Bill C-325 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canadian Bill of Rights (right to housing)

This enactment amends the Canadian Bill of Rights to include the right to proper housing, at a reasonable cost and free of unreasonable barriers.

Opposition Motion—Housing

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

As always, it is a great honour to stand in this House on behalf of the wonderful people of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and talk about an issue that is very near and dear to my heart, but that is also consistently one of the top issues that is raised by people where I live.

I got into politics because of the work I used to do as a former caseworker for former member of Parliament Jean Crowder. I worked in her office for seven years and really got to see how the policies and legislation that were enacted in this place affected the people on the ground. There were far too many occasions when I was sitting across the table with tearful constituents who were at the end of their rope because they were having to make a decision about whether they could pay the rent or put good quality food on the table. In a country as wealthy as ours, that is a shameful thing that it is still going on today. These are problems I was dealing with in the last decade. They are still going on and it is 2018.

We have this motion today because we have this sense of urgency. This was an urgent issue 10 years ago and it was an urgent issue in 2015 when the Liberals won the election. However, there has been a delay, and we have not seen the action live up to that urgency. As members of Parliament, we all have those stories. We all have to sit in our constituency offices and try to explain why we are not doing enough to meet it. Therefore, let us look at the motion before us, because it has two very important constituent parts.

One part is going to call upon the House to recognize the right to housing as a human right. Right away I want to acknowledge the hard work of my friend and colleague the member for North Island—Powell River and her attempt earlier in this Parliament to put that into law through Bill C-325, which was unfortunately voted down by the Liberals. That bill would have basically enshrined the right to housing in the Canadian Bill of Rights. I know the Liberals at the time criticized it. They said that using a legal avenue, a rights-based approach, would not be effective. I think members were saying that we need to have a plan. The point they were missing is that when people have a legal avenue, that is how they hold their government to account. When they have a legal avenue they can go to the courts, they can make sure that not only the legislature but the executive branch is actually living up to that legal obligation. I know it is not the only answer. However, it certainly is a very important constituent part of the issue that we are trying to deal with today.

The second part, which is probably the critical part of the motion, is that we want the current government to bring its funding commitment forward and spend it before the 2019 election.

The Liberals are absolute masters of the long promise. They will announce something that is usually made up of previously announced funding, it is grossly inflated to include both territorial and provincial funding announcements, and when we look at the fine print we see that it is spread out over a whole bunch of years and the funding is not going to come into effect in a big way until after the next election. Yes, the national housing strategy was rolled out with great fanfare. However, when we look at the budgetary numbers, it is all back-ended to fiscal year 2019-20 and beyond, so we have to wait until the next Parliament. Although there is federal money being spent now, it is nowhere near enough to acknowledge the crisis that exists on the ground. Therefore, what we are calling on the government to do is to move the spending up, treat this like the crisis it is and get those units built.

I want to talk about some of the amazing local initiatives that are going on. In the absence of this critically needed federal funding or the fact we have to wait for it, I look at associations like the M’akola Housing Society and the Cowichan Housing Association, that are really trying to lead with local efforts to get the ball rolling. In fact, where I live in the Cowichan region, the Cowichan Valley Regional District, we are going into municipal elections this fall and we will have an important referendum question on whether we are going to allocate some funding to the Cowichan Housing Association so that it can start taking firm action.

I am really heartened by the incredible work being done by constituents in my riding. They have seized the issue. They have done homeless counts. There is also that part of the housing crisis that is frequently not talked about which is housing insecurity, people who are one paycheque away from being evicted, have threats from their landlords or are couch surfing. It is a big issue.

I do not want to prejudge what the referendum question is going to be, but I hope that the voters in Cowichan Valley look at this question, treat it with the seriousness that it deserves and try to recognize the local efforts being made on this issue.

