Citizenship and Immigration Committee on July 24th, 2018

[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.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Factually, that is incorrect.

[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?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

That is the challenge of having an emergency shelter system that is beyond surge capacity.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

You said it's the new normal.

[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—

[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?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Currently, the city of Toronto's homeless population and shelter population is—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I'll clarify. The question is specifically about people crossing at Roxham Road.

[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—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Okay, I have limited time.

[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.

[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—

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Then you have a set budget at the City of Toronto to deal with emergency housing.

[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.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

I was just giving you the numbers.

[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.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

That's not what I said. What I said—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Certainly, I think that if you come to this meeting—

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

—was that the displacement of populations inside Canada is the new normal.

[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—

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

I have the figures—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

—why you're here. So I would ask—

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

—but you'd have to stop asking the question for me to answer it.

[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.