Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to the third reading of Bill C-66, an act to amend the National Housing Act and the CMHC act.
As my hon. colleagues from Kamloops has mentioned, a more accurate and descriptive title for the bill would be an act to destroy the National Housing Act or an act to throw Canadians out on the street.
I have been disgusted with the Liberal government's duplicity. Homelessness is at a crisis in Canada. We have just come through one of the worst winters ever with homeless people freezing and dying on the street. The Liberal government's policies are responsible for this travesty. It has slashed transfer payments to the provinces. It has abandoned social housing and left overburdened provincial and municipal governments to pick up the pieces. It is a disgrace.
When Canadians walk the streets of their communities they see this crisis with their own eyes. The evidence is everywhere. All the Prime Minister has to do is walk down the street here in Ottawa, just a few metres from Parliament Hill, to see the evidence. There are homeless people pleading for help. It is the same in every city and town in Canada from Thompson to Toronto. The Liberal government is either so out of touch with what is going on out there and it does not see the problem or it just does not care.
There has been report after report on this issue: the Golden report, the report submitted to the Minister of Finance by the New Democratic Party's social policy critic, the member for Vancouver East.
The member for Vancouver East travelled from coast to coast, including to Thompson and South Indian Lake in my riding. She has met with people on the front lines of the crisis and people who work with the homeless and, unlike the Liberal government, actually cares about them as human beings. However, her report, like the Golden report, is sitting on a shelf somewhere in the finance minister's office collecting dust.
The Liberal government has done nothing, not a thing. Of course, the government says it cares, just like it said it cared about victims of hepatitis C and just like it said it would get rid of the GST.
The prime minister appointed the Minister of Labour as his minister responsible for homelessness. This minister would not even go before the committee studying the bill. According to the Liberals on the committee, housing and homelessness are not related. That is the typical Liberal government logic. It is like saying hospitals and health care do not go together.
This raises an interesting question about the Liberal government's attitude. Why do we even need a minister responsible for homelessness when there is already a minister responsible for housing? One would think that homelessness would be something that the minister of housing ought to be responsible for. After all, he is responsible for making sure Canadians have homes. There must be more Liberal government logic at work here.
The fact that the Liberal government has appointed a minister responsible for homelessness separate from the minister of housing should speak volumes. It says that the government sees homelessness as something that is always going to be there and therefore needs a minister to look after it. It clearly does not see homelessness as something the minister of housing can or should be doing anything about. Heavens, no.
Instead, the minister of housing brought us this bill to gut and privatize social housing. That is the Liberal government's idea of what the minister of housing is for. Apparently that minister's job is to create homelessness so that the minister for homelessness has some work to do. This bill is the last nail in the coffin of social housing in Canada.
I know that makes the Reform Party giddy with joy. The Reform Party even brought in amendments to try and get the bill to go further. It is just like the years 1993 to 1997 when it pushed the government to cut more, cut taxes and cut dollars going to health care and social assistance. What do we have now? We have a health care crisis. The Reform Party is now pushing to cut social housing even more just to make the crisis for homelessness even worse.
I do not know how members of the Liberal government can say they care about homelessness when they are doing the exact opposite of what they say. They have abandoned social housing in seven out of the ten provinces. It may be eight soon.
We all know the Liberal government has more or less finished a deal with the Conservatives in Ontario. It is just waiting to see whether or not the Conservatives get re-elected so it can dot the i 's and cross the t 's in that agreement. It will not make much difference if the Liberals or the Conservatives get elected in Ontario. When it comes to housing, they pretty much agree.
Howard Hampton of the Ontario NDP is the only party that is coming out in support of social housing in Ontario. Then there is Manitoba where the Liberal government has already downloaded social housing onto the province. The Filmon government has already begun phasing out all funding for social housing. Every cent for social housing will be gone if Mr. Filmon and the Manitoba Conservatives get a chance to finish what this Liberal government started.