The Liberals in questions and comments are going to come up with all kinds of facts and figures and say they really are doing something, but the really bad thing is that the government is prepared to spend $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money on an old pipeline to deliver diluted bitumen to our coast, something that flies in the face of our climate change commitment. Furthermore, the Liberals want to expand the export of diluted bitumen. It just makes an absolute mockery of our climate change commitments.

The Liberals can find that kind of money pretty quickly and easily, but I am left trying to explain to my six-year-old kids, whose future we are trying to work on in this place, what the current government is doing and try to put that in the context of the housing crisis we are having.

It is always very helpful in this place when we are talking about particular issues to bring in personal stories because that is ultimately why we are here. I want to talk about a couple of constituents who wrote to me and gave me permission to use their names and talk about some of the things they are going through.

I would like to talk about Wilfred Stevens. He is a single father who can barely make ends meet because he is trying to prove that he is the primary caregiver to his children. He has been struggling to get the child tax benefit and all of this financial difficulty is not allowing him to have that kind of security in making his rental payments.

There is a woman named June Thomas in my riding who has been waiting for quite a long time to get her GIS application processed. She is currently couch surfing, at her age, in different family members' homes to try and make ends meet. It is absolutely unacceptable that our seniors, the people who in previous generations and previous decades built this country to what it is today, are still having to live in such abject poverty and trying to find a place to live, one of the most basic human needs.

Peter Emeny-Smith is having problems with the CRA and so on. These are all issues that relate to people's ability to find housing and when they do not have that kind of security it affects their entire life, their outlook on life, the way they are able to function in society, their ability to hold down a job. That kind of stress wears people down and it can lead to further costs down the road in their mental health and their physical health, so there are real tangible economic costs to not solving the housing crisis. Maybe my Conservative friends will argue that it is too costly a venture. I would argue that it is too costly not to do things.

Given that my time is running out, I will end by saying that I recognize how critical this issue is. I am going to be hosting two town halls on housing during the October constituency week to try to juxtapose what the traditional federal role used to be in housing with what it is now, and what more we could be doing from the senior level of government.

I hope all hon. members will look at the spirit and intent behind this motion, recognize its urgency and support us in addressing this very critical issue.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have had the opportunity to speak to the budget in previous years, and I often refer to budgets as showing what a government's priorities are, and more importantly, what a government's priorities are not.

The inequality gap between Canada's wealthiest and the rest of Canadians has never been greater in our country. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, as of 2016, Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs now earn over 209 times more than the average Canadian worker. This year, Canada's CEOs could have stopped working at 10:57 a.m. on January 2 and taken the rest of the year off and they would still make as much as an average Canadian this year. Members can think about that for a minute.

Reducing this inequality is simply not a priority of the government. Despite promising to close the stock option deduction loophole, which is projected to cost some $840 million this year alone, the government, under pressure from its wealthy friends, abandoned that promise. The finance minister has suggested that this is because small businesses and start-ups use this as a legitimate form of compensation. However, the data shows that this is not the case.

The CCPA found that 99% of benefits from the stock option deduction went to the top 10% of income earners in Canada. It found that, “In essence, there is no benefit from this tax expenditure to anyone making less than $215,000 a year.” These are not employees of small start-ups. These people are the government's wealthy backers and fellow French villa owners. This is just one tax loophole.

Unfortunately, despite its promise and its posturing as a progressive force, the government has left several of these highly regressive tax policies on the books. It has also failed to take real action on the abuse of tax havens. Tackling these issues is simply not the government's priority.

For Vancouver East, housing remains the number one issue for many of our residents. It has long been declared a basic right by the United Nations, and Canada has signed and ratified a number of international human rights treaties that identify the right to adequate housing as a fundamental human right.

The NDP introduced Bill C-325 to enshrine the right to housing for Canadians in the Canadian Bill of Rights. To my dismay, every Liberal MP joined hands with the Conservatives to vote against that bill.

At a town hall I hosted, many attendees agreed on the necessity of a real, national, affordable housing program; the need for renewed and ongoing federal housing subsidies; the need for a long-term solution, not two-year transitional measures, for co-op housing; the importance of the Liberals honouring their election promise of incentives to build rental housing; and the need for dedicated funding for aboriginal housing.

