Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the motion proposed by my hon. friend from Shefford. I will be sharing my time with my good colleague from Chicoutimi.
Perhaps the most visible sign of poverty in Canada's cities is the growing number of homeless people. In the 10 minutes I have available to me I would like to discuss the cause of homelessness and the lack of adequate housing for many low income families. I will also show how this government has failed Canadians in need of housing and suggest some ideas on how we might begin to tackle this problem.
In the recently released Toronto task force report on the homeless, Dr. Anne Golden noted that there are four principle causes of homelessness. First, there are social factors that have contributed to the breakdown of families and other social support networks. Domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse and the alienation of individuals from family and friends have all added to the problem of homelessness.
Poverty as well continues to aggravate this problem. In recent years the incidence and depth of poverty have increased because of changes in the structure of the labour market. For example, Canada's unemployment rate continues to be about double that of the United States. As well, reductions in transfers from the federal government to individuals have left low income Canadians with fewer resources to pay for housing.
Third, many people who suffer from mental illness and addiction become homeless after being deinstitutionalized because communities lack adequate support programs. Inadequate discharge planning of hospitals and jails also results in people being released on the street with no support systems.
Finally, since this Liberal government was elected in 1993 the supply of affordable housing has shrivelled. The dwindling supply of low cost rental units and rooming houses, the withdrawal of federal support for new social housing programs and the abandonment of social housing by the federal government have all made affordable housing much harder to find.
All these factors have combined to send the numbers of Canadians who are either homeless or who lack adequate affordable housing skyrocketing in the last six years.
Ironically, the current finance minister, the man who has had the ability to address this problem for the last six years and who has done nothing, once promised that he would fix it. Yes, it is hard to believe, but the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard who has been Minister of Finance for the last six years once cared about homelessness in Canada.
In 1990 he co-chaired, along with the member for London North Centre, a Liberal caucus task force on the homeless. He told us that he was concerned about this important social problem. He and his Liberal cronies shuffled all across the country. They met with all the right groups. They said all the right things. They smiled for the cameras. They tried to look concerned. Then they wrote a flowery report. The finance minister said “Trust me. I have the answer. If you elect Liberals we can fix the problem”. We all know what happened. They got elected and promptly and conveniently forgot their promises.
Let us take a look at exactly what the finance minister promised to do for the homeless when he got the power. He said that housing is a fundamental human right. The Liberals promised to discuss housing rights at a first ministers' conference and they promised to enshrine in the Constitution, no less, the right to adequate shelter. What happened? When they got elected they said “Thanks for your vote” and they tossed out their promise.
The finance minister also promised to provide more money for housing to the provinces through the Canada assistance plan, now called the CHST. Guess what? They got elected and instead slashed provincial transfers by 40%. So much for the promises of the member for LaSalle—Émard.
They said we would get a new federal-provincial social program to assist the working poor with housing costs. It never happened.
They promised they would hold a national conference, bringing together federal, provincial and municipal governments to fix the problem. The Liberals still have not set a date.
The finance minister promised a few other things. He assured us that if Canadians elected a Liberal government he would increase funding for housing co-ops and look at new ways of using co-ops. He gave us his word that he would make surplus crown lands available below market value for low income housing. He said he would encourage private-public partnerships to build affordable housing. Get a load of this: he promised that he would eliminate substandard aboriginal housing by the year 2000.
If we were keeping score, so far the finance minister has hit zero out of eight.
I could talk all morning about the failures of the Liberal government, but that would not help solve the problem. Let us talk about some of the things we can do. This is a solvable problem which does not take brain surgeons to fix.
First, let us hold the national conference on the homeless which the finance minister promised nine years ago. I realize that there are those who will roll their eyes and say that we need less talk and more action, but I am not talking about a bunch of politicians sitting around, complaining about how awful a problem this is and that someone should do something about it. What I am proposing is that all three levels of government come together to devise and implement a strategy to address this problem. We need to identify measurable targets with time lines and divide up the task between the three governments with respect to their jurisdictions. And then we need to do it.
Second, the federal government needs to stop the downloading of social housing to the provinces. You cannot fix your house if you have given all your tools away and we cannot fix the housing problems if the Liberals have given up control over social housing. Let us be frank here. The decision to offload the responsibility for social housing to the provinces has been an unqualified disaster.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but if the housing minister had purposefully set out to royally screw up our system for providing affordable housing to Canadians he could not have done a better job than he already has. Half the provinces will not sign the agreement and those are the provinces with the vast majority of social housing units. The provinces that have signed are the smaller provinces which are also cash starved.
Let us not kid ourselves. Look at what happened to job training. The Liberals had this bright idea that they would transfer job training to the provinces. We all know what happened. The provinces gladly accepted the job training money and then had to use that money for hospitals, schools and social services because this same federal government cut those transfer payments by 40%. Now there is no more job training in Canada and the exact same thing will happen with social housing.
We can raise the supply of affordable housing in Canada, but that is only half the answer. We also need to address the income problem, and there are two things we can do. No Canadian who earns $10,000 a year or less should have to pay personal income tax. We need to raise the personal income tax exemption to $10,000, not the $7,900 the Reform member said we should raise it to. This will immediately put cash into the hands of low income Canadians. We need to create more jobs for those on the margins of society. Let us make it less expensive for employers to hire by reducing payroll taxes.
I reiterate that this is a solvable problem. Despite its promises the Liberal government has abandoned the homeless and allowed this problem to get worse. Some people may wonder why the Tories are interested in helping the homeless. Why worry about the homeless? None of them ever voted PC. If we think about what it means to be a Conservative, we will understand why this is important. We believe in family and in our communities. We are the party of nation building and we believe in equality of opportunity. Homelessness strikes at all these core beliefs.
If we can deal effectively with these issues it will solve problems in our families. It will strengthen our communities and our country. It will ensure that Canadians who have been forgotten by the government will once again have access to the same opportunities as everyone else. This is why we need to act now.