Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I see MP Vaughan on my screen here via video conference through Zoom, so he will be able to hear my comments.
Thank you very much to the committee members for letting me have this opportunity.
I wish to raise a point of privilege. As the first meeting dealt with the election of the chair, this is the first opportunity for me to raise this question of privilege, since I'm not a permanent member of the HUMA committee.
At the last HUMA committee meeting, prior to the prorogation of Parliament on August 17, MP Vaughan specifically named me in a completely misleading claim, which I was not able to correct since I was not a sitting member of that meeting. It was misleading to the witnesses and to the members of this committee. He said the following, Mr. Chair:
We have been asked by some of the opposition parties to end Reaching Home and to send the dollars straight to provincial capitals and not to front-line services, particularly in B.C., by the member for Vancouver East, Ms. Kwan. What would the impact of that be on some of the prairie provinces—Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta—where support for homeless services, in particular harm reduction, has been very slow to meet the front-line needs of a COVID response?
Mr. Chair, I want to be very clear to the committee members that at no point have I ever said that the government should end the Reaching Home program, nor has that ever been the NDP position, for that matter. What I have said repeatedly is that the program is not enough, that it is deficient in addressing the homelessness crisis. I have, on numerous occasions, called on the government to do more than the Reaching Home initiative. I have called on the government to provide capital funds, in collaboration with the province, NGOs and with municipalities, to provide support to address the housing crisis.
I'm also on the public record, Mr. Chair, in support of the “Recovery for All” six-point plan. As well, I have written to the minister on these points. The correspondence clearly states that the government is not doing enough, and as well calls on the government to expand the Reaching Home program.
Mr. Chair, suggesting that I've called on the government to cancel the program is blatantly false. It's misleading the committee members. It's misleading the witnesses. I wish to correct that record.
Mr. Chair, for your information and for the information of committee members as well, I have attempted to resolve this issue. I have made two attempts to reach out to the minister himself to talk about the housing crisis. The minister, over the course of the summer, came back to me and suggested that I should talk with Parliamentary Secretary Vaughan. My office reached out to MP Vaughan's office to say that in my meeting to speak with him, I wish to address this issue. Since my office has reached out to him with respect to that, we have not had any response from him or his office.
This brings us to where we are today. I think it is absolutely essential that the record be corrected.
Mr. Chair, I would ask, through you, to ensure that the witnesses who were present at that meeting receive the correct information so we can ensure that people are not misled.