The one shred of good news in all this has been the news that co-op housing will not be part of the download in Ontario. The Liberal government has spared the Ontario co-ops. Of course, this does not exactly warrant a lot of gratitude. That would be like being grateful to a mugger for leaving our pocket change but taking the rest of our money.
The Liberal government is still downloading non-profit social housing corporations and aboriginal housing corporations. In seven provinces that have already been downloaded, the Liberal government did not spare the co-ops. If the Liberals truly are a national party, they should prove it by reversing the downloading of co-ops in those other seven provinces. Better yet, they should not download any social housing at all. Housing is a national responsibility not a provincial one.
Bill C-66 takes the Liberal government's attack on social housing to new heights. The bill paves the way for the privatization of social housing. It opens the door wide for private for-profit corporations to be recognized as social housing providers by the CMHC. Of course, once we privatize social housing it is not social any more. As the name indicates, for-profit companies are in business to make money not provide a service. Social housing is a service not a business. It is a service to help put a roof over people's heads. Housing is not cheap and many low income people need subsidized housing or they would have no choice but to live on the streets. These people are not living in mansions. Many social housing units barely meet minimum standards, but at least they give people warm, dry places to sleep.
What does the bill do to the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act? It guts them. It guts the acts that govern social housing in this country. It eliminates the minimum standards that were built into the old legislation for social housing to be clean, safe and affordable.
Logically, what is the Liberal government saying by eliminating these minimum standards? It is saying that it does not think the homes of Canadians should have to meet even the most minimal standards. It is saying that Canadians do not deserve even a minimal level of safety, cleanliness and affordability.
The only logical reason for the government to get rid of these standards is so that it does not have to live up to them. That is what it has done for years in most first nations communities throughout Canada. It is shocking and appalling that it is knowingly and willingly removing minimum standards from homes in Canada.
The Liberal government cannot say it did not know that was what it was doing. My New Democratic Party colleague from Bras d'Or—Cape Breton raised amendments at report stage to put these standards back into the bill but the Liberal government voted them down. How does the government try to justify this? The CMHC bureaucrats who wrote the legislation say they need flexibility. I am all in favour of flexibility but not flexibility without standards. Flexibility is good, but we cannot give bureaucrats and private social housing providers the flexibility to reduce cleanliness, safety and affordability of social housing below basic human standards. It is not right.
Speaking of not meeting basic human standards, let us talk about aboriginal housing. The housing conditions of first nations people in Canada, whether one is talking about remote first nations or urban ghettos, are a disgrace.
The minister of Indian affairs has been to a number of remote first nations. She has seen the conditions in my riding and in other northern communities. She has seen the pillows stuffed in the holes in the walls to keep out the winter cold. She has seen homes wrapped in plastic to keep them warm and homes without running water or toilets. She has seen all this, but the minister of Indian affairs has done nothing.
The Liberal government has done nothing about aboriginal housing but make a few token gestures. Small token gestures are all that the government has shown to its gathering strength policy.
Conditions on first nations are so bad that even the United Nations has condemned them. Now we are saying we should keep on going and do this throughout the rest of Canada instead of improving where we should be. Watching the decline of social housing since the Liberal government took power has been like watching one of the ancient Greek tragedies where everyone dies in the end. Every Canadian will lose because of what the Liberal government is doing with this bill.
Housing is part of the foundation of our economy. People cannot be expected to get training or to look for jobs and add to our economy if they are busy struggling to survive on the streets. By giving people a roof over their heads and a chance to make something of their lives, social housing provides a boost for our economy. It prevents people from falling through the cracks.
The bill will privatize social housing and it will raise rents, lower standards and put people on the streets. This bill will do more harm than good to our economy and our society. It is cruel. It is short-sighted. I do not know how the Liberal backbenchers over there can sleep at night. I hope some of them will show a shred of conscience and help us in the opposition to defeat the bill when we vote on it one last time.