I'm referring to the rights contained in article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which include among other things the right to adequate housing and sufficient food. These are rights that are not being respected right now if you consider the poverty that surrounds us and the gravity of the housing problem.
I'm not the only one to say this; there are UN committees that have said it, most notably the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which produced a very exhaustive report in May 2006. The committee heard from organizations in civil society, but it also took note of the voluminous report by the Canadian government. The committee issued very strong criticisms particularly to the effect that Canada was not using its capacity, was not putting its economic growth to good use to reduce the income gap and fully respect rights. Unfortunately, the committee produced this report three years ago now and the Canadian government still hasn't responded to it.
In my opinion, that's inadmissible. Once an international covenant has been signed and a commitment made to earmark the maximum amount of resources available to a cause, to continue to progress in this area, to produce reports for expert committees, once recommendations are made and not followed up on by government, that is completely unacceptable, to my mind. I may be using strong words here but I think they are appropriate in this area: Canada is behaving like a "rogue state".