SoVote

May/2/24 7:31:53 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member another question because there was a lot to unpack in her speech. The condition of housing is critical as well. The member knows, from her experience representing the largest base, about the really deplorable condition of barracks and, in some cases, PMQs and residential housing units. Can she talk about what she has heard right on the ground from the forces about the condition of their living conditions, and the working conditions, because it is the buildings beyond the housing units as well.

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Context: House Hansard - 307 - May/2/24

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

May/2/24 7:32:48 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is true that the buildings they work in sometimes have wires hanging from the ceiling. I know that the military police station has not been kept up in decades. However, there is a place that is even worse than what we have seen in some of the barracks in Petawawa, which is Shearwater. Apparently, there is black mould and peeling paint. The mattresses were so bad, and looked like they were full of lice, that they had to be pulled out before the troops could sit in there. Now, all of this tells a potential person who is willing to put their life on the line for their country that this government does not really care about them. If it does not care about those who are signing up, training, going through the harsh conditions and putting their lives on the line, they wonder what will happen if they are injured. Is the government going to take care of them? Insofar as the housing, there are several houses that are uninhabited because the government has not put the effort into fixing them up.

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Context: House Hansard - 307 - May/2/24

Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

May/2/24 7:34:00 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we are debating the eighth report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, which addresses the rent increase that took place in April. This is what was reported back to the House: “Given that, rent for Canadian military personnel living on bases is increasing this April, and at a time when the military is struggling to recruit and retain personnel, the committee report to the House, that the government immediately cancel all plans to increase rent on military accommodations used by the Department of National Defence.” This was something the committee agreed to unanimously. There was no dissent at committee over this point. All four parties at committee agreed that we should report this back to the House. We have now had a chance to debate this, and every member in this chamber will have a chance to vote on this. I am curious to see whether the Liberal support at committee will spill over to an expression of support in the chamber. April 1 has come and gone, and Canadian Forces members did not get rent relief, so the housing crisis in the military continues, and the retention and recruitment crisis continues. There are 16,000 vacancies in the Canadian Armed Forces. There are 10,000 undertrained and undeployable personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces. We are in a crisis of retention and recruitment. This has been observed by the chief of the defence staff and everyone on down, who have testified at various points over the last year and a half at committee. This crisis of personnel is affecting Canada's national security. It is affecting our ability to be a meaningful ally to our partners in NATO and throughout the world. There are a number of crises facing the forces, including the production and supply of ammunition. Troops are unable to train due to lack of equipment and supplies. We do not have enough trained forces and equipment to be able to deploy and accept deployments on behalf of allies. Increasing the rent of our soldiers on base at a time like this, when so many members are facing the cost of living crisis across the board for food and everything else, it is like we are asking the troops to tighten their belts a little more, among all of the other ways our troops are shortchanged of training opportunities and the things they joined the forces for. Our forces want to deploy. They want overseas and domestic deployments. They want to train. They do not want to go on an exercise and shout “bang” rather than actually fire training rounds. That is not what our troops want to do. The statement that the committee reported to the House was amid reports that began in a committee of the Nova Scotia legislature. Erica Fleck, the director of emergency management for the Halifax Regional Municipality, testified, “we have active serving Regular Force members who are still couch surfing who were posted here in the Summer who cannot find a place to live. They are regularly now going to food banks.” She went on to say, “Again, I mentioned the food banks. People are coming to work hungry. Young soldiers are coming to work hungry, and leaders are trying to feed them as best they can, using their own money.” This is testimony in a provincial legislature. This is not an unverified news report or rumour that there are hungry or homeless troops. At the same committee, Craig Hood, the executive director of Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command for the Royal Canadian Legion, testified, “What I came across was some startling information on serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces being posted here: living rough in tents, living out of their vehicles, couch surfing, engaging in interpersonal relationships for the purposes of securing housing - which oftentimes puts them as victims to domestic violence.” This happened in December 2023, when this explosive testimony occurred in the Nova Scotia legislative committee, and what was really startling was that, when asked about this in the House of Commons, in response to a question from the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman to address these allegations and to ask what was being done and why the government was failing our troops, this is what the minister had to say about that testimony: “Mr. Speaker, of course, the member opposite is once again badly misinformed. In fact, when this was reported in the press, the Canadian Armed Forces in Nova Scotia canvassed all of the members of the armed forces and determined that all of them were properly housed and that the reporting was false.” The minister of defence actually said those words in the House of Commons. He dismissed the reports of the executive director of the Royal Canadian Legion for Nova Scotia and Nunavut Command and the director of emergency management of the Halifax Regional Municipality. He dismissed them and called their claims false. That is quite astonishing, and it was in no small part because of this that we really dug into the issue of housing in the military. Fortunately, there are two Halifax-area MPs on the defence committee, and neither of them presumed to deny what was going on in their own city because they know. It is a fact that there is homelessness in the Canadian Armed Forces. There is food insecurity in the Canadian Armed Forces. This is the state of the armed forces under the government and the cost-of-living crisis faced by millions of Canadians that is being acutely felt in the Canadian Armed Forces. We