Thank you.
My understanding was that the theme today was Canada's place in a competitive world, so I've tried to place housing within that context. Housing is a basic need for everyone in the world, for the man who's just paid off the mortgage on his dream house and for a child who's in a temporary shelter because her family's looking for housing.
The problems about a lack of housing and the effect that has on individuals and the economy are well known; the research has all been done. In your package, I have provided copies of some papers, some excerpts of papers that were already submitted to pre-budget consultations in Ontario, one from landlord organizations, one from the Wellesley Institute. Rather than your having to read everything twice, I'm here in support of what other people have submitted.
The other two documents were not submitted for this session: one was a background paper for Diane Finley's round-table discussion on housing that was held last month, and the other from the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. All these offer possible solutions. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; the solutions have also been identified, and there's certainly a role for the federal government to play in coming up with these solutions.
For the last 20 years there's been a 25% decrease in the funding provided by the federal government for housing. We're the only OECD country that doesn't have a national housing policy. We've just been slapped by the UN rapporteur for what's happening with housing in this country. It affects our trade or our competitive position by sending a message to people who may be considering coming to live in Canada that it might be a less than ideal place to live. I know we're considered very safe and we're not a war-torn country; however, housing has become increasingly expensive, and a quarter of a million Canadians each year go through a period of homelessness. These stats are laid out in the Wellesley Institute paper.
Visible homelessness is already affecting tourism in Vancouver and Victoria--I don't know about the other provinces because I tend to focus on the local papers--and conferences have been cancelled by American groups because they don't like the aggressive panhandlers they see in Vancouver. There's a reason for these people being out there; they're not housed in a stable place.
It does take all levels of government to tackle the problem, but there's a huge role for the federal government, and our government does have responsibilities. In an ideal world, the market and individuals would solve every problem, and there wouldn't be a need for government policy, but we all know that's not the case. We're calling for a national housing policy, for tax policies that will encourage rental landlords, market landlords to build more housing: There's a real shortage of rental properties, and that's all a result of tax policies that were put in place in the seventies and eighties. We need a commitment of funds for social housing as well.
If we don't, there's a pressure on wage rates, and it's not going to help our competitive position if we have to keep providing higher wages for our workers. In the paper I handed in earlier, I gave the example of Holland, where after the war social housing was built so wage rates could be kept down and the country could compete internationally.
That's all I have to say. Thank you.