44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/13/23 11:25:13 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in listening to this debate today, it seems like there is not just one elephant in the room, but a whole herd of elephants in the room.
Nobody really wants to talk about the fact that the private market will not produce affordable housing and affordable rental units. What we actually need, as I think everybody in this room is aware, is for alternatives for people that provide secure housing, through co-operative housing or other forms of non-profit housing. I wonder if the member would agree with me that this is the real elephant in the room that we are not talking about, which is the failure of the market system to produce affordable housing.
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- Jun/13/23 12:51:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question to the hon. member has to do with the elephants in the room I talked about earlier.
We have some members of the House who tend to blame immigrants for the shortage of housing, when we know that we need workers and that the immigrants themselves suffer from the lack of housing. We also have people who are blaming councils. As a former councillor, I know most councils have worked hard to try to get new housing built.
Does the hon. member really believe that the private market will actually solve the affordable housing crisis in this country, when it has demonstrated that it would not?
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- Jun/13/23 1:06:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, now I have heard the second Conservative speaker calling for some kind of capital gains exemption for real estate investors as a way of solving the housing problem. In the 1990s, we understood that the most vulnerable in Canada, such as young families, seniors and low-income people, needed alternatives to ownership to get secure housing.
I am going to ask the hon. member this again: Do any of the Conservatives support returning to a strong co-op movement in this country that provides people with security of housing, which they pay for themselves but which requires some public subsidy to get going?
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- Jun/13/23 6:37:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as one of the people who believes very much in diversity in the House of Commons and making sure that all kinds of Canadians can participate in democracy, I am a strong supporter of the virtual Parliament measures. I think it is essential to our democracy that Parliament does evolve and change. Next door to me is the member for Victoria, a young mom who is about two days away from having a second child, and because she cannot fly during that period of time, she would be excluded from these proceedings if it were not for virtual Parliament.
I think what we are seeing here is an evolution that makes Parliament more democratic and more representative. Like the member, I have a long commute and I go home every weekend. I do not avail myself of virtual Parliament very often, but that does not mean that I think others should be deprived of that right.
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- Jun/13/23 6:52:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to the debate, and I have enormous respect for the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman. I do agree with him that we work better when we are here in person.
However, last October, I had a very severe bout of COVID and I had to stay at home. I was not allowed to fly. I was a danger to other people. I could not have participated without virtual Parliament. I know there are others who have had similar experiences. People say that the pandemic is over, but we just had an outbreak of COVID in a child care centre in my riding. It has been very severe. Tons of kids and their parents now have COVID again.
Does the member for London West agree that we are not really out of the woods on these pandemics, that we may need these measures and that we should keep them in place in the interim?
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- Jun/13/23 7:09:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will say that I am not an unreserved fan of the virtual Parliament. One of the things I would like to see is eliminating the chairing of committees by someone virtually. We have vice-chairs, and there is no real need to have virtual chairing for committee meetings.
That said, I think there is something to be said for our making Parliament more family friendly, to accommodate all kinds of families. I know we lose some things with a virtual Parliament, and I know some things are inconvenient, but for me, that is outweighed by the factor of making Parliament more family friendly. I wonder if the hon. member shares my concern that we make sure all kinds of families can serve here in Parliament.
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- Jun/13/23 7:37:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to start with a small correction to the record. The member for Saint-Jean implied that I had said I did not support everything in the motion but was in favour of virtual Parliament. What I said was that I am a strong supporter of virtual Parliament on the basis of its ability to be more family-friendly, to make Parliament more diverse and to include people when they have physical and health challenges.
I did say that I have some concerns about practices that evolved during virtual Parliament. I was happy to hear the member raise the condition of the health and safety of interpreters. They are essential to the operation of the House, no matter whether one is an English speaker or a French speaker. What measures does she think we should be taking now to improve the working conditions for those very important interpreters?
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