44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 30, 2023 11:00AM
- Oct/30/23 5:54:32 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague the following. In his opinion, how many additional housing units will we be able to build if the amendment proposed by the Conservatives is adopted? Will it really improve the situation of families in Quebec and Canada who are struggling with housing problems?
52 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 5:54:49 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I think the report speaks for itself in terms of the recommendations.
I mentioned just now that the national housing strategy is a fluid one, and we are going to continue to see changes. Unfortunately, what we have seen from the other side of the House are delay tactics. There were delay tactics at committee to get the report here in terms of finding consensus on recommendations. There have been delay tactics with other housing initiatives and votes that we have had in this House. So, my answer would be that I think we are going to continue to see this pattern of behaviour continue, with obstruction and delays, trying to prevent the government from moving forward with legislation that is going to help Canadians.
127 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 5:55:33 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the Liberals try to pat themselves on the back and say that everything is great, but all we have to do is go outside and we will find homeless people everywhere. It is not working.
We lost 800,000 units under the Conservatives. They failed to deliver. In fact, they said that they were going to commit to making sure there was housing for 50% of homeless people within a decade. That is not good enough. The member before him started talking about how they will not be able to house everybody.
What we need is a wartime-like effort with a commitment and a timeline so that we actually do build housing for everybody. However, someone at home is listening to this government saying, “Sorry, we cannot promise that we are going to make sure you have a roof over your head.” What kind of country do we live in?
Will my colleague and his government put forward a plan with a timeline to ensure that every Canadian in this country has a roof over their head? We need a wartime-like effort. We need it urgently. It is impacting everybody.
196 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 5:56:42 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I attended committee again today, and we had CMHC representatives there as well as representatives from infrastructure who manage our Reaching Home program, and we talked about the inroads that we have made.
For me, the most pressing issue of all the issues related to housing are encampments, and I think we need to provide additional assistance. However, it is a great first start in terms of the resources that we provided to those who try to get people out of encampments and into transitional supportive housing. We need to do more of that. I think that is the most pressing issue for those people who are living rough and do not have the services in order to deal with their mental health issues, in many cases, or addiction issues, and it is an all-of-government approach. I think I have been very consistent, as has the government, in terms of working with partners in this space to serve that population.
164 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, it has been really interesting to sit in the House today and listen to Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker declaring victory on the housing situation, talking about all of the fantastic things they are doing right now and announcing new fancy program title after new fancy program title. We have seen, over the last eight years, ever-larger announcements in terms of spending, but never as part of the conversation do we get to actual outcomes. By “outcomes”, I do not mean the fancy titles or the big numbers; I mean actual homes being built for Canadians.
It has been eight years that the government has been in power, and it is now in partnership, coalition or whatever we want to call it with the NDP. We have never, ever, been so short of homes in this country. Rents have never been higher than they are right now. The cost to purchase a home has never been higher than it is right now. It is harder for Canadians to get housing than it has ever been in our history. Today it is harder than ever, after eight years of the Liberal party's being in government, yet speaker after speaker has come out there and, with a straight face, declared victory and made ever bigger pronouncements.
I do have to point out that I will be sharing my time with the hard-working member for Peterborough—Kawartha, and I thank my colleague beside me here, who snuck a little note in. Some might have noticed that, and every colleague of the House knows what that is like.
The interesting thing about this is that it has never been worse, but the only time it was even close was in the disastrous Trudeau years of the seventies and eighties. Many, but not all, members of the House remember the disastrous Trudeau legacy. We had a housing crisis, an inflation crisis and an economic crisis. We had a unity crisis. Does that sound familiar? Sometimes it gets a bit confusing when I talk about the disastrous Trudeau legacy, and some Liberal members from time to time bounce up and get defensive of their own government right now, another disastrous Liberal government. I understand the confusion, but if we remember those days, the real difficulty around them and the real tragedy around what happened in the seventies and eighties were not just the 14 deficits in 15 years that led to that unbelievable economic pain for families. Many of us remember it; we have just heard another member talk about how difficult it was during that time. However, we were not trading short-term pain for long-term gain; we actually had long-term pain as well, so it was short-term pain and long-term pain, because in the mid-nineties, from 1995 to 1997, another Liberal government had to pay the price for all of the deficits we ran up.
We ask this question on a regular basis in the House: How much interest is the Government of Canada going to be paying today on the debt it has run up over the last eight years? We never get an answer from the Liberals, but the answer is that it is in the $44-billion range, and the suggestion is now that, because of interest rates, that number could be higher. We pay the same on interest, on nothing, as we pay in the Canada health transfer right now in this country, after eight years of a Liberal-NDP government. We are throwing away between $44 billion and $50 billion a year on interest payments that we could be spending on other things that are important. We could be unlocking the potential of our housing sector if we just got a handle on our economy.
The Liberal answer, if they had that money, might be to just spend $50 billion, do a big announcement and call it something fancy, but we would say on this side that our leader today did a fantastic speech as he introduced his bill, Bill C-356. I would highly recommend that people check out his speech on social media: on X, Facebook or Youtube. His message is resonating with a growing number of Canadians. There are many points in the speech that people can reference. If people want to get a bit of hope and a bit of wind in their sails as they are trying to deal with crisis after crisis that they have seen befall them because of actions undertaken by the NDP-Liberal government of the day, they should read Bill C-356 and watch the speech the Conservative leader, the future prime minister, made today. I guarantee them they will find some hope in that speech.
However, we are dealing with the issues we have right now, and we could be dealing with this issue for two more years. It was very interesting today to hear NDP speakers. Many of them are very passionate about these issues and have very different views of the world than I would have. They have very different ideas than we have over here on how we achieve results for Canadians. It was very interesting to hear them speak so critically of the Liberal government and meanwhile every single day they vote to keep the government in power. As bad as an incompetent Liberal government is, it is even worse to be the party that is voting consistently to keep its members in power and is propping them up day after day.
I will touch on another thing that is kind of interesting. Over the last few days, when we talk about the economic situation, these things all connect together of course as we deal with the devastating economics. As we learned from the Trudeau debacle of the seventies and eighties, everything is connected and eventually there is a cost.
Over the last couple of days, we have had this conversation around the carbon tax. Apparently there are places in this country where Liberals hold seats but they are worried they will not hold them for very much longer. We found out that those Liberal members of Parliament have a lot of influence over their government, because the government is so scared it is going to lose those seats as it looks at the polls. It not just Atlantic Canada; it is other places too.
The Minister of Rural Economic Development told the entire country, in an interview, that the reason people are getting a break in one part of the country on the carbon tax is not because it makes environmental sense or even because it makes economic sense but because it makes political sense. If someone votes Liberal, they will be rewarded with tax breaks, but if someone is in a part of the country that does not vote Liberal, they do not get those same rewards.
As we are having this conversation, I started thinking about where this goes next. Is there going to be another interview next weekend that is going to talk about a housing program, for example, that is going to benefit municipalities that vote Liberal? I do not think the NDP has this kind of power, but does it maybe extend to NDP ridings too? I do not think NDP members have been strong enough negotiators to work that into their deal, but perhaps. These are reasonable questions Canadians might have. Where does this end?
The Liberal Party is clearly panicking. It is clearly plummeting. It is in a free fall right now and making decisions that, in a normal context, would not make any sense. It has been making those types of decisions for the last eight years, which has brought us to where we are right now, but Canadians are waking up to this.
My hope is our NDP colleagues start to see this as well and that at some point in time we have an opportunity to have a confidence vote in this Parliament, like we have on a fairly regular basis. Maybe this confidence vote would be different. Maybe rather than just saying with words that they do not have confidence in the government, because we all understand that, they will actually vote that way on behalf of their constituents. Maybe we can have these debates in a meaningful way, get this country back on track and have these debates during potentially an election time even. That is how dire the situation is right now.
As I wrap up, I really look forward to questions. I hope in the questions coming from the Liberals' side maybe they will ask us about Bill C-356. I have some points I can get to if they are curious to know answers to some of the challenges we have.
1476 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity to read Bill C-356 and it sounds a lot like our housing accelerator fund. I guess the best form of political flattery is political plagiarism.
I have had the opportunity to look through the last several housing plans from the Conservatives. They have talked about money laundering, about making land available through the Canada lands initiatives and addressing amortization periods. They have talked about everything except providing support to people: seniors, persons with disabilities, the people who sit on affordable housing wait-lists.
My question to the member opposite is: Why?
98 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:09:10 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I find it quite ironic when Conservatives rise in this House and blame the NDP when they are responsible for losing 800,000 units when they were in government.
