SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 339 - Sep/19/24

Sep/19/24 10:15:37 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, apparently Conservatives are not aware that a unique physical address could represent an entire apartment building, but I digress. My point is, can the member name just one project that the former Conservative government built in his riding when he was a city councillor and later the mayor? I want just one.

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Context: House Hansard - 339 - Sep/19/24

Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

Sep/19/24 11:37:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the admirable and extraordinary member for New Westminster—Burnaby. I think he will have some very interesting things to share with us about the reality in his region and in his province. I will start this intervention by thanking the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for this motion. I find it interesting that we are having this debate in the House today. In fact, it is as though the committee told the Liberal government that there was a problem, that something was happening and that it has to wake up because there are people living in the street. There are people sleeping outside, in their car, in their trailer, in their truck. There are people sleeping on their friend's sofa or living in a two-bedroom apartment with five people because they can no longer afford housing. People are getting sick staying in bacteria- and fungus-infested apartments where the owners refuse to make the necessary renovations. This crisis has been growing worse for years. The situation has really become dire. Every July 1 in Montreal, more and more families are ending up on the streets because they do not have a place to live. The rate of homelessness is rising everywhere. People are being forced to live in parks, in tents. We are seeing it in Ottawa, Montreal and across Quebec and Canada. That makes no sense. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have allowed this situation to get worse. For years, the leader of the Conservative Party, who used to be the minister responsible for housing, did not build even a single housing unit. In actual fact, he lost 800,000. During their nine years in office, the Conservatives lost 800,000 affordable housing units. The Liberals are no better. They lost nearly 300,000 and they are proposing completely ridiculous definitions of affordable housing. Three years ago in Montreal, a two-bedroom apartment that cost $2,235 a month was considered affordable housing. Who can afford that? It just does not make sense. This is all because market logic and profit have been allowed to take over the entire real estate sector for years. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments have stopped viewing housing as a fundamental human right. Instead, they see it as a source of profit and returns. It is fine for real estate to be a source of investment for people, for their retirement, for example, or to bequeath something to their child. I have no problem with that. However, if there is no off-market, social, co-operative, community and student housing, this vicious circle will simply continue. It only serves the interests of big investment companies, the real estate giants that have taken up more and more space in the real estate landscape. In the 1990s, almost no homes were owned by these real estate giants. Today, these large corporations own more than 20% of the housing stock. They have no human connection to the people on site, to the tenants. They think strictly in terms of profits and returns. That is the crux of the problem. That market logic has taken over the entire housing sector in the past 30 years while the Conservatives and Liberals were on watch. We can do things differently. We must do things differently, through what we call social housing or non-market housing. It currently represents just 3% of our housing stock here in Canada and a little more in Quebec. That is nothing compared to Finland, where it amounts to 10%, or Denmark, 20%. For years now, every time a piece of land, a house or an apartment comes up for sale in Vienna, Austria, the municipality invests to control the price of the lot, house or apartment. Today, in Vienna, the municipality owns 60% of the housing stock, which is under government control. There are different ways of doing things. We need to reserve federally-owned land for non-profit organizations that can develop truly affordable housing. Since that is their primary mission, they are in the best position to do it. Now the federal Liberal government is starting to wake up. I mentioned this earlier. It did nothing about co-op housing for eight years. Now, in the latest budget, it hinted that housing co-ops might be a good solution. Co-ops were a good solution in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. All across Quebec, there are successful housing co-ops where people are happy. People have a new way of thinking about housing. They work together to take care of their housing co-ops. The government needs to build more housing co-ops and take care of existing housing co-ops. Some of them need major work, and the federal government is not stepping up to support them. I think that is an important thing to consider. We need more housing co-ops, but we also need more programs to take care of housing co-ops so they last a long time and so we can control rents and keep them truly affordable. The Minister of Housing just announced 56 locations that have been selected for affordable housing to be built on federal public lands. This is a good thing. The NDP has been calling for this for quite some time. However, we hope that this will not once again be handed over to private developers who just want to make a profit. The project must be assigned to non-profit organizations, or NPOs, and to organizations that can build housing that people can afford. Let us not forget one very simple rule. People must not spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Paying more than 30% puts people in a precarious situation, sometimes under the poverty line. We need to stop thinking about housing based on the median price in one's region and start thinking about how we can ensure that people do not spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Housing is not a luxury. Housing is a fundamental right. I welcome the recent reports from the federal housing advocate. She is doing extraordinary work. I think the Liberal government should take a page out of her book. Too many measures in the Liberal housing strategy focused on private developers. The NDP wants to put a stop to that. One way to do that is to have an acquisition fund. We can take existing federal land, use it for truly affordable or social housing, give those contracts to non-profits, allow them to acquire the land or have a truly affordable lease so that they can build housing that will really help people. We could also follow the example of Montreal and have an acquisition fund to buy private land or buildings and convert them into social or truly affordable housing. There is a fine example in Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie: the Bellechasse site. It is public land with community groups, where the community has come together to create a new neighbourhood with a human face, where there will be mixed-income housing, but also social and truly affordable housing with public services, a school, and a park. It will be a nice place to call home. The federal government needs to work with the municipalities and the provinces to be able to complete such projects. Too many people are just a hair's breadth away from losing their homes and ending up on the streets. We are seeing it more and more, in all our towns and municipalities. Vacancy rates are so low that people no longer have options. They are no longer able to find housing. The Conservatives' approach of leaving everything to the market and the big corporations will just exacerbate the problem because that is exactly where the problem originated. We cannot move in that ultra-capitalist direction, where everything is seen only in terms of profit, while there are people suffering. In my constituency, 15% of people spend more than 50% of their income on housing. That is obscene. More than half their income goes to housing. When you look at the cost of groceries on top of that, these people are obviously forced to make absolutely heartbreaking choices, and sometimes go and live in their van, truck or car. Alternatively, the might go and live with friends or relatives, where they will share a room, sleep on the sofa or on the floor, all of which is far from ideal. There is the visible homelessness, but there is plenty of invisible homelessness as well. That is the result of 20 years of Conservative and Liberal inaction and bad policies.

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Context: House Hansard - 339 - Sep/19/24

Mrs. Brenda Shanahan (Châteauguay—Lacolle, Lib.)

Sep/19/24 2:13:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is so exciting to be back in the House and to be able to continue working for the wonderful people of Châteauguay—Lacolle, soon to be known as Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville. It is especially exciting to be able to implement federal programs to make life more affordable for Canadians. Over the summer, I saw first-hand in my riding how our action plan is working and making life easier for hundreds of households. I had the opportunity to visit SOLIDES, the Société locative d'investissement et de développement social, which is the largest property owner in Châteauguay. This organization buys and renovates apartment buildings and rents them out at affordable prices. This model can and should be replicated across Canada. SOLIDES was recently allocated more than $3 million from the affordable housing fund to help renovate and maintain its buildings. I would like to congratulate the entire team at SOLIDES on their excellent work.

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