44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 19, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/19/24 10:19:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka for his excellent contribution. He did a good job explaining and presenting what we are discussing today. This subject is of interest to a great many Canadians and Quebeckers too. The housing crisis we are facing today was caused by this government, which has mismanaged its files since it came to power in 2015.
My colleague spoke about this government's incompetence, which I believe takes many forms. I hope to have the opportunity to point to some of the factors that led us to this housing crisis, which has sadly affected all of Canada and all of Quebec, including in places where homelessness would have been unthinkable. This has caused terribly unfortunate situations in our cities as well as in our small towns.
As my colleague was saying, people are having to sleep on couches. This is a hidden form of homelessness, and even our small towns are not immune to it. In fact, this is happening in my riding and pretty much across Quebec. Other forms of homelessness are increasingly visible, and that is so unfortunate to see. It is truly sad that people in Canada, a G7 country, a G20 country, are not even able to put a roof over their heads. Plenty of ordinary Canadians are now finding themselves on the streets, homeless.
This week I heard a man on a call-in show describe his situation, which was pretty cut and dried: He was forced out of his home because the landlords were taking over the property. This is allowed in Quebec. He found himself on the street because there is no housing. He bought himself a tent and that is where he lives today. Does anyone think we have palm trees and sunny skies year round in Canada? October is coming. November too. In December the snow comes, along with temperatures in the negative twenties and thirties.
These people will be sleeping outside. As parliamentarians and members of this legislature, we cannot simply look away. It borders on the criminal to do so.
Thomas Mulcair, a well-known former politician who used to lead the NDP, is now a high-profile political commentator in Quebec. He said that the Prime Minister and his government promised affordable housing in 2015. They promised they would build homes so that everyone would have a roof over their head. Where are we today? The situation, as my colleague pointed out, is worse than it was nine years ago, when this Prime Minister came to power.
Many people of all backgrounds and circumstances have entered our country in recent years, and it was the Liberals who did this. However, they built less housing. How can it be that they did such a poor job? Let us crunch the numbers. Fewer homes were built in 2022 than in 1972, despite the population having doubled. How can they have done such a poor job? I repeat, fewer homes were built in 2022 than in 1972, despite a doubling of the population. In my opinion, someone somewhere is not doing their job. Someone, somewhere, on the other side needs to wake up, because this is not working.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, has indicated how many homes must be built by 2030 if we are to try and get a handle on the situation.
We will need 8.5 million housing units. I am not the one saying this. It is the CMHC. They are the experts. Here are some figures. I do little summaries like this on every sector in Canada. I can also talk about the budget and a whole host of other things, but since I only have four minutes left, I am going to focus on the housing question. Rent has doubled since 2015. Mortgage costs have doubled since 2015. Of all the OECD countries, Canada is the slowest to build. Of the G7 countries, based on our land mass, Canada has the fewest homes, and yet, if one looks at a map of Canada, it is not for lack of space.
In Toronto, it takes 25 years to save for a down payment, when that should be the repayment period. That is unbelievable. I repeat: Fewer housing units were built in 2022 under this government than in 1972. Something is not working. Right now, money is being spent left and right. We do not know what is happening with that money. Right now, we are seeing just how overwhelmed Canada's big cities are with what has been happening, especially in Montreal. Does anyone feel like going to Montreal these days? Shots are being fired, there are guns everywhere and people are sleeping outside. That is the current situation.
Our leader introduced a bill to build housing and encourage the use of federally owned surplus buildings and land, but it was voted down. The bill stipulated that municipalities would have to build 15% more housing and meet housing construction goals. How could anyone think that voting against that bill was a good idea? I will tell the House why they voted against it. They voted against it simply because it came from the Conservatives. That is the only reason. It is a matter of partisanship, when what we are trying to do here is to take care of Quebeckers and Canadians, to put a roof over their heads. That is what we are trying to do here—
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Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent comment. I apologize. I can be quite intense, and I get fired up with tough subjects like this. I am now seeing homelessness in Lévis, which was never the case. I had never seen it before, but it is there now. We see homeless people. There are young people sleeping in shelters, under bridges or in their cars. That is not normal. It is unacceptable. Our leader introduced Bill C-356, which was defeated. I do not understand how anyone could have possibly thought it was not a good idea. How could they think it was a bad idea? The bill died at second reading.
I only have 10 seconds left, so I will end on this note: When we are sitting on the other side of the House, we will get this done.
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- Sep/19/24 10:56:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I just listened, for 20 minutes, to the member opposite talking about the job the Liberals have done over nine years on the housing file in Canada.
I represent Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte and there are housing encampments all over our riding now. Nine years ago, these did not exist. Just this week, I read in Barrie Today, there was another fire at a homeless encampment at Milligan's Pond.
Please, can the member opposite not admit that over nine years, things have become much worse in Canada, and homelessness is a serious issue now that did not exist nine years ago?
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- Sep/19/24 12:37:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will start off by saying a few things that I know have never been said before in the House: axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Has anyone heard that before? These are not just slogans. These are four lines that capture the real-life struggles of real Canadians, and one of the struggles we are talking about today is about homelessness and housing.
I have an announcement to make. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, we have a housing crisis in Canada, in case anyone did not know, particularly in the Liberal benches across the way. It is a crisis caused by the worst housing policy ever in Canadian history. I thought I would lay out, for all those watching, some of what I call the Liberals' greatest hits of housing.
