Mr. Speaker, a lot has been said about CMHC's involvement in providing insurance so that more people can afford homes. I would like to touch on the area of social housing and the way the National Housing Act and CMHC have helped in the social housing. I would like to use experiences in my riding.
Canadians of Lithuanian descent in my constituency saw the need for housing for seniors. In no way could these seniors afford individual homes, et cetera, so they built Vilnius Manor. How did they build it? They got a long term mortgage from CMHC at a very low percentage over a long period of time. Today these seniors are enjoying one of the most beautiful homes in Toronto, probably. In this home the seniors not only mix with Canadians of other heritages but they can also hear their own language. They can also see part of their own culture that they brought with them to Canada. It is a real success story, situated right on Bloor Street in Toronto.
An example of a similar project, again funded or assisted by CMHC, is Copernicus Lodge. A group of Polish descent built Copernicus Lodge as a home for seniors. It was filled up before it was even completed. In these models some people have to pay the full rent and others get a subsidized rent. Again, there is a women's auxiliary with this Copernicus Lodge who provide activities for the seniors. You will not see happier Canadian citizens than the ones living at Copernicus Lodge.
Another example in my constituency is Wawel Villa. Again thanks to CMHC funding a group of seniors can live in Wawel Villa just opposite High Park. They can walk through the park and enjoy life in their older years.
I had the experience also of helping Canadians of Latvian descent to build Kristus Darzs in the Woodbridge area. Again, this home would never have been built if it were not for the assistance of long term loans from CMHC.
I hope this program will never be cut. We have thousands of such homes across Canada providing comfortable living for those in these kinds of homes.
A problem is beginning to develop that I would like to share with the minister, the mover of this bill. As these people age in these homes they now need more intensive care. Many need ongoing nursing care. Many require chronic care assistance and they do not want to move out. These homes were not built for these kinds of clients.
Do they move out? Where do they move to? Most of them want to stay. All the homes I have mentioned are looking. Copernicus Lodge has already built a second phase. They have floors that provide more intensive care for the people who need it. This is a problem that is facing our country. We build affordable homes for senior citizens as they get into their eighties and nineties. And I am so pleased that many are living into their eighties and nineties, and some are reaching a hundred and over. But they need special care.
Rather than move the people out, we have to provide in these homes more intensive assistance, which requires a different kind of personnel. It requires highly trained nurses, psychologists, social workers, and so on. Yet these are the areas where unfortunately the Conservative provincial government is cutting back. I do not know why the Premier of Ontario wants to cut back on the backs of seniors. I believe we have to reduce our deficit. We have to run a much leaner government, but not a meaner government, such as the province of Ontario appears to be doing. This is an important issue, which will be facing the country even more intensively.
This brings me to the issue of jurisdictions. We have been talking over the last month about perhaps moving some of the powers the federal government has to provincial jurisdictions and co-operating with the provinces to decide who can deliver these programs the best.
We are talking about federal programs in housing. The province of Ontario also is involved in housing. If someone in the greater Toronto area wants a subsidized unit, they go to the metropolitan Toronto level. The city of Toronto has a program called City Homes to help people with affordable housing. There are four levels of government-federal, provincial, metro Toronto, and Toronto-all involved in housing.
If we want to keep the country together, these are the areas we must look at to see who can deliver the housing programs best, most efficiently, et cetera. And let us talk with the other levels of government. If there is one level that can do it better, fine, it can take over a certain area. If the federal government can do it better, it would take over, with the caution that the federal government will still need a strong central government to maintain standards coast to coast to coast, be it in housing, day care, or health care.
I wanted to put on the record the kind of assistance my constituency received thanks to the type of bill we are amending here today, the National Housing Act.
The House has heard the problems that are facing the Parkdale area of my riding, with prostitution, drug trade, high school dropouts, et cetera. We are trying to analyse why in one part of my riding there is such a heavy concentration of all these social problems yet in another part of the riding there are not the same problems. One thing, in my analysis, that contributed to this is the
lack of home ownership in the troubled area. In that area only six per cent of the population own their homes.
Again, if all levels of government got together to make it possible for people to afford their own homes and build a family unit, et cetera, I think we would reduce the numbers and the kinds of problems facing the Parkdale area. We are working on it, but we do need help from legislation such as we have here today.