Also, they have not negotiated or gained any housing in the whole eight years I have sat in this place. New Democrats have been trying to get getting housing built. If we were in government, there would be much more. We would have a plan to make sure that everybody has a place to live. We were able to negotiate over $7 billion for indigenous people.
All I hear about the Conservatives' plan is to sell 6,000 public buildings and 15% of federal public lands. We know how that works. We saw Doug Ford in Ontario do it with the Greenbelt. He lined the pockets of a handful of developers for billions of dollars, $6.8 billion.
What is my colleague going to do to make sure that does not happen with federal lands and buildings if that is the Conservatives' plan?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
179 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:11:17 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am looking for what the plan is. If the plan is to put pressure on local governments to create density, what are the Conservatives going to do to ensure that a large part of that housing is going to be non-market housing?
Right now in this country, there is 3.5% non-market housing and 30% corporate ownership of housing, something I am sure the Conservatives are very supportive of. Europe has 30% non-market housing, but if we go to Europe, we will not see homelessness.
I want to work with my colleague. He is a friend. I respect a lot of the work we have done together on mental health and addictions. I want to hear what the Conservatives' plan is so that we can find some common ground in this place. That is really what is needed right now from all parties. I think there is a willingness, but we have to find a pathway to get there.
165 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:12:12 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the reality is that even in the member's second question, he uses lingo and terminology that does not talk about results. We need housing. If the government is going to transfer money to municipalities for housing, it would be reasonable for the government to hold those municipalities accountable for actually creating housing. That is what Conservatives are going to do.
I do not have enough time to give any more background on the Conservative leader's speech. I would just encourage Canadians to find it online and watch it.
92 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:12:57 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank the constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. It is always a big honour to stand in the House of Commons to speak on their behalf.
Without a doubt, the biggest issue facing Canadians right now is housing. If anybody would argue that with me in the House, I would definitely die on that hill. It is the number one issue across the country.
Tonight, we are talking about the Liberal national housing strategy. This report came out of the HUMA committee, which I sit on, so I was part of it, and I want to go through a couple of things.
The report says the Liberal-NDP government “announced their national housing strategy in 2017, with great fanfare”. I guess it was not the Liberal-NDP government at that time. It was just the Liberal government. It went on:
The Prime Minister even went so far as to call the [national housing strategy] “transformational”. The [national housing strategy] is supposed to:
Remove 530,000 Canadian families from housing needs.
Reduce chronic homelessness by 50%.
Protect 385,000 community housing units.
Provide 300,000 households with affordability support.
Repair and renew 300,000 existing housing units.
Create 100,000 new housing units.
But here is what has happened since 2015 under the Liberals and their [transformational housing strategy]:
House prices have doubled in Canada....
Monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled to over $3,000 per month.
The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities is $2,213, compared to $1,171.
Nine out of ten young people in this country who do not own a home believe they never will.
It now takes over 60% of Canadians' income to cover the cost of owning a home.
According to the OECD (2023), Canada has the largest gap between home prices and incomes among G7 nations.
Canada has the fewest number of homes per capita in the G7.
The CMHC is predicting that housing starts will decline by up to 32% this year.
That is the situation we are in. I am 44 years old, and never before in my life have I seen a housing crisis like this.
Today, at committee, we had the opportunity to welcome back members of CMHC and Infrastructure Canada. For people who are watching at home, Infrastructure Canada oversees a program called Reaching Home, the program that is supposed to fight homelessness. What I am about to tell members happened today at Parliament in Ottawa. The bureaucrat from Infrastructure Canada said that it had seen “tremendous results” with the money from this program. Tremendous results in homelessness, I would say.
We are less than a mile from the ByWard Market. Anybody who has come to Ottawa in their life knows that was the place to go. There was BeaverTails. It was where they went when they visited Parliament Hill. When people come to Parliament Hill now, they do not even recognize it. That is the situation across this country. In my community of Peterborough—Kawartha, there are tents; encampments; homeless people, families and seniors; and homelessness. However, we have seen tremendous results.
I am just going to do a quick google here. I am not sure what tremendous results they are speaking of, but here are just a couple of headlines from the last month. “Metro Vancouver homeless count up 32%”. “Homeless encampments at ‘all-time high’ in Ottawa”. The Ottawa article goes on to say, “According to data from Brown's department, city staff have responded to 375 encampments so far this year. That's way up from 343 during all of last year and 248 in 2021. In 2020, the first year with comparable data, there were just 65.”