Let us start way back in 2017, when the Liberals announced to much fanfare that they would reduce chronic homelessness by 50%. That was only seven years ago. Then in 2020, they said they had upped their commitment and declared their focus to be on entirely eliminating homelessness in Canada. Back in 2018, they brought in their national housing strategy and spent $82 billion on housing. What is the result? The result is the worst housing crisis in Canadian history.
The cost of housing has doubled. Rent has become so expensive that a woman living in Kingston is spending 100% of her income on rent. It is reported that a man in Abbotsford had to continue living with his separated partner because he could not afford to move out. Mortgage payments have doubled. Canadians are living through a housing hell. The Building Industry and Land Development Association is reporting that 73% of GTA residents are dissatisfied with the availability and affordability of homes.
I will just pause for a moment to mention that I will be splitting my time with the great member for Cariboo—Prince George.
To get back to the facts, 90% of those living in the GTA believe there is a housing shortage, 83% think affordability is a significant issue and 59% say the cost of living is the most pressing issue. Let us talk about homelessness. In my hometown of Winnipeg, over 1,200 people are homeless. Last week, I had the great privilege of meeting with Jim Steep. Jim Steep is the executive director of Agape Table. Every day, it serves meals to the homeless. It has done this since 1980. I volunteered there several times giving out meals. Agape has been doing this for over 40 years. The day I was there last week, they served 1,010 meals in just the morning, the highest number in its 44-year history.
At the finance committee, we have been studying the housing crisis for about a year. Last October, I had the chance to question Cam Guthrie, mayor of Guelph. He was elected in 2014. On the record, I asked him how many homeless encampments were in Guelph in 2015. He said zero. I asked him how many there were today. He said 20.
Two million Canadians are now lining up at food banks. One alarming statistic is the increase in the working poor who are visiting food banks. These are people working three jobs, working single mothers having to choose between paying rent and feeding their children. The Liberals have spent $82 billion on their much-vaunted national housing program since 2018, but the PBO reports that since that same year, the number of homeless people has increased by 20% and the number of chronically homeless people has increased by 38%. Something is clearly not working.
According to the Homeless Hub, the number of homeless in Canada ranges from 150,000 to 300,000. Then there are the hidden homeless, the couch surfers, estimated to be up to about 900,000 people. The Auditor General says the federal government does not even know if its initiatives aimed at reducing chronic homelessness are working.
In Vancouver, homeless services found 4,820 people were homeless this year, compared to 3,634 in 2020, a whopping 32% increase in three years. In 2018, the number was 2,181. In Halifax, the number of homeless jumped from 119 in 2019 to 879 in 2024, an increase of 637%. Let us talk about Toronto encampments. In that city, on March 15, 2023, there were 82 encampments at 24 sites. One year later to the day, March 15, 2024, there were 202 at 72 locations. These are just facts.
The Government of Ontario estimates that nearly 250,000 people, roughly three out of every 200 residents, are homeless. In Mississauga, as of May 5 of this year, there were 256 encampments. It has been reported that so many people are homeless that they are being turned away from homeless shelters. It is so bad, that people have resorted to sheltering in ERs in cold weather. ER visits by homeless have skyrocketed by 68%.
In Saint John, New Brunswick, the number of homeless has reached 600, according to Fresh Start. In Quebec City, the number of visible homeless increased by 36% between 2018 and 2022. In Sudbury, it is up, from 164 to 237. In Waterloo, it is up 129% since 2020. In Montreal, it is up 33% since 2018. I could go on and on, but the reality is that there is a tsunami of homelessness across this land.
I find this debate ironic. Every day, we are privileged to come here to work in the House of Commons, the people's house, but the stark reality is that after nine years of the Liberals, while we work in the people's house, the people do not have a house. It is a catastrophic failure of the Prime Minister.
Last year, CMHC came to the finance committee and told us that to get back to housing price equilibrium, Canada would need to build three million additional homes by 2030. In 2023, Canada built 240,267 homes. Three million additional homes by 2030 would mean that, on top of that number, we would need to build an additional 500,000 homes each year. That is not going to happen. We have never built more than 270,000 homes in a single year, yet just last April, the Prime Minister announced to much fanfare that he would build 3.87 million new homes by 2031. It is just not going to happen, like so many of his promises.
I remember that they were going to plant two billion trees, reduce cellular costs and balance the budget by 2019. Instead, the Prime Minister doubled the national debt in just nine years. The reality is that Canada's housing inflation is now the worst in the G7 relative to income.
I could go on and on, but my time is almost up, so I will just point out that the Conservatives brought forward a common-sense bill, the building homes not bureaucracy act, which would have incentivized municipalities to build more homes. The Liberal-NDP coalition voted it down. The reality is that only common-sense Conservatives would build the homes that Canadians can afford by firing the gatekeepers and tying infrastructure funding to housing starts. Let us build the homes.
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- Sep/19/24 12:47:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, over the years, the Government of Canada has provided literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in support for dealing with housing and the homeless. We have been working very closely with provincial governments, non-profit organizations and municipalities and we are making a difference.
We can contrast the Liberal plan, or the Government of Canada's plan, with the leader of the Conservative Party, who, while he was the minister of housing, did absolutely nothing. There is no doubt about that. No minister has been more of a disaster on the housing file than the current leader of the Conservative Party when he was the minister of housing. That is a plain fact.
Why should Canadians believe that the Conservative Party will be able to deal with the issue of housing and will work with the different levels of government and non-profits to—
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