The Liberals promised to bring back a national housing strategy, and there was much fanfare, by the way, with that announcement. However, what we learned was that 90% of the funding will not actually be spent until after the next election. The issue of housing affordability constitutes a crisis, with real, immediate needs, and the government's response was to say that it will get back to us after the next election. Honestly, we do not deal with a crisis by spending over 90% of promised funding after the next election.

The NDP has urged the government to bring the funding forward by increasing housing spending to $1.58 billion in budget 2018 instead of in 2021. Sadly, budget 2018 failed to acknowledge this important call for action. According to the government, tax loopholes for the richest must continue. Funding for affordable housing can wait.

Homelessness costs Canada $7 billion annually, $1 billion in B.C. alone. Every dollar invested in providing housing has been found to yield over $2 in savings in areas like health care, the justice system, and other social supports. Each dollar invested in housing construction has also been found to result in $1.52 in GDP growth. These are investments that pay for themselves and simply should not be made to wait.

I had the opportunity, when speaking in support of Bill C-15, to draw attention to the work of the Vancouver East community and what it is doing in trying to obtain UNESCO world heritage site designation for Vancouver's Chinatown. With Canada having just celebrated its 150th birthday, partnering and investing in preserving heritage sites like this would have been welcome.

B.C. was able to join Confederation through the labour and sacrifices made by Chinese railway workers, and 2017 marked the 70th anniversary of Chinese-Canadians winning the right to vote. Vancouver's Chinatown is number three on the Heritage Vancouver Society's top 10 watch-list of endangered sites. It is on the top 10 endangered places list of the National Trust for Canada.

Relentless development threatens the area more and more each year. Our community was hoping that the federal government would get behind our UNESCO push and provide preservation funding. There was not anything in budget 2018 for this important work. I hope that in future budgets, there is recognition from the federal government to help revitalize Vancouver's Chinatown and Chinatowns across the country.

On another critical issue, there is not an indigenous community in Canada that has not been touched by the systemic racism and sexism that allow indigenous women to be stolen from their loved ones and allow indigenous men like Colten Boushie to be killed without repercussions.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has been riddled with challenges since the beginning. The inquiry is the result of decades of work and advocacy by families and survivors. I feel very strongly that it must put the needs of families and survivors at the forefront. It is also vital that organizations that have been granted standing because of their expertise on the conditions and practices that cause and perpetuate the murders and disappearances of indigenous women and girls are also heard by the inquiry. To date, there has been no information regarding the process or the timeline for these experts and the institutional hearings of the inquiry. This is not acceptable. “No more stolen sisters” cannot just be a slogan.

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in the massive rally to stop Kinder Morgan. This call for action was led by indigenous leaders from across the country. Thousands gathered at Forest Grove park to send a clear message to the Prime Minister: no consent, no pipeline.

With eagles soaring above us, the leadership spoke eloquently and passionately about future generations and how it is our responsibility to “warrior up” to protect those who cannot speak for themselves. Their powerful and inspirational message united all of us: with one heart and one mind, let us all work together to stop Kinder Morgan.

The issue of pipelines brings us to the need for real action for a just transition to a sustainable future. What about bringing in a strategy to expand the use of solar panels for homes and public buildings? There is nothing like that in the budget.

On a critical issue, the government has also finally decided to provide the Immigration and Refugee Board with some funding to address the strain on the system caused by the significant increase in asylum claims in Canada. Unfortunately, because of how long the government put its head in the sand on the irregular crossings, this new funding will address the issue for only two years. That is not nearly enough. The added funding will only ensure that 18,000 cases are processed. At a time when there are over 40,000 cases in the backlog, which is increasing by 2,100 cases per month, this is not sufficient.

This budget does not address the real needs of Canadians. Action is what really matters. It takes courage to act, and I call on the government to act.

Housing

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, over 235,000 people are without a home in our country. In Canada, housing should be a right. Liberals like to talk about the right to housing but are unwilling to enshrine it in law. Maybe this explains why not a single Liberal spoke on my bill, Bill C-325, during its second hour of debate.

Are the Liberals keeping silent because they are just too ashamed to speak against the human right to housing?

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the right to housing is a fundamental one. Everyone deserves to have a roof over his or her head and the security of knowing where he or she will sleep at night. Across Canada, one of the richest countries in the world, many people do not have a home.

I have heard stories of seniors couch-surfing; couples who are both gainfully employed but cannot find a home to rent or buy that they can afford; parents placing their children in care because they cannot find a home; and business owners struggling because they cannot hire people because there is nowhere for them to live. There are many other stories that should make us all sleepless. There is no question that Canada has a housing crisis in rural, urban, and indigenous communities.

The government's recent budget has housing funding that would mostly be spent after the next federal election. When will Canada recognize that housing is a right?

I encourage all members of this House to support my private member's bill, Bill C-325, on the right to housing. Let us make it happen.

Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in the House to speak to Bill C-29.

My constituents have identified three priorities in our riding. They have serious concerns around the needs of seniors, about housing that is affordable, and addressing the serious issue of climate change. This work has influenced my actions heavily. I am holding seniors' town halls that will be wrapping up in January, and in a riding of my size, I will be hosting a total of 11.

The need for affordable housing has been framed in my private member's bill, Bill C-325, on the right for housing for Canadians. This summer, we will begin the work we have to do with our constituents around the important issue of climate change.

Beyond these three priorities, my staff and I work hard on many challenges constituents face. They include small business needs, transportation issues around our ocean, issues with trade, and much much more.

My constituents sent me here to have a strong voice for them in this place. This is why I was very disappointed yesterday when the government reduced the time we could speak on this important bill. Bill C-29 includes 146 clauses that would amend 13 pieces of legislation. It was introduced in the House of Commons and this past Friday, three days later, debate began. With the time allocation now, there is very little time for parliamentarians to debate its content.

Time allocation provides the government with a mechanism for setting out the amount of debate a bill will receive at any given stage. When the notice is given, a short debate is had, a vote is called for, and if the motion is approved, as it was by this government, a limit for debate is established.

I take the duties of my job very seriously. Part of those duties are standing in the House debating on the bills before this place. During the last Parliament, the New Democrats decried the Conservatives' routine habit of this procedure. A year into the Liberal mandate, and the Liberals have not copied this practice; they have outright championed it.

I would like to remind members on the governing side that Canadians expect to know how they spend their money. Bill C-29 is a budgetary instrument, a bill that has specific changes to the Bank Act, to small businesses, the Canada child benefit, and the Employment Insurance Act. It must be taken seriously.

Specifically, the NDP is concerned by the fact that many relatively technical legislative changes, 239 pages amending over a dozen acts, are included in a single bill, while we have not had the time needed to debate them sufficiently.

In my riding, families are struggling daily. They have to make decisions if they can send their children to swimming with their classes because they cannot afford the $2 fee the school is requesting. Families are also facing serious challenges around finding day care. Day care spaces are limited, and the cost is often just too much. The child benefit was a step in the right direction, but the amount did not create child care spaces, nor make it affordable for families. Now we see that the Canada child benefit will be indexed in 2020, as the Liberals have proposed, rather than listening to the so-called inadmissible amendment made in the committee to see it indexed to inflation each year starting January 1, 2017. This means that each year the benefit will be worth less to Canadian families.

I have veterans who are standing outside of local businesses in my riding fundraising for their medication and seniors who are making choices among medication, food, or paying for their heat. Where is there anything in the budget that will help these folks to afford their medication?

Small business owners are looking for ways to build their businesses because they see opportunities. However, without the promised tax break, they are finding it hard to invest in the important infrastructure or human capital they need. Small businesses have grown in my riding and have provided jobs when our larger resource based jobs were lost. The government saying that businesses want money in people's pockets to spend in those businesses is only one part of the equation. The promised tax cut would have meant an equitable support to businesses across the country. Each area faces multiple challenges, and this tax break would have really made an impact in my riding.

The Liberals have rejected our proposals to cap transaction fees for credit cards and are doing nothing to facilitate the transfer of family businesses within the immediate family. Small businesses could not be clearer. As the job creators of our country, a cap on transaction fees for credit cards would make a real difference. Why is the government prioritizing credit card companies over small and medium-sized businesses in Canada?

In my riding of North Island—Powell River, it is the small and medium-sized businesses that are participating in the chambers of commerce, giving back to the communities at events, and employing people. It is time to give them the support they need, because they benefit us all so very much.

This budget also shows a worrisome trend with the government, a hands-off approach that signals an increase in upcoming privatization schemes. This comes to us as a bit of a surprise because budget 2016 did not include any details of a privatized Canadian infrastructure bank. It did have the term “asset recycling”, about which we asked numerous questions. We know that “asset recycling” is a financial term that involves the sale of an asset and the use of proceeds of the sale to invest in another asset. For the government, it means selling public infrastructure or privatizing it to raise money that will be used to fund other infrastructure.

On October 20, we learned that Liberals gave Credit Suisse, an investment firm specializing in privatization, the mandate to advise the Liberals on the benefits of privatizing Canadian airports. It seems like a foregone conclusion that the recommendation will be privatization.

Other pension fund experts are salivating at the prospect and do not even hide that it is about private ownership or private management of public assets. As Claude Lamoureux, former CEO of Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, said on May 25, “For government, it is a way of offloading, of giving that to someone else. And in my opinion, this someone else might be more efficient than government”.

The road map is pretty clear: sell airports and possibly other infrastructure to raise some or all of the $40 billion to be invested in the Canadian infrastructure bank. The Liberals hope that these public funds will attract $160 billion in private capital. Regardless of the way the bank will work, it is clear that private investors and pension funds will be asking for a return on investment, which makes sense. That is what they do. The only way to do this is to create a revenue stream, and that means imposing tolls and user fees at a rate of between 7% to 9%.

What will this mean for communities across Canada? I represent many small and rural communities. The need for infrastructure is profound and often they are left behind. This scheme would not benefit the people of these small communities. How long will they have to pay tolls or user fees to get a benefit of 7% to 9% return on investment? This scheme is so speculative that even president-elect Donald Trump thinks it is a great idea.

Since we are on the topic of implementing certain provisions of the budget, can the government finally admit which ports, airports, and bridges will be privatized? What will be tolled and which user fees can Canadians expect? These are simple questions. My constituents, who work so hard, are left wondering when these costs will appear. I am particularly concerned with what this would mean for smaller communities that will not be able to generate the kind of user-fee revenue streams that would be attractive to investors of this bank. Why is the government taking away allocated funds for infrastructure for a new scheme that simply will not help communities in my riding?

During this time of year, many organizations, service groups, and people are working to ensure the holidays will be good ones for those struggling to make ends meet. I remember being in Port Hardy and one member of the community showing me the food bank. He said that 20 years ago they did not have them, that there were enough jobs, but now they had been forgotten and they fundraised to feed themselves. This budget could do so much more.

I want to thank all of the people, organizations, and service groups that are actively working to feed those across the riding who are hungry, whether it be the Eagles Ladies Auxiliary that has been fundraising for weeks now, selling food to raise money to feed those who desperately need it; the Angel tree, where people buy a gift for a child who would go without if not for the generosity of the communities I serve; the Community Resource Centre in Powell River; the Salvation Army; the Good Food Box; all the food banks across the riding; Grassroots Kind Hearts; and the Beacon Club, just to mention a few. Poverty is real in our communities and I thank all of those who work everyday on the ground to fight it.