- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Port Moody—Coquitlam
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $129,260.13
- Government Page
- Apr/16/24 3:12:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, seniors are being kicked out of their homes because assisted living is now fodder for greedy developers and private equity firms. Ninety year olds are being put on the street so that super-rich CEOs can make a buck.
The Liberals and the Conservatives let developers buy up affordable housing and now they are letting them go after long-term care. A family whose father was kicked out of his home called this a death sentence.
Will the government stop this in its tracks and use the budget to end greedy CEOs from evicting vulnerable seniors?
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- Feb/7/24 7:52:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today I want to speak about the fact that so many Canadians are suffering from losing or potentially losing their housing.
Recently in the House, I asked the housing minister what the government was going to do about keeping seniors in their rental homes as many of the affordable rental homes for seniors are being gutted for luxury condos. Luxury condo developers are buying up land, getting it rezoned and upzoned, and displacing the people who have lived in those homes for 10, 20, 30 years, and sometimes longer.
I was at a redevelopment where a 70-year-old senior asked if I could help find a long-term care home, because a developer had come and bought up that low-rise rental housing and there was nowhere for that senior to go.
I was talking to an educational assistant in her 60s who wants to retire, but is being displaced in my community of Port Moody—Coquitlam. She told me that she has nowhere to go. She has spent her entire career supporting families in this community, sibling after sibling. She loves the community, but is being pushed out by greed.
I think about the fact that the government continues to miss the mark on supporting and protecting rental homes. Conservatives lost 800,000 affordable homes. Liberals have done nothing to make up for those losses and it is affecting people on the ground.
I also want to talk about transit. We know that we need more public transit investment. The Liberal government is so far behind on its investments in communities, it would much rather spend its money on greedy CEOs who want new freezers than make sure that EAs and the seniors who have lived in our communities forever are being displaced. That is where the Liberals are focused. That is what they want to do.
Therefore, I am here today to ask the Liberal government this. Why it is so hard for it to invest in communities and people? Why is it missing the boat on transit? The Metro Vancouver mayors have been here advocating for a transit investment. The infrastructure minister said that they will get it two years from now. That is not good enough. If they do not get the money for two years, they cannot even build for another two on top of that.
What is the Liberal government doing to make sure that communities are kept whole, and that people have a place to live and transit to use?
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- Feb/1/24 2:49:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, rent is due today. For workers in Port Moody—Coquitlam, that rent will cost over 50% of their monthly paycheque. Some seniors are facing renoviction and homelessness because corporate investors are buying up their affordable homes. The out-of-touch Liberals created this mess alongside the cut-and-gut Conservatives, who work for greedy corporations. Why are the Liberals dragging their feet when Canadians desperately need affordable rental homes now?
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Mr. Speaker, the government member just said that, since 2015, the Liberals have recognized that the federal government needs to be involved in housing. That is not true.
I am the representative for the NDP on HUMA. The housing minister of the very recent past refused to acknowledge that the Liberals have a market-driven lens on their take on housing. I can tell members that it has been damaging to my community of Port Moody—Coquitlam, and they are still doing it.
I think about the rents right now and the seniors in my community who are being displaced by the gentrification. There has been luxury condo after luxury condo that the federal government has loaned money for. It has not spent a dollar on operating, when it needs to subsidize and help those seniors stay in homes. We have seniors living in tents.
I am not going to let the Liberals take a victory lap on the work they have done since 2015 because they have done nothing.
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- Nov/23/23 11:22:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is such an important question. For eight years, I sat at a city council table and saw that perfectly affordable housing was being bought by large corporations and upzoned for them, and then almost a quarter of the condos they were building were sitting empty for years. The efforts of the development industry to pull profits out of communities at the cost of affordable homes for Canadians of all ages were very difficult to watch, because we could see the profit leaving communities. Those developments were not building communities, and we can see now that we have a lot more work to do in the area of bringing back affordable units. It is 15:1. People cannot afford to live in these communities anymore when they are taken over by real estate trusts and development groups that build luxury condo after luxury condo.
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- Oct/23/23 3:11:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the City of Coquitlam has had to foot the bill to save affordable homes because the federal government is missing in action. Renters in my community are being displaced at alarming rates as their homes are being sold off to for-profit developers. Homelessness in Coquitlam is soaring. We cannot afford to lose more co-ops and rentals. The Liberals are turning their backs on local governments that are doing their best to protect low-income renters.
How many more people need to go homeless before the Liberals take this housing crisis seriously?
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- Oct/18/23 3:15:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, homelessness in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody is up by 86%. Community leaders from the Tri-Cities Homelessness & Housing Task Group are calling for political courage. I agree. People being unable to find a home is past the point of a crisis, and with colder weather on its way, action is needed, but the Liberals are out of touch, and their lack of concern is appalling.
What are the Liberals going to do to get people into affordable homes before the winter?
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Mr. Speaker, I will just remind the member that it was because of the NDP that many of those programs, like CERB, allowed people to stay in their homes over the pandemic. If it was not for the NDP, people would have received half of what they needed to survive.
I was actually looking at the rapid housing initiative numbers today on an Order Paper question. A number of rapid house initiatives have not yet been built and we see it manifesting on the streets of our communities. People are living in tents. It does not matter and we cannot fall back on the fact that this is a G7 problem. There are people in Canada suffering, and the government has a responsibility to put them into homes, to build homes, to have affordable homes available for them and to pass Bill C-31.
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