Going from 65 in 2020 to 375 in 2023 means tremendous results. It was shocking and unnerving to hear the justification that they are doing a great job when all we have to do is go to any downtown in this country to see otherwise.
I asked people on Facebook to write and email me because it is critical that we listen to our constituents. There is obviously a disconnect from reality. We see it. We see the political game. We saw that this past weekend with the carbon tax. First they were saying, “The carbon tax is great. It is wonderful. It is really helping everything”. The Conservatives have been sitting over here for years saying that it is not working and it is not a good plan. Now they are saying, “You know what, we might be losing seats. We'd better change our approach”. This is about political science, not about humanity.
I want to read this to the House because it really summarizes the Canada that the Prime Minister has created. My constituent wrote:
Hi Michelle, I don’t normally get involved in politics or ever even wrote to a politician. But the issue around addiction and homelessness is really starting to frustrate me. And the reason is I live in the south end of Peterborough and we are constantly having issues with people trying to get into our cars. Yesterday we had someone walk right up our driveway in front of my wife and go into our backyard and snoop around before leaving. On multiple occasions we have had people sleep in our kids mini houses in our backyard and my wife sees them when she goes to work at 5:30. As a parent of two young kids we can’t even let our children play in our own backyard for fear of people coming back there and we don’t know what these people will do. The fact that they now do it right in front of us and that we can’t do anything is a bit worrisome. I don’t know the solutions I just wanted to share a bit of my story so hopefully something can be done about this. So kids can get back to being kids and not have any fear of who or what is in there toys or if there toys will even be there when they want to use them because someone else has stolen them. Thanks for reading and hopefully something changes through all levels of government.
That is one of thousands of emails I have. They are an indication of the country we live in. It is chaos. It is a public safety nightmare. At the core of all of this is housing.
There is the Reaching Home program, which is supposed to help with homelessness. According to the website, “Reaching Home has 4 regional funding streams that provide funding to communities to address local homelessness needs.” We did the work to go online to see how to access these funds, and as of October 27, the designated communities funding stream is closed, the indigenous homelessness funding stream has no way to apply, the rural and remote homelessness funding stream is closed and the territorial homelessness funding stream has no way to apply. That, my friends, is what we are talking about when we say “bureaucracy”. That, my friends, is what we are talking about when we say “gatekeepers”. They talk about these programs that no one can even access.
Let me mention another a little thing about the Reaching Home strategy. It is all fine and well to have access to programs that no one can access, but there is no plan for treatment and recovery in any of this. There is a very wishy-washy, wraparound support system and them saying, “Yes, we are going to offer supports”.
I challenge any member in the House to find out if somebody in their local community has had timely access to the supports they need to get out of addiction, to get out of abuse, to be successful, to leave the environment they are in, because it is certainly not in here. If someone wants success in this country, they have to help people, and “wraparound supports” is a really nice term, but it means nothing if nothing is in place. There is nothing in this country under these Liberals, and after eight years of Justin Trudeau, that is designated and that focuses on treatment and recovery—
1413 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:22:12 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, the reality is this: homelessness is the worst that it has ever been. I, along with my Conservative colleagues, came here to fix it. That is why I ran. We have to do something. This national housing strategy is just more paperwork. Every expert has said that we need the private sector to close the gap. We need more supply, yet the Liberals and NDP punish people who want to build homes.
I ask everyone watching to please vote Conservative and please pay attention. We need more houses built in this country, and we are the only party that would do it.
111 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:23:05 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I would note that the member has never been supportive of any of the programs that the federal government has done with respect to building affordable housing throughout the country, yet in the member's very own riding, when a project with federal dollars that she voted against was announced and the groundbreaking ceremony occurred, she tweeted out, “Step by step, brick by brick. Very happy to support this project!!” I am curious whether the member can inform the House how she was supporting the project, because it clearly was not by supporting the monetary measures that went towards it.
104 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/30/23 6:25:08 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, nowhere in the world has the free market solved an affordable housing crisis. We know that under the Conservative watch, we lost 800,000 units. We saw REITs and corporate ownership of residential housing go through the roof. We saw housing prices double. Today, we still hear of no plan from the Conservatives. All we see are things like what happened in Ontario with the Greenbelt.
I want to hear from my colleague. Do the Conservatives have a plan, and do they support co-op and non-market housing and social housing as a solution to the free market disaster we are seeing when it comes to housing in this country?
113 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
