- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Hamilton East—Stoney Creek
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $105,519.46
- Government Page
- Jun/13/24 12:27:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague that today's motion is nonsensical. It is just a regurgitation of the motions we have seen over the last number of months when we could be and should be debating more important issues, like housing and the environment.
The Leader of the Opposition was in Hamilton recently as part of his “make Canada great again tour”. He made no reference to, or had no ideas about, how to get out of the housing crisis. He provided no plan as it relates to combatting climate change.
I wonder if the member can speak to why it is so important that we provide options and alternatives for Canadians as it relates to those two very important issues.
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- Apr/18/24 4:59:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition was in Hamilton several weeks ago as part of his “make Canada great again” tour, and he talked about dismantling the national housing strategy, which is a strategy that has built units in the member's riding. In fact, I know that there were 18 transitional units constructed in his riding. Passage House in East Gwillimbury provides shelter services for people who are in encampments. There was also a youth shelter constructed in Sutton. It provided services by Blue Door.
I wonder why the Leader of the Opposition is so intent on cutting supports for not-for-profit organizations as well as cutting supports for those most vulnerable Canadians who need the services and the facilities in the member's riding. Can I ask him why?
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- Jan/30/24 3:13:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government believes workplaces should be safe, respectful, and free from harassment and violence. The Canada Labour Code includes numerous provisions to that effect, and Canada has international obligations that outline that same commitment. One year ago today, Canada ratified convention 190 of the International Labour Organization on violence and harassment.
Can the Minister of Labour provide insight on this convention and the important role Canada plays in international organizations like the ILO?
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- Dec/7/23 12:47:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I sat through the speech of the Leader of the Opposition this morning, and we certainly know what he is against. He has waged a war against science. He has waged a war against climate change. He has waged a war against green infrastructure investments and the green economy. We know what he is against, but I am not certain we know what he is for at this point.
His campaign is not what he brags and boasts it to be. It is not an axe-the-tax campaign. It is actually an axe-the-facts campaign that he has waged against all the things I just referenced, and Canadians know that.
When will he present an environmental plan for Canadians that will actually do something, that is based on science, that will address climate change and all the issues that come with it? That is my question for the member.
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- Nov/23/23 10:24:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, honestly, if I did not work here, I would pay money to just hear stuff like that every day of the week.
In all seriousness, we have heard a couple of references this evening and today about plagiarism. Political plagiarism reigns supreme on the other side of the House. The Leader of the Opposition continues to steal political themes from former president Trump. He has adopted Mike Harris's “common sense revolution” tag. If the Leader of the Opposition has any original ideas when it comes to housing or the bill that is in front of us, when can we expect to hear them in the House?
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- 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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- Nov/23/23 7:45:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my friend and colleague highlighted the difference between our housing platform and the opposition's. While the Leader of the Opposition seems to be applying for the position of the Canadian The Apprentice host, we are busy working with stakeholders. Instead of threatening to fire people, we have used the carrot approach in incentivizing the private sector and not-for-profit sector. I ask my friend and colleague to comment on why it is important to work with stakeholders in this space in order to see new affordable supply across all of Canada.
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- Nov/23/23 6:52:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there was not a lot in that on the bill in front of us on the Competition Act or removing GST from purpose-built rentals, but I will take the member up on his reference to plagiarism. We have certainly witnessed a lot of political plagiarism over the last several weeks. The Leader of the Opposition has almost taken every page out of Donald Trump's political playbook in threatening to defund the media. He has talked about firing people with our own Canadian version of The Apprentice. Of course, he has also taken on Mike Harris's common-sense revolution tag.
What is the Leader of the Opposition's fascination with political plagiarism? Does he have any original ideas of his own? If he does, when will we hear them?
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Madam Speaker, that was interesting to listen to. There was some real revisionist history there. The member opposite referenced political relationships with dictators, and I am going to pick up on that.
It is no secret that the member for Carleton has hitched his political wagon to former president Trump. We know of former president Trump's relationship with Putin and his affinity for the government in Russia, and we know that the member for Carleton has been eerily silent on his support for Ukraine.
Is that an indication of his lack of support? Can we chalk up the member's silence on his support for Ukraine to his relationship with former president Trump and, by extension, his relationship with Putin? Can the member explain that and connect the dots for us when it comes to relationships with dictators?
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- Nov/3/23 11:10:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this week I met with Lori Oschefski and representatives of Home Children Canada, an organization raising public awareness about an important time in our history when Canada's immigration laws facilitated the flow of orphaned or low-income children to be immigrated for the purpose of domestic servantry.
While many of these children lived hard lives in the U.K., enduring the industrial boom and world wars, their time in Canada was hardly easy. They worked on farms or in homes under very harsh conditions, and many of these young children were abused, mistreated and neglected.
So many of the stories of home children have been lost over time that many Canadians today are unaware of their family's connection to this issue. I know this because I am a descendant of one. My great-grandmother Elizabeth Boardman arrived alone at the very young age of 13.
I share this statement today to ensure the stories of British home children are never forgotten considering the harrowing fate many of them met while in Canada. I thank Lori and all members of Home Children Canada for their continued advocacy on this very important issue.
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- Nov/2/23 1:50:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we continue to see one party in the House spread misinformation. I heard a “falsehood” earlier, and that term is used in response to my colleague.
Whether it is the member for Sarnia—Lambton talking about battery fires with EVs, the member for Niagara West talking about ivermectin being used to combat COVID-19 or the suggestion by the member for Saskatoon—University, who discouraged Canadians from using heat pumps because they would not get home insurance, this misinformation, I think, does a lot of damage to discussions in the House. I wonder if my colleague can speak to the whole issue of relying on science to adopt a climate policy.
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- Oct/31/23 1:10:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is very appropriate that my friend and colleague referenced our support for Ukraine. We are almost up to 200,000 refugees coming from Ukraine who fled the war and Russia's illegal invasion, but we are starting to see some cracks in the support for Ukraine. We are seeing this with right-wing Conservative governments across the world. There is the possible return of Trump, with his obvious support for Putin and his open declaration that he and the Republican Party will not support Ukraine. The Leader of the Opposition, of course, has been very quiet on this subject.
I wonder if my friend and colleague could speak to the importance of our government's continued support for Ukraine and its people.
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- Oct/31/23 12:24:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the speeches today, there have been a lot of comments about students and the lack of housing for students. We have not talked a lot about support for colleges and universities.
I know that in Hamilton, McMaster University just completed the construction of a 1,400-bed student residence in downtown Hamilton, but it has done that largely without financial assistance from any level of government. It is important that we recognize there is space in the sector for us to contribute to student housing issues across the country.
Does the member see any opportunity for our government and others to contribute to easing the student housing pressures that almost all university and college towns are facing across the country today?
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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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Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity to read Bill C-356 and it sounds a lot like our housing accelerator fund. I guess the best form of political flattery is political plagiarism.
I have had the opportunity to look through the last several housing plans from the Conservatives. They have talked about money laundering, about making land available through the Canada lands initiatives and addressing amortization periods. They have talked about everything except providing support to people: seniors, persons with disabilities, the people who sit on affordable housing wait-lists.
My question to the member opposite is: Why?
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- Oct/30/23 5:56:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I attended committee again today, and we had CMHC representatives there as well as representatives from infrastructure who manage our Reaching Home program, and we talked about the inroads that we have made.
For me, the most pressing issue of all the issues related to housing are encampments, and I think we need to provide additional assistance. However, it is a great first start in terms of the resources that we provided to those who try to get people out of encampments and into transitional supportive housing. We need to do more of that. I think that is the most pressing issue for those people who are living rough and do not have the services in order to deal with their mental health issues, in many cases, or addiction issues, and it is an all-of-government approach. I think I have been very consistent, as has the government, in terms of working with partners in this space to serve that population.
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- Oct/30/23 5:54:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the report speaks for itself in terms of the recommendations.
I mentioned just now that the national housing strategy is a fluid one, and we are going to continue to see changes. Unfortunately, what we have seen from the other side of the House are delay tactics. There were delay tactics at committee to get the report here in terms of finding consensus on recommendations. There have been delay tactics with other housing initiatives and votes that we have had in this House. So, my answer would be that I think we are going to continue to see this pattern of behaviour continue, with obstruction and delays, trying to prevent the government from moving forward with legislation that is going to help Canadians.
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- Oct/30/23 5:53:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to speak to that.
I have been very consistent. I said “consecutive federal governments”, and so I think all parties are to blame for the federal government's exit.
I also mentioned that for 30 years municipalities asked for support, including from the previous government. It was our government who stepped into that space for the first time in 30 years with a national housing strategy and $82 billion worth of support for everyone in this sector, including the private sector.
So, when the member opposite starts to talk about the lack of support and who is to blame, the Conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. They had their opportunity to provide a strategy and they did not.
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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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