44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 30, 2023 11:00AM
- Oct/30/23 6:12:57 p.m.
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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—
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- Oct/30/23 6:22:12 p.m.
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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.
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- Oct/30/23 6:23:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting. One of the biggest problems we have in the House is that the Liberals often will say that they are spending their money. What is lost, so often forgotten, is that they do not have any money; they have taxpayers' money, and that is the reality. That is why there is record-high inflation. That is why there is a homelessness problem. There is reckless spending by a government and a Prime Minister that have never had to balance a budget. There is reckless spending by a Prime Minister who does not know that it is not his money.
I will share another little point that happened today in committee. The Auditor General's report said that the government spent $1.3 billion to reduce homelessness, but could not tell whether it had reduced it at all. Of that $1.3 billion, $708 million went to social distancing and masks. I am sorry, but when people live in a tent, they do not need those things; they need houses built.
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- Oct/30/23 6:25:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the reality is that when there is an affordability crisis, the first thing people stop doing is giving to charities. The first thing people stop doing is being able to have extra cash. Social services and social programs are funded best when we have a healthy economy. Tell me what is happening in this country right now when we have historically high usage of a food bank, the highest ever. We will get houses built only when the private sector can do that, and then we would have a healthy enough economy to have social services money. Build for that. That is the reality, and we have a government right now that does not respect taxpayers' money.
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