Madam Speaker, last month the government finally recognized the seriousness of the housing crisis.
I think everyone in the House applauds the appointment of the Minister of Labour as the federal co-ordinator on homelessness. Her personal commitment to housing issues is well known and no one doubts that if she was given the tools to do the job she could make a real difference.
This bill is a clear indication that the government does not intend to allow its co-ordinator on homelessness to do more than attend conferences on homelessness. All the way through this bill are provisions that remove direct government involvement in providing housing for those in need.
Instead of parliament or the cabinet making decisions about how to best provide affordable housing, authority has been delegated to an appointed CMHC board of directors. A basic democratic principle is that decisions should be made by elected officials. This bill ignores that principle. Once we have voted to allocate money for housing, the only means this bill gives us for reviewing decisions made on social housing is when the House of Commons receives CMHC's five year corporate plan.
That is why I am a little curious about the wording of the amendment of my Reform Party colleague from Kelowna to remove section 101. This is the only section left in the National Housing Act allowing for the regulation of the CMHC. I have heard the hon. member express concern about the need to make the CMHC more accountable and I hope he will reconsider his motion.
All through this bill are provisions allowing the CMHC to set terms and conditions for programs that provide loans or contributions for housing. If we pass this bill, decisions about how these programs will work will not be made by parliament. They will not even be made by cabinet. Instead, they will be made by an unelected board of directors.
It does not take much of an imagination to picture the response of the government when an unpopular decision is made by the CMHC board. “Oh, that has nothing to do with us,” it will say. “It is all the fault of CMHC”.
When they were in opposition, the Liberals would have found this unacceptable. My colleagues who have been here more years than I have can remember Liberal MPs condemning legislation as undemocratic because it transferred decision making power from parliament to cabinet. Of course, this was when they were in opposition and it was the Conservatives who were introducing the legislation. Today with this legislation they are going even further than the Conservatives could have imagined.
It should also be made clear that the government is not just turning over the power to make decisions about mortgage insurance to CMHC. Under this legislation the government is abandoning its decision making role in almost all parts of the National Housing Act. Whether it is the eligibility criteria for housing renewal programs or setting national standards for public housing, this government is abandoning its responsibilities.
The amendments the NDP will introduce require approval by the governor in council for terms and conditions for housing programs set by CMHC. This does not mean that the cabinet has to approve every last project the CMHC assists. Given this government's record on patronage, there is no way we would suggest that. What it will do, however, is to ensure that the conditions under which projects receive support are approved by the governor in council. This is already happening.
Currently the National Housing Act sets out the terms and conditions for loans, grants and other forms of assistance. The goal of the amendment is to restore the principle that rules about how taxpayers' money is spent should be approved by parliament or by regulations approved by those who are accountable to parliament.
I would also like to touch on some of the specific problems with the bill and what they mean for the federal housing policy now and in the future.
As it stands, the National Housing Act has a number of provisions stating how programs to provide housing should be run. These measures ensure dollars spent on housing do what they are meant to do: help those in need of affordable accommodation find it.
The current restrictions in the National Housing Act seem nothing more than basic common sense. These restrictions include provisions to restrict rent increases for housing projects which have been built or repaired using federal dollars, a reasonable measure if the goal of federal housing programs is to increase the supply of decent, affordable housing.
It includes restrictions saying that only housing projects sponsored by non-profit or co-operative associations qualify for full funding, another measure that seems necessary if the goal of the housing program is to provide affordable housing and not line private developers' pockets.
Under this bill, these provisions are gone. This bill paves the way for the privatization of social housing in Canada. Current statutes contain very clear definitions of what a public housing project is and what an eligible contribution recipient is. These definitions have ensured that funding for housing goes to the groups best able to build and operate affordable housing: non-profit groups and co-operative associations.
This bill eliminates these definitions and others from the National Housing Act and puts them at the discretion of CMHC. This opens the door for private for profit corporations to be recognized as social housing providers. With social housing this can be a very expensive proposition. Building housing units is only part of the cost. The other part of the cost is subsidies for rent.
For non-profit and co-operative housing, all we are subsidizing is the operating and capital costs. If we allow private for profit corporations to provide social housing, we will pay for their profit margin as well as for the cost of the housing. Instead of housing dollars assisting Canadians looking for decent, affordable accommodation, we will be subsidizing for profit developers. In case there is any doubt about this, I would like to touch on what happened in Ontario in the late eighties in cases where private for profit developers received social housing funds. For private developers it was the equivalent of a blank cheque.
Under the Liberal government the subsidy paid for the difference between what the tenant could afford and the market rent for the apartment. The rent review guidelines made it easy for landlords to raise rents and every time the rent went up, so did the subsidy the government was having to pay. In some cases the rents being subsidized in private for profit developments were over $2,000.
In contrast, co-operative and non-profit housing have not seen such dramatic increases in the cost of rent subsidies. There, rent covers the cost of the mortgage and maintenance, not a landlord's profit margin.
The amendments that the NDP has put forward ensure federal funding for housing goes to those with a proven track record: non-profit corporations and co-operatives. In other words these amendments ensure any federal funding for housing goes to where we know it will be used for its intended purpose and where we can keep track of how it is used.
The NDP is also concerned about the elimination of national standards for public housing. In section 78 of the existing National Housing Act, there is a requirement that public housing provide decent, safe and sanitary housing accommodation. Bill C-66 removes this provision. The explanation given was that flexibility is required. There are some things where I do not think we should be flexible. Ensuring that public housing in this country is decent, safe and sanitary is one of them.
It also has been suggested that standards are not required in the section of the National Housing Act dealing with public housing because they are present in the definition of low rental housing project. I am not a lawyer but as far as I know a definition has to be stated to have any effect. Under this bill low rental housing project is defined in section 1 of the National Housing Act but will not appear anywhere else in the legislation.
Like the Minister of Labour in her role as federal co-ordinator on homelessness, the definition sounds good, wants to do something and is not being allowed to do it by this government. What our amendment in Motion No. 16 seeks to do is to restore standards for public housing.
In closing, I emphasize that New Democrats recognize the housing problems in Canada are serious enough that there must be a federal role. We are also concerned about the restrictions the amendments moved by the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve would place on this role. I would hope it is not his intention but the effect of his motions is to give provincial governments ideologically opposed to social housing a veto over the construction of new housing projects. Given the seriousness of the housing crisis we face, this is not something the NDP is prepared to do.