- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Hamilton East—Stoney Creek
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $105,519.46
- Government Page
- Nov/23/23 10:04:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that was a bit hard to listen to, because I was a municipal councillor at the time the member for Carleton was the housing minister. Municipalities begged and pleaded with the minister of the day for housing resources and none came.
When we talk about support for municipalities, the leader continues to play the blame game. He is not helping municipal councils. He is blaming municipalities today, the small-town mayors and councillors who are trying to get housing supply out the door. He had his chance as part of a government to support municipalities for many years. In fact, we came individually and then went through FCM, and all of those efforts were rejected by the member and his government.
It is hard to listen to the speech today by the member opposite when he talks about supporting municipalities. The Conservatives have no intention of doing that. If they did, they would have done it when their leader was in government prior.
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- Oct/31/23 11:54:10 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a lot of the member's speech focused on housing. The speech largely ignored the $82 billion that we provided through the national housing strategy, which, I would remind members of the House, is a 10-year plan. We are halfway through that plan. Much of the resources go to non-profits and municipalities, which the member raised in terms of providing support. I am well aware of that as a long-time city councillor in Hamilton.
The member had lots of criticism towards the private sector. As much as we have issues related to the financialization of housing, the private sector is key as it relates to getting us out of this housing crisis. It is going to be a partner in this space in terms of providing all the homes we need, in terms of building supply. Why does the member see fit to demonize the private sector when it is an important part of getting us out of the housing crisis?
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- Oct/30/23 5:42:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always great to rise to speak on behalf of my constituents of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, and it is always great to rise on the topic of housing, something that is near and dear to my heart.
I am one of probably a handful of people in the House who have lived in social housing, and that was through the 1970s with my family. I have that perspective of being a tenant. My perspective of living in a social housing unit is probably a lot different than my mother, who had two small kids in tow when we moved into the unit on Oriole Crescent.
It is important, when we talk about the financialization of housing, that we focus on what many have talked about today, and in other debates, and that is the perspective of the tenant and the challenges they face in trying to make ends meet in a very challenging market. That has happened historically. We have heard that through the decades. We have seen the rise and fall of interest rates. We have seen housing challenges with supply issues. Those challenges, of course, are back today. There is no denying that we have a crisis today.
Being a municipal councillor for so many years, I had the opportunity to serve on our municipal non-profit. CityHousing Hamilton was the largest non-profit housing provider in the city of Hamilton. We managed 7,000 of the city's 14,000 affordable housing units. I worked with an incredible team, including people such as Tom Hunter, Sean Botham, Leanne Ward, and Adam Sweedland, who is the CEO now, who are the front lines in providing support.
As my friend and colleague just mentioned, for those who are on the front lines providing support to tenants who are in need and those looking to find an affordable place to live, there is really no issue of who the government is or what political stripe they are. What housing providers are looking for, in this case for units that were owned and managed by the municipality, is financial support and policies that protect tenants, as well as policies and legislation that would make investments in housing.
When I think back to my time serving for over a decade on our municipal non-profit, and for the last seven years before my election here, I served as its president, I look at the challenges that we faced at CityHousing Hamilton, and the other housing providers that we worked in consultation and co-operation with. They were people such as Jeff Neven at Indwell services and his team, who provide incredible support, not just in Hamilton but in southern Ontario as well. There are the organizations such as Mission Services with Carol Cowan-Morneau and her team there, including Sue Smith and others, who do tremendous work in assisting some of our most vulnerable Canadians and Hamiltonians.
Another organization is Good Shepherd. I had the opportunity to speak to Brother Richard the other day at the ONPHA Conference in Toronto. At the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association Conference, Brother Richard was talking about projects Good Shepherd has on the horizon.
All of those groups and organizations look to all three levels of government for support. As has been referenced earlier today, and I have relayed this point many times in the House, for 30 years, non-profit housing providers have been left to their own devices. Back in the 1990s, the federal government decided to exit the sector. They passed on and downloaded that responsibility onto the provinces.
In the province of Ontario, when that was downloaded, Mike Harris and the common-sense revolutionary guard in the Legislature decided to pass those services and the costs for social housing on to municipalities. Municipalities have struggled to not just provide quality services for those services that were downloaded onto them, but they have struggled to get at the affordability housing wait-list. Those units I mentioned earlier, thousands of them, were passed on to city hall with the keys and no resources attached.
Here we had thousands of post-war units that were providing support for tenants, a safe place to call home for many, and the municipality was then left to its own devices in trying to incorporate the costs of repairing and renovating those units in their municipal budgets, which is unheard of. It happens nowhere else in Canada, except the province of Ontario, where a Conservative government would see fit to download those services to the municipalities.
As members of CityHousing, we had to find unique ways to make ends meet. We were land rich and cash poor and looked to our holdings of land to provide opportunities for development. We went out to the private sector and found unique partnerships to try to encourage the private sector to build on properties that we owned and to provide new units. The units people were living in were post-World War II units, for instance, where the windows were leaking, the roof was leaking and maybe the elevator did not work in a medium- or high-rise building. We needed partners who had resources, and we allowed access to our lands in order to provide density and new units, trying to get at that 6,200- to 6,400-unit wait-list we had.
When I look at the national housing strategy and what it does, it is providing support to housing providers. I just listed a handful of many dozens in the city of Hamilton. The national housing strategy was a game-changer. Municipalities, since the early 1990s, had asked consecutive federal governments for resources for renovation and repair. Many of the units that stakeholders and housing providers managed in the city of Hamilton could not pass a property standards inspection because of the state of disrepair. They asked for resources to get at the wait-list. Some of our most vulnerable Canadians sit on that list, including seniors and persons with disabilities. We know that indigenous people make up a greater percentage of those on the wait-list than the general population in Canada does. We looked for ways and means to renovate, repair and build units on our own, but we just could not make it work.
The national housing strategy, when it was announced early in the first mandate, was a game-changer for municipalities. It was a program that provided opportunity and hope for housing providers that there would be resources and that we would not have to continue to try to make ends meet on our own.
I look at the investments that have been made. I will use Hamilton as an example. The co-investment fund meant that we had tens of millions of dollars in federal resources available to get at our oldest units, to get at energy efficiencies, to reduce greenhouse gases and to make our units more accessible for people with disabilities.
I look at the rapid housing initiative. It pulls people out of encampments and seeks to address the issue of women fleeing domestic violence. The rapid housing initiative, of course, came at a perfect time. It came during the pandemic, when municipalities were struggling to build new units with supply chain issues. When I look at the resources that were passed along there and look back to my participation on our board, I would say that irrespective of what one's partisan stripe was on city council or who participated as board members for a municipal non-profit, we were just thankful that a government recognized the need and recognized that municipalities and housing providers had their challenges.
I look to the Canada housing benefit. It provides a portable rent supplement to people who are looking for a market unit to live in. It also provides a top-up for them to go out and find an affordable place to call home.
I look at the housing accelerator fund, which we have talked about extensively here, and the assistance it is providing in working with municipalities as our partners and working with stakeholders in municipalities across the country. Instead of casting blame on municipalities, small-town mayors and councillors, we are working with our municipal partners.
What I have heard is interesting, because many of the people on the opposite side of the House in the Conservative Party are former municipal representatives. Every time the Leader of the Opposition gets up and chastises the gatekeepers, this fictitious bogeyman entity to blame for the housing challenges we have, members who were municipal councillors get up and encourage him to do more and say more to chastise municipalities.
It is important to recognize the inroads we have made with the national housing strategy. It is a fluid document. Members are going to continue to see changes. The GST waiver is an important initiative that we just announced. They are going to see movement on the co-op file. They are going to see other initiatives that have been called for. I am hoping for an acquisition strategy at some point in time. We know our rural partners need additional supports.
For me, these are all important initiatives and they prove that the federal government is listening to the stakeholders. It proves that we are providing those investments contrary to what we have seen for the last 30 years.
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- Oct/30/23 5:41:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my friend and colleague emphasized the importance of working with municipalities, provinces and everyone in the sector. The Leader of the Opposition has taken the approach of blaming municipalities, municipal councillors and mayors, who are our partners in this space.
Could he elaborate on why it is so important, as a former mayor and municipal representative, to work with municipalities, rather than blaming them for the challenges we have nationally?
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Madam Speaker, that was a bit hard to listen to.
I was a municipal councillor in the 2008-09 recession, and municipalities individually begged the previous government for assistance on the affordable housing front. We witnessed our affordable housing wait-lists almost double, and so in Hamilton it went from 3,600 families and individuals to almost 6,200 or 6,400, if memory serves me right.
We also collectively asked, through FCM, for the previous government to assist municipalities. Guess who was part of the government? The Leader of the Opposition. This is not a case of playing catch-up, this is a case of making up for lost time. All the years the Conservatives were in government, they had no housing plan.
Now our government has come forward with a national housing strategy that responds to the concerns and requests from municipalities from across the country. Is the member aware of that?
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- May/3/23 3:16:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while the leader of the official opposition blames local mayors and councillors for a lack of housing supply, our government has taken a different approach. Can the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion inform this House as to the level—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- May/2/23 5:36:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know if the member opposite knows this, but his leader, today and for the last number of months, has been blaming municipalities, small town mayors and big city mayors. He has been critical of mayors and councillors across the country for not doing their part as it relates to assisting with the affordable housing supply, and the housing supply in general.
Our government, as members know, has taken a more collaborative approach, working with municipalities to provide support in building supply. I wonder, as a small town mayor, whether he feels that a more collaborative approach is better than the one that his leader is taking, which is to demonize municipalities that are, in large part, trying to help all levels of government with the challenges we face.
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- May/2/23 1:49:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it has been an odd debate to follow today because we have consistently heard the message from the party opposite blaming municipalities for a lack of supply and lack of affordable housing support, and many of them are former mayors and councillors.
What I have not heard today is any one member of the Conservatives single out a municipality or tell the government which municipalities are the gatekeepers, which ones have the red tape and are blocking supply. Not one of the Conservative members have referenced that, and I hope the member opposite can assist right now in identifying a geography in Canada that is not playing its part.
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- May/2/23 1:23:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a former Hamilton councillor, I know that my former colleagues and municipal staff are doing everything they can to increase housing supply, as well as provide support for affordable housing.
What I do not understand is the motion that has been put today by members on the opposite side of the House, which seeks to blame their former municipalities or the municipalities where they are from and the municipalities that they represented.
The member opposite was from Centre Hastings, a former municipal councillor who is blaming her municipal staff for standing in the way, the gatekeepers, in terms of preventing supply and affordable investment.
We have heard from the former mayor of Collingwood, whose motion here today speaks to that same issue, in terms of blaming municipalities.
I wonder if my colleague sees fit, in terms of supporting municipalities, and sees how our national housing strategy is providing support to municipalities instead of laying blame at their feet.
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- May/2/23 1:09:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there have been a lot of speeches from the other side of the House today that have been trying to rewrite history. I was a municipal councillor during the years Harper was in government and, as the member pointed out, there were no programs for municipalities. There were no housing programs for not-for-profits. I wonder if the hon. member could reiterate parts of his speech that talked about policy support, the national housing strategy and what that means for not-for-profits and housing providers across the country, versus what we experienced during the Harper years.
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- Oct/17/22 1:59:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the political career and achievements of Hamilton city councillor, Sam Merulla. Following in the hard-working footsteps of his mother Rosalia and his late father Giuseppe Merulla, Sam has dedicated his entire life to serving the public. After 22 years of service, he has decided to retire from elected office.
Like a brother to me, he was always quick to offer good guidance, counsel and support when I needed it most. He worked on enhanced public transit, affordable housing, services for seniors and the disabled, and infrastructure renewal, and the list goes on. Councillor Merulla was a leader on all issues. It is largely because of his hard work and determination that we see what many consider a renaissance in our great city of Hamilton.
I know that Sam is anxious to spend more family time with his wife Corrine, his two daughters Sabrina and Alexa, and their families, and the newest addition to the Merulla family, baby Remi.
Please join me in congratulating Councillor Merulla for his more than two decades of service to the residents of Ward 4 and the entire city of Hamilton.
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