have been studying the crisis of housing on base, and we have had alarming testimony at the defence committee from ombudsman Lick: I've heard from a member's dependent, who shared with me they had been homeless for five months. I've heard from families using food banks. I've also heard from some who are one paycheque away from not paying their rent or needing to make a hard decision between food and rent. He continued, “While members do not expect a lot from their barracks, I was shocked to see some deteriorating single quarters on base that are not acceptable for any human in any situation.” This was from the military ombudsman. He also said, when he asks, “'Do you know someone who is at risk of being homeless or at risk of accessing a food bank?', everybody nods. Everybody knows someone.” This was his testimony at committee. Amid all of this, we have a denial from the minister of defence that there is homelessness and food insecurity in the Canadian Armed Forces, so we have examined this quite thoroughly at committee, and we will have a report in due course with recommendations to Parliament, but we have found that it is not even just the residential housing units. It is the RHUs, the PMQs and barracks. We have heard of toilet facilities not up to standard by any means, mould on various walls and ceilings, and so on. We have heard time and time again that it is things like this, such as the lack of access to a home, that drive people out of the Canadian Armed Forces at a time when we need our men and women so much. At a time of elevated need, we have a crisis of retention and recruitment. In response to an Order Paper question that I had asked, we have confirmation that recruitment is not keeping up with people leaving the forces. We have 16,000 vacancies and 10,000 people undertrained, and the forces are shrinking. It is getting worse, not better. We have seen the shortages and how the wait-lists of personnel to obtain a home are sometimes longer than the postings. When members of the CAF have to re-post from one end of the country to another, this is a trigger point. This is where military families have to decide whether they can continue in the forces or not. If personnel have to transfer from Halifax to Esquimalt, maybe they own a home in Halifax already or maybe they have access to a residential housing unit that is not terrible, that is not falling apart and that has a working toilet, and they would be going to another posting where they might be on a waiting list for five years. Then they would have to go on the market and find a place to rent or buy in an expensive place like Esquimalt. Every place is an expensive place in Canada after nine years of the Liberal government. In nine years of the government, we have seen rents double, as an average, across the country, more than double and almost triple in some large cities. We have seen the price of housing across the country double. Interest rates are high and are being fuelled by deficits, which trigger inflation, which triggers higher interest rates. We have seen no restraint from the government. We have seen no balance and no ability to rein in or do anything about the crisis of housing and access to housing across Canada. When it comes to our armed forces, the least the government could do is not boost up the rent on the small group of people who are fortunate enough to even have a base house, never mind the plight of forces members who are on multi-year waiting lists. There are thousands of CAF members waiting for access to base housing. We have actually called upon the housing minister to come to committee, housing being one of the triggers that are causing people to leave the forces and presumably a factor in the difficulty of the forces to recruit. The minister has not come to committee to answer for this. We note that the budget the Liberals just tabled contains exactly zero dollars for additional housing on base. There is zero dollars next year, too. There is $1 million the year after that, if I remember correctly. As far out as we can see, in the budget projections through to 2029, I think there is eventually a total of some $14 million for military housing. They are short thousands of units. How are they going to fix this problem without budgeting for it? The government is not even going to start to address the backlog and the shortfall in construction for base housing, not with zero dollars this year and zero dollars next year. Under the existing funding, they are building about 20 homes a year. Let us think about that. There are thousands of people waiting for a home, and 20 homes a year are being built. They are decommissioning close to that number anyway. They are barely keeping up with the ones that have fallen apart to the point that they cannot even be used anymore. These properties, as we have seen from testimony, are pretty rough to begin with. There is also nothing to address this issue in the defence policy update that was just tabled. In fact, it is a misnomer to even call it a defence policy update. It is full of exploring options and reaffirming existing policies. There is literally nothing concrete that is new policy, unless it was formerly the policy not to consider options. This is assuming the Liberals were ever going to consider options to replace our submarines. undertake and see through NORAD modernization, or build and procure any of the kit we need. Unless it was the Liberals' policy not to consider options before, a new policy of considering options is hardly a policy. Taking it back to housing, there is nothing in there respecting housing. This seems to be such a small thing. I have heard the Liberals ask, “do the Conservatives not know the rents are capped at 25% of the forces member's salary?” This is capped, so they can afford it. However, their wages are not keeping up with the rest of the cost of living increases. The military members' budgets are already stretched, so now even any increase is going to reduce the standard of living for that family. We have heard time and again that it is all these other factors that drive people out of the forces. It is the difficulty with repostings and the way that affects families if they are established in a community. They may already have a family doctor in a community and kids in school, and the serving member's spouse has employment, and then they are told they have to be reposted across Canada. Maybe the spouse's job is not transferrable. Maybe their credentials are not recognized in another jurisdiction. Maybe they are going to be waiting five years to find a doctor in that community and, oh, by the way, they cannot afford a home there. They may lose the base housing if it is a family in a PMQ and would not receive the same accommodation in the new post. These are all factors that affect retention and recruitment. The government has a crisis of retention and recruitment. The forces are, in the words of the defence minister, in a death spiral of crises of retention and recruitment. Why not do the easiest thing that the Liberals could have done, even if it is only symbolic? It is by no means suddenly meeting the 2% of GDP obligation that we have to our allies, but it would be something. It would send a signal to the troops that they do not bear the cost of the $950 million of cuts that are taking place and that the Liberals announced. I have said enough on this for now. I will take any questions.

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