughs Festival.
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- Jun/13/23 11:41:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. I did not have time to address it in my speech.
Financialization of housing is a problem that is getting worse; we can see it. Just to put this into perspective, the federal government withdrew from housing in 1993. At that time, 30 years ago, 0% of the Canadian rental market was owned by private interests, either national or international. That phenomenon did not exist when the federal government was involved in housing prior to 1993. Now it is 23%. That means that 23% of Canada's rental housing stock is currently owned by national, private or international interests. When it comes to the right to housing, these people could not care less. All they want is to make money.
This problem needs to be addressed.
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- Jun/13/23 4:04:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague seems awfully pleased with how Canada is dealing with the human rights issue. We know that this is documented in Canada. Take, for example, the crisis in Iran. We know that there are Iranian nationals who are here and who are friends of the regime in Iran, a regime that is currently violating women's rights. I do not think that I need to paint a picture. There are some pretty horrific images making the rounds on social media.
With regard to China, the government is still tolerating Chinese police stations here in Canada. The RCMP's reports on that are contradictory. Recently, the mayor of Brossard told the media that a city councillor had been elected with the help of the Chinese regime on social media. The Brossard city council is extremely uncomfortable with that situation. The mayor talked about it in the paper. She was trying to find out from the RCMP what to do with one of her city councillors, who, as we know, was elected with the help of the Chinese government.
Could my colleague enlighten us on what is happening on that issue?
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- Jun/13/23 4:34:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague seems to think Canada is tough and imposes sanctions on regimes and individuals that violate human rights around the world.
We recently passed a motion recognizing the genocide against the Uyghur community in Xinjiang, China. However, we continue to import products from that region. The United States dealt with the problem differently: It assumes that any product manufactured in that region is associated with human rights violations.
Does my colleague think Canada should adopt the same policy? We give no one any chances, and we no longer buy products from that region?
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- Jun/13/23 5:05:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this bill is a good opportunity to discuss the many human rights being trampled on across the world these days. One country we rarely talk about, if at all, is Haiti. Currently, Haiti is a country in turmoil, ravaged by gang-related theft, looting and murder.
There are tremendous challenges in my riding involving women who are here in Canada but whose children are still in Haiti, living in very troubled areas, with no adults around. They live with their grandmothers in villages controlled by violent street gangs. It is very difficult to bring these people here. We have had a few success stories. One or two children have been repatriated, but this is extremely difficult to do.
Obviously, it is always a bit complicated to intervene in other countries, but what could we do to resolve this atrocious crisis caused by the events in Haiti?
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- Jun/13/23 6:50:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, perhaps I am a bit naive. When I first got here, I naively thought that we would be debating. I thought that democracy was the bedrock of ideas, that we would put forward ideas, that the opposition parties would put forward other ideas, that the government would also put forward ideas, that we would debate them all, and that this would lead to amazing bills. People would look at us and say how incredible we are. I thought that was democracy. As I have said many times here, that is not the case. I have lost count of the number of gag orders this government has imposed. Now we have a fundamental proposal that will change how we debate things for the next 10, 15, 20 or 100 years.
We hope to be long gone by then, because Quebec will have become independent. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that this proposal is going to be adopted, changing all the rules of the game with the wave of a magic wand. We have just a few hours to debate huge changes to how we conduct debates here. I think that is totally unacceptable.
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- Jun/13/23 7:07:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will calm down now.
In fact, I am a bit of a rookie in the House, a rookie in that it has been four years. I was here in 2019, but the pandemic hit soon after. We went back home and sat via Zoom. We returned roughly a year ago.
Honestly, when we are here in the House, that is when I resolve problems the most, by talking directly to the Minister of Immigration, among others. In Longueuil, there is a lot of immigration and we have very difficult and complex cases. Sometimes it is in talking to the Minister of Immigration, and offloading files to him, that we settle some things. I had cases involving Haitians who arrived in the past few weeks and months. If I had not spoken to the Minister of Immigration, I am pretty sure things would not have worked out so quickly.
There is also an airport in my riding. On that issue there is a lot of work to be done with the Minister of Transport. If I did not meet him in person, this would never get resolved. I do not understand why people are insisting on sitting virtually when we do our best work, in my opinion, when we are here in person.
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