Debates of May 7th, 1999

National Housing Act

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys is an experienced and capable member of this House and he knows it is quite wrong to use props. Tearing up bills and other papers in the course of his speech is surely using the document as a prop. I know that he is excited about the subject and feels passionately about the issue, but perhaps he could constrain himself a little and comply with the rules.

[Nelson Riis, NDP, Kamloops, BC]

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.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

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.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Secretary of State (Multiculturalism)(Status of Women)]

Madam Speaker, I would like to make a comment and ask a question as a result of the comment.

After listening to the hon. member's speech, it would seem to me that the hon. member mixes up two very important terms: the issues of homelessness and housing. They are not synonymous. The issue of homelessness is a broader issue. If the hon. member has read the Golden report, which I hope she has and recognizes that it was sponsored in part by the federal government, the report shows that the issue of homelessness is a multifaceted issue.

In the city of Vancouver, where there is a great deal of homelessness and the issues of prostitution, urban natives and drug addiction, the government has recently put in $5 million to coordinate a strategy between three levels of government: between the people who live in the area and between the non-governmental organizations in the region to be able to work horizontally within and between governments and communities to come up with a coordinated, comprehensive, holistic response to these issues.

Not only was money put in to do this issue, but recently money was put in to the urban aboriginal strategy to help aboriginal people in cities to work toward a plan of action they can administer to find solutions to some of these issues. It needs to be co-ordinated.

Does the hon. member understand the difference between homelessness and lack of housing?

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, anyone who would suggest that homelessness does not go in line with housing is dreaming in Technicolor. Certainly there are situations where that may not be the key issue, but I can say without any doubt in my mind the reason that a number of first nations people leave their first nations to go into cities and elsewhere is the lack of proper housing in first nation communities.

If the government were truly committed to addressing the problem of homelessness, why is the minister responsible for homelessness not being given a budget? What is she supposed to do? Are we supposed to look out there on the street and say make it go away? It will not happen. The crisis will get much worse if there is not a serious effort to address the problem.

By downloading social housing and not supporting social housing programs we are increasing the crisis that much more. There will be that many more people on the streets.

[Gilles Bernier, Progressive Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to debate Bill C-66 at third reading. It is an act to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Act. It is also a sad day for Canadians. We all know that the bill will pass because the Liberals will use their majority to pass it, I suspect some time next week.

When the bill was introduced in committee we were allowed to submit amendments to it. We supplied a few. One of them was with reference to subclauses 18 (1) and (2) on page 7 of the bill. We requested the addition of a subsection (3) which would require the government to spend an amount equal to compensation paid by CMHC to the Receiver General for Canada in return for the federal government's backing of its loan insurance and guaranteed operations on social housing. It was defeated in committee.

Let me explain what the amendment was all about. If I lived in a rural area of Canada and had a seasonal job, in the wintertime I would have to rely on EI to feed my family. If I wanted to get ahead in life, I would try to obtain a loan to put a roof over the heads of my kids and my wife.

I would go to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and would be considered a high risk. There is not a bank in the country that would give me a mortgage; I would be told absolutely no. However, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation would assume this high risk so that I could build a house for my family. If something happened and I could not pay for the house, the government would guarantee CMHC 100% of the mortgage insurance.

When the bill goes through the government will not guarantee a penny to CMHC. Yet the governments wants the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation within the next three or four years to give it $198 million. The government wants to take $198 million out of the corporation and put it into its general account and waste it like it has been doing since 1993 when it came to power.

My amendment was defeated in committee. It was a shame, but that is the way it is. The money is lost to CMHC forever. It could have been used for social housing, but it will be put into the general revenues of the government.

It could be spent on something like the million dollar plastic dinosaur that the government is building in Alberta or the grant the Department of Canadian Heritage gave to publish a book of dumb blonde jokes.

We were sent to the House of Commons by Canadians to be their representatives. We have a mandate to fight for the concerns of Canadians, to make sure the economy moves well, and to create programs so that there will be prosperity in the country and the economy will be booming.

I do not think spending money to publish a book on dumb blonde jokes and creating a plastic dinosaur in Alberta is good for the economy. People are living in shacks. Families with young children are living, eating and sleeping in their cars. This is Canadian society today.

While the flexibility to offer new products is welcome—and I welcome that because we need new products—the changes eliminate the advantages of government underwriting. Forcing the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to cover any loss will decrease the willingness to finance high risk borrowers such as low income people. It may also make it more difficult for borrowers in more remote locations to qualify for mortgage loan insurance. I am not the one saying this; it has been reported.

Another of my party's amendments concerned clause 25. We would have liked it to be amended by deleting lines 19 to 24 on page 19 and line 35 on page 19 and replacing it with subclause 6(7). Again, for the record, that amendment was defeated.

CMHC has a board of directors with a good balance of five highly qualified professionals: a chairman, a president, a vice-president and two public servants. It also has five political appointees. Clause 25 in Bill C-66 proposes changing the composition of the board so that there would be a majority of eight political appointees, with only the chairman and the president remaining on the board.

I asked on a number of occasions how this change would benefit Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and/or the clients it serves. The only answer was that all other crown corporations were doing it. Is that a logical answer? To me it is not.

