Mr. Speaker, it is tough to constrain myself. I appreciate the fact that I should not have torn up that bill, but I am fed up. I am fed up with this government. I am fed up with its lack of attention to housing and I am fed up when I talk to people who cannot find decent housing for their families.
We are talking about Bill C-66, which would change the housing act and the CMHC, but we are not doing anything about housing. We are making it worse. Imagine that. This bill will make housing worse in the country. What are we doing here? We should all run out of here before this bill proceeds any further, but I know we are not going to do that. We have to hang in here, so I will say a couple of words.
What is so depressing is that governments are elected to serve Canadians. We have a very serious housing problem facing our country. I am looking particularly at a number of groups. I will identify two that immediately spring to mind. One group is the young people of this country; the young people who have worked hard to get decent training and education, who have hustled to get work, who are working often at two or three part time jobs, although some have decent jobs. They are trying to save money. They cannot afford to put a down payment on a house. They cannot afford housing. One would think that there must be some program we could introduce to assist them.
That is to say nothing about the aboriginal peoples of the country. If there is an embarrassment, it is that. We should hang our heads in shame and say we are disgusted and ashamed that we have allowed this situation to develop in terms of aboriginal housing in virtually every part of the country. There is something wrong. It is a disgrace.
The homeless issue is sad. There are people living under bridges by the thousands in this country. It is an embarrassment in one of the richest countries in the world. We should be doing something about it, but we are not. We are making it worse.
We are not alone in this. Back in 1993 the government said “we're outta here”. It said that it was out of housing and that it would not do anything more for housing, that it would not put another cent into housing, that it would not put a new nickel or quarter into social housing. In 1993 that was the big announcement. It was embarrassing that the Liberals cheered this announcement. They said, “Hey, great news. We are cutting back on social housing”. I remember that day. There was applause in here when they announced that they were not going to spend any more money helping people get into social housing. Members across the way applauded. I think most members would find that there is something very seriously wrong with this picture.
The Liberals then said, “We are out of here. We are not going to put another new nickel into social housing. As a matter of fact, we are going to get out of the business completely. We are going to fob it off to the provinces. We are going to download it onto the provinces so that they can carry the can on social housing”. They did download it onto the provinces over the last number of years and are still doing it.
What are the provinces doing? Are they any better? They are worse. They are not doing anything either with a couple of exceptions, to be fair. To our friends here who are representing the province of Quebec, Quebec has programs in social housing. I am pleased to say that the province that I represent, British Columbia, is doing something in social housing. As a matter of fact it just announced an increase in hundreds of units of social housing.
The provincial government alone says, “We are out here all on our own. We get no help from the federal government, not one whit. We need social housing in British Columbia and if we have to do it we are going to expand with hundreds and hundreds of new social housing units”. We should be cheering the province of British Columbia for at least picking up that initiative.
We have the province of British Columbia, not only maintaining its social housing but expanding its social housing, we have the province of Quebec and that is about it. That is all the social housing we are seeing by and large across the country.
We have a serious problem. That is why we were hoping that when we looked at Bill C-66 dealing with housing that we would see some initiatives.
We heard some very eloquent speakers before me comment about a variety of issues on why they are concerned about this. I want to identify clause 38 of this legislation. This is a pathetic clause. Under clause 38, it allows the CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, to waive provisions of existing agreements. What does that mean? It means that under this clause an agreement between CMHC and a housing co-op or non-profit corporation could be ripped up and people living in co-ops or social housing could see their homes sold out from under them. That is what this little clause means about provisions regarding existing agreements.
We tried to get a clarification in committee whether this means that if the government deems it appropriate it can say to co-operative housing organizations across the country, “Too bad, we're getting out of it”. We have not received a decent answer.
That is why we are opposing this legislation so strongly. We tried it at second reading but it did not work. We tried it in the committee. We tried to get the Liberals to understand that we have to do something about housing. They said, “No. We are not going to do anything about housing. We are out of housing. We don't even like social housing”. They probably did not say that, but I guess that is what they were really meaning.
So here we are at third reading, the last gasp. We are just going down the tube here. This is it. At the end of the day the government is gone and that will be it for social housing from coast to coast to coast. It will be a sad day not only for people who are looking for homes today, not only for people who are living in shabby, dastardly housing conditions, but more importantly a bad day for Canada generally.