Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee.
The Right to Housing Coalition is a Winnipeg-based coalition of 120 individuals and 33 organizations working together to address the current housing crisis and the chronic need for social housing. We promote and lobby for safe, high-quality social housing in which rent is geared to income, and for housing policy solutions on a local, provincial, and national level as part of a comprehensive strategy to eliminate poverty. The Right to Housing Coalition maintains that adequate and affordable housing is a basic human right; yet over the past decade, the commitment by the federal government to put this right to housing into practice has been significantly eroded.
In 2006 the United Nations called housing and homelessness in Canada a national emergency, a finding confirmed by the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing after his official fact-finding commission to Canada in 2007.
The key reason that the Right to Housing Coalition has decided it's important to present to this committee today is that we want to take this opportunity to reinforce, with the experience of our members, member organizations, and the people they work with, a message that I'm sure you're hearing across the country: that the provision of social housing is a key component to alleviating poverty in Canada and that it will take action by the federal government to address this housing crisis.
The Canadian Housing and Renewal Association estimates that Manitoba requires 1,000 units per year for the next five years to reduce our deficit of social housing. The Province of Manitoba has now stepped up and committed to create 300 units of social housing each year over the next five years—that's a total of 1,500 units over five years—and now it is the turn of the federal government to do its share.
You, the members of this committee, have a tremendous opportunity before you to address the housing needs of Canadians. On December 8, Bill C-304 will come back to this committee to complete its clause-by-clause review before it is sent back to Parliament for its third and final reading. The Right to Housing Coalition urges you not to miss this opportunity to give it a speedy passage back to Parliament before Parliament is dissolved and the bill dies on the order paper.
So my message today is pretty simple: it's a strong encouragement to this committee to make sure this happens, because if we want to take steps to work on poverty in Canada, this is a fantastic opportunity.
Thank you very much.