On three different occasions on the same amendment I asked Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation officials in briefings what problems existed that needed solutions. They gave no answer. I asked them how it would improve service to Canadians and they had no idea. I believe this change is totally unnecessary.

At least we have five highly qualified professionals on the board who know what they are talking about as far as the corporation is concerned and five political appointees. With the new bill some of these individuals will be pushed aside and eight political appointees and two highly qualified professionals will sit in their place. Does that make sense? To me it does not.

Under the new bill the changes would remove any reference to fair rents in providing RRAP assistance to private landlords. Any provisions for urgent repairs have been removed. Transfers from the governor in council to CMHC authority to determine amount of RRAP forgiveness, household incomes, household needs and attributing household incomes have been deleted. Specific reference to non-profit corporations has been removed.

I will now go to sections 78 to 83, the public housing section. The changes rationalize the flexibility of the 1996 social housing transfer agreement by eliminating the need for global agreements. They remove the restrictions on decent, safe and sanitary housing. They remove the low income restrictions. Consistent with the changes under other sections of the act, all references to low and modest incomes have been removed. Overall the bill is defining social housing out of existence.

In section 95 dealing with programs, the definition of eligible contribution recipients has been eliminated. The reference to section 27, non-profit status, has been removed. The social housing character of section 95 has been defined out of the legislation.

What is good in the bill? I do not see too much in it. From 1985 to 1993 under the previous Conservative government funding for social housing rose by 73%. That is how much money was put into social housing under this program. I even have the figures to show how much social housing was built by the previous government from 1985 to 1993. From 1993 to the end of 1998 when the government took power, the number of units in Canada declined by 3%.

We are not in 1993 any more. We are in 1999. There is a crisis out there. It is not a problem; it is a crisis. People do not have homes and the government is cutting social housing.

A couple of weeks ago a new minister for homelessness was appointed and was asked a question. She rose in the House and said she was not the minister for homelessness. Last week she gave a speech in the province of New Brunswick in which she told the audience she was the minister for homelessness.

I would ask the government or the minister responsible for homelessness what is her mandate in this new portfolio. She does not know. She does not know if she is the minister or if she is not.

She had a meeting with the mayor of Toronto not long ago. There were articles this morning in the National Post and the Toronto Sun in which she was quoted as saying “I went to bingos with you homeless people. I know your problems and I am going to make things happen”. The mayor of Toronto now calls her bingo mom. That is a shame.

I asked two questions in the House during question period. Some Liberals screamed that they were not good questions. I do not want to discredit the minister responsible for homelessness. I know her past. She is from New Brunswick and I am also from New Brunswick. For 25 or 30 years she was very good with the program she started. However I am not a person who lives in the past. What I did 20 years ago is irrelevant today. Now she has a job as a member of parliament and has been appointed minister to see what can be done to help homeless people and if there can be a better housing policy.

The minister should have come back a long time ago, it was 45 days ago. She was supposed to have something at the end of April. Now we are in the month of May and there is still nothing.

While the minister was in Toronto, she was to have a meeting with the mayor of Toronto. She was supposed to have that meeting within 30 days, on April 29. I am quoting the mayor of Toronto when he said “but the bingo mom did not show up and now I cannot get a date for another meeting”. What is the minister's mandate?

It is not something that needs to be fixed next year or in five years time. As I said a while ago, it is not a problem, it is a crisis in this country.

I am on a task force that was organized by the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. I travel around Canada to meet with special groups. I have been to Vancouver. I have been to Edmonton. I have been to Calgary. I have been to Saskatoon. I have been to St. John's, Newfoundland. I have been all over. Next Monday I will be in Charlottetown. The stories told to us by people who have appeared before our committee are unreal.

I was in the United States about nine years ago. When I came back to Canada I was a proud Canadian. Many times we hear it said that Canada is the best little country in the world. Say that to those people who appeared before our committee and we will hear firsthand what those people have to say.

As a member of parliament representing Canadians and especially the constituents in my riding of Tobique—Mactaquac, I cannot believe that a country as rich in resources and minerals as Canada with the big population we have cannot afford a social housing policy.

Instead of helping those people, we are cutting social housing. This bill is taking everything out of social housing. This bill will pass. The Liberals will use their majority to pass it, and when the bill passes there will be no more social housing policy. It is the end of this country's social housing policy.

When the Liberals were first elected they were on a roller coaster ride for two years. In 1995 they finally realized there was a problem with social housing. Instead of tackling that problem, facing the problem and taking care of it then, they decided to download it to the provinces. They decided to give their problems to the provinces.

Now that we are in a crisis the same Liberal government will not accept the responsibility. It blames the provinces, like it did with health care and like it did with Mike Harris in Ontario. The Liberals cut health care. They cut the transfer payments by 40%. Then the provinces had to cut the hospitals. Then the Liberal government blamed the provinces for the crisis. Is that logical?

I do not care which party governs, we are here to represent all Canadians. We should throw partisan politics out the door. We should work together as one to make sure that all Canadians have a home. That is a basic need. I do not see that happening on the other side of the House at all.

This bill will take us into the international market. I am not against that, because it will create jobs here in Canada within that market. The problem is wider than that. My dad always told me that charity begins at home. We have a problem in Canada. Instead of running abroad, we should try to fix the problems here.

In closing, we will be opