Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I participate in today's debate to urge the government to take steps to ensure the viability of housing co-operatives.
I want to thank my colleague from the Progressive Conservative Party for giving us this opportunity to debate this issue.
I should remind the House that, in the riding of Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, which I have been representing since 1993, there is a deeply rooted tradition of co-operative housing, with more than 2,000 units.
I think it is our duty as parliamentarians, as our colleague suggested, to outline the merits of co-operative housing. Co-op members are involved in their community. They are involved in a managerial capacity. Because they take their responsibilities, they look after the well-being of the co-op, and this can only reflect positively on the entire environment.
We cannot talk about co-ops, about ensuring their viability, by allocating the necessary resources so that 20, 30 or 35 years from now, co-ops are still a viable reality both in terms of upkeep and subsidized housing, without mentioning that the governments that have succeeded each other since 1992 have systematically withdrawn from the co-op program.
I think that the more militant among us, the staunchest advocates of social housing, will recall that when times were good, there were three separate federal programs under which housing could be built, operated and subsidized for members of a co-operative. But after 1992, the government, following the trend and figuring that subsidized housing should no longer be subsidized, cruelly withdrew from that area.
I want to point out that 29% of Canadian households with the greatest needs are found in Quebec, a province which has always been very supportive of co-ops. This means that, with 25% of the population and 19% of the funding for social housing, Quebec has more families in need of assistance for co-operative housing or any other form of social housing.
Unfortunately, in this case as in others, the list could be long. The Government of Quebec, the people of Quebec and the taxpayers of Quebec have not had the support they were entitled to expect.
It is important to say that the government announced a few months ago in the Speech from the Throne it wanted to withdraw and negotiate with the provinces the full transfer of all matters relating to public housing.
Sovereignist that I am, I would see this as a matter to celebrate, since the whole area of public housing is more a matter for the Government of Quebec and, to some degree, for municipal governments. There is, however, cause for concern, because the government wants to transfer, to all intents and purposes, nearly $2 billion.
Governments that signed agreements with the central government—including Saskatchewan, and I will come back to it, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories—signed at a loss. For negotiations to be fair and to make it worthwhile to the provinces to sign, there must be money to ensure the continued operation and upkeep of co-operatives.
The co-operative housing movement got started in the 1970s. We will therefore be looking at co-operative housing that will require important investments for maintenance, renovation and repair in the year 2000, 2005 or 2010.
What the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada and its counterpart in Quebec are asking is not just that the federal government negotiate the transfer of responsibility with the provinces, but that it have the generosity, the conscience, to provide, in the negotiations to follow, for funds to be transferred as well, so that the provinces that become responsible for this co-operative housing are also given the money to maintain and repair it.
But the government opposite is short-sighted and lacking in vision, and governs by trying to offload its responsibilities onto the provinces. The $2 billion they are trying to negotiate will not be sufficient to allow us to plan long-term projects for the housing stock.
It is a strange thing. On the one hand, the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, a fairly easy-going fellow, is not all that worked up about it. The Government of Quebec has broken off negotiations. The federal government is letting things drift along and, right now, there are no negotiations taking place between the Government of Quebec and the federal government.
Why are there no negotiations between these two levels of government? Because the offer on the table is unrealistic and ridiculously low, because there is no desire to right the historical wrong done to Quebec, which has, I would remind you, 29% of the neediest households within its borders. In the best years, it receives 19% of subsidies.
Of course the Société d'habitation du Québec and the minister responsible for housing in Quebec, Rémi Trudel, have calculated the shortfall the Government of Quebec has experienced in recent years by not receiving its fair share. The figure is in the millions.
It is our responsibility to remind the minister that he must give clear directives that negotiations with Quebec are to be resumed.
We are in favour of the Government of Quebec being able to regain control over this area of jurisdiction, like all governments wishing to do so, but not by selling out.
I wish to speak of a proposal to which my colleague has already alluded: an agency. Where social housing is concerned, there is already the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which administers a certain number of operating agreements in conjunction with the co-operatives.
It carries out real estate market studies. It carries out analyses and tries to understand the major trends in the housing market, not only construction, not only the private housing market, but also the co-op market.
The Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada, which is certainly the movement with the greatest expertise anywhere in Canada, has made a proposal, and I believe they wish to meet with the minister at the earliest possible opportunity. If adopted, their proposal would save billions of dollars, as it would make a community partner such as the federation the major administrator of operating agreements.
I believe that, where English Canada is concerned, this is a proposal worth considering. Once Quebec will have regained this responsibility, along with the related budgets, and once there can be a true housing policy—because the appropriate resources will be available—it will be up to the Quebec government to decide whether it wishes to have this type of partnership with a community agency such as the one that is proposed.
I will conclude by saying that, out of all the provinces, Quebec is the only one that allocated budgets for the maintenance of co-operative and social housing, and our province is also the only one that earmarked $40 million for development purposes. This shows the degree of support for the co-operative movement in Quebec, and I hope such support will continue in the future.