Evidence of meeting #118 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
—from June of last year to June of this year, it has increased year over year, so the graph is going like that.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
You can't tell us how many people are going to cross the border, so how can you project how many hotel rooms will be needed?
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
That is the challenge of having an emergency shelter system that is beyond surge capacity.
Conservative
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
The new normal requires us not to operate shelters at 90% capacity in normal times, because the new normal is displaced populations—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
How many spaces are going to be required over the next year? You said that there will be more installment payments to provinces, and these installments are not part of the budgetary process. As parliamentarians, our role is to question government expenditures and their efficacy, so how many more hotel spots are you estimating will be required, and over what time period?
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Currently, the city of Toronto's homeless population and shelter population is—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I'll clarify. The question is specifically about people crossing at Roxham Road.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
I'll give you an explanation. Currently, the shelter capacity in the city of Toronto stands at about 6,400 people, half of whom are children. That number has been holding steady at about 5,000 over the last seven years. The way to create shelter capacity—
Conservative
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
The way to create shelter capacity in the system is to get those people out of the shelters into permanent housing—that's the $40-billion national housing strategy.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I'm asking for stats. We're trying to figure out how much money it's going to need—
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Then you have a set budget at the City of Toronto to deal with emergency housing.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I understand you're trying to talk the clock. That's fine, but we're not getting the numbers we need here.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
The reality is that your government is coming out and making an announcement on funding with no numbers attached to it. We can't assess how many people and for how long. Even though I might not agree with my colleague here on how, we need to be able to assess whether this is the best and most compassionate way to deal with people who are entering this country at Roxham Road, now that, as you said, this is the new normal.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Certainly, I think that if you come to this meeting—
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
—was that the displacement of populations inside Canada is the new normal.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
To my colleague's point, if you've come to this meeting without these figures, then I don't understand—
Conservative
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
—but you'd have to stop asking the question for me to answer it.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
—given the amount of colourful commentary that you had around the provincial government, which has been in office for two weeks, if you are planning to run for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party.