Mr. Speaker, if Canadians were asked if they believe that housing is a basic human right they would answer with a resounding yes. Most everyone understands that without the basic provision of safe, secure, affordable housing it is pretty hard to make anything else in one's life work.
Most everyone gets that fundamental point but apparently not the Liberal government. Despite the Golden report, the report of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, my own report from my travels across Canada this winter, the report of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, CMHC itself, and so on, we are still living with the terrible record of being the only industrialized country without a national housing strategy.
I asked myself how could this be when in 1990 the Minister of Finance, then in opposition, decried the fact that poverty and homelessness existed in Canada. “It is reprehensible in a country as rich as Canada”, he said. How can it be that we still have a housing disaster in Canada today when a minister of homelessness was appointed in March of this year? How can a country as wealthy as Canada be condemned by the UN for its appalling record on homelessness, particularly for aboriginal people?
These shameful conditions exist not because of the fault of individual people who are without housing or are homeless but because of deliberate, conscious public policy by design that has created a housing crisis.
Let us make no mistake. What we see today on our streets, in the waiting lists for co-op housing and in every community where housing is threatened is a direct result of a terrible decision made by the government in 1993 to dump housing and end construction of social and co-op housing. We are living the consequences today of the decision made in 1993 to abandon social housing. I implore the federal government to look at what is going on today.
The minister responsible for homelessness and I were at an Ottawa luncheon that launched an instant food hot pack and a corporate sponsorship drive for the Ottawa Food Bank. The Ottawa Food Bank needs all the help it can get, but the people forced to rely on charity in this wealthy country need real solutions, not band aids or hot packs.
My caucus has strongly supported the 1% solution for housing advocated by the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee and now supported by organizations across the country. We in the NDP have made very clear and will continue to demand that the federal government take responsibility for housing.
Housing Canadians is important. We want to see a national housing strategy. We want to see the 1% solution. I have a motion coming before the House that is soon to be debated and speaks to this matter precisely. I urge the government to do the right thing, to show responsibility, to work with the provinces and to implement a national housing strategy so that no man, no woman, no child or family is lacking this basic human need. Will the government do that?