Senator Martin: CMHC says the gap between the amount of housing needed to restore affordability and the amount projected to be built by 2030 has gotten worse over the last year in my province of British Columbia. Statistics Canada said that in July residential housing permits in B.C. fell over 30% year over year. On Tuesday, it reported that investment in residential building construction also fell in B.C. in July.

Leader, the Trudeau government has been too late in acknowledging the housing crisis they created, and nothing they have put forward will come close to fixing it. If the Prime Minister believes he’s not responsible for housing, how can he bring homes to Canadians that they can afford?

Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Senator Gold, back in May, I raised with you the massive shortfall between the amount of housing the Trudeau government is promising and the amount Canada needs just to restore housing affordability by 2030. Earlier this month, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, said our country needs about 3.5 million more houses over and above what is already projected. This is roughly the same amount CMHC said we needed in a report released last year. So more than a year later, we haven’t seen progress.

Leader, your government first promised the Housing Accelerator Fund in 2021, yet it didn’t accept applications until this past July and it hasn’t built a single house. Why did it take so long for the Trudeau government to get an accelerator fund up and running during a housing crisis?

Senator Plett: Sounds like deceleration.

Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-1001, An Act to amalgamate The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Ottawa and The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation for the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, in Ontario, Canada.

This bill seeks to legally formalize the amalgamation of the two religious entities by combining them into a single federally incorporated not-for-profit corporation. The Catholic Pope announced the merger on May 6, 2020, and these two corporations, by way of a petition, have prayed for an act of incorporation to make legal effect to the merger announcement. Bill S-1001 is the legislative response to that prayer.

For context, Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall in January 2016, Archbishop Terrence J. Prendergast, was given the mandate of making recommendations regarding a possible merger between his diocese and the Archdiocese of Ottawa. The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation for the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, in Ontario, Canada, is incorporated provincially under the Statutes of the Province of Ontario in 1979. In 1884, The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Ottawa was incorporated federally under the Statutes of Canada, which brings us to the debates before us today.

The bill is quite straightforward. For the purposes of the debate at second reading today, I will highlight four of the clauses of particular importance.

For the specifics of the amalgamation, clause 3 creates The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation for the Diocese of Ottawa-Cornwall, for which a certificate of continuance is deemed to have been issued under clause 10(3) of the bill, according to subsection 211(1) of the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, and the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Ottawa.

Subsection 2 of clause 3 specifies that the new entity will have the status of a corporation without share capital as incorporated by a special act of Parliament and not continued under any other act.

Clause 4 states the effects there will be upon amalgamation. These include the consolidation of all property; obligations; liabilities; civil, criminal or administrative actions or proceedings; convictions, rulings, orders or judgments; claims, rights and privileges; as well as any devise, testament, bequest, donation, beneficial trust or other transfers of property for the benefit of any of the amalgamating corporations.

That is to say that any legal obligations or potential criminal proceedings are not nullified through the act of amalgamating these two entities.

Clause 7 defines the not-for-profit nature of the corporation to be established. And clause 10(2) provides that The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation for the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall is deemed to have applied for a certificate of continuance under subsection 211(1) of the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act before the bill receives Royal Assent.

Clause 10(4) explains how, for the purposes of subsection 211(7) of the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, the bill serves as the certificate of continuance for The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation for the Diocese of Ottawa-Cornwall Act.

Now I turn to the importance of this bill for the proponents, the two Catholic communities that have been praying in earnest for the amalgamation.

This bill will create one large archdiocese stretching from Ottawa South to the St. Lawrence River, merging Alexandria-Cornwall, with 27 parishes with a Catholic population of about 60,000, with the larger Ottawa archdiocese, which serves about 395,000 Catholics with 107 parishes and missions.

One of the reasons for amalgamating Ottawa with Alexandria-Cornwall is the protection of French-language Catholic services in eastern Ontario because of the difficulty of finding bilingual priests who could serve as bishops. That, coupled with demographic changes and aging buildings that will eventually need to be closed, led to the decision.

While many parishioners felt that the two separate dioceses were a good fit because many of the parishes of both Ottawa and Alexandria-Cornwall dioceses are near the same highway and more closely linked to each other than to the neighbouring Archdiocese of Kingston, not everyone agreed. Opponents feared that the region would be lost within the larger archdiocese. They also raised concerns over a loss of history. The Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall’s roots go back to the very first settlements of Catholics in Upper Canada. While it seems that many recognize the merger was inevitable, it is my sincere hope that the archbishop will do whatever possible to honour and preserve the history of the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall.

My honourable colleague Senator Clement, as the former mayor of Cornwall, participated in numerous community consultations on the merger and knows well the desires of these two communities. That is why the honourable senator worked diligently with her community to establish a petition to call on the Senate to pass a private act to amalgamate the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Ottawa and the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation for the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall into a single episcopal corporation. To quote the senator from her sponsor speech:

If there is one thing that comes through from all my interventions over the coming years, I hope that it’s the voices of the many people impacted by policy; they deserve to be heard loud and clear.

I think this is what Bill S-1001 is all about — hearing the voices of those impacted. I am glad that other voices — and I’m thinking mostly of Indigenous voices here — are not silenced either, and that there are provisions so that, should the unfortunate need arise, this bill will not preclude litigation that may need to proceed against one of the former entities. While I pray that this clause will never be necessary, it is important that, as parliamentarians, we ensure that past wrongs against Indigenous peoples are not forgotten.

I will close my remarks with two comments I read in an article on the recent Catholic Women’s League Convention in Cornwall. Angela Gaudet, the Catholic Women’s League Alexandria-Cornwall Diocese president, said:

It’s the end of an era, and the beginning of a new journey . . . I’m excited and nervous at the same time.

Emma Rose Rayburn, communications director of the Catholic Women’s League said, “We’re all on board and everyone is ready to move on.”

I think these sentiments wrap up the feelings well. Life is a journey — one that can be both exciting and scary. Yet when we are all on board and move forward together, great things can be accomplished. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Housakos, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Housakos, seconded by the Honourable Senator Wells:

That the Senate call on the Government of Canada to:

(a)denounce the illegitimacy of the Cuban regime and recognize the Cuban opposition and civil society as valid interlocutors; and

(b)call on the Cuban regime to ensure the right of the Cuban people to protest peacefully without fear of reprisal and repudiation.

(On motion of Senator Clement, debate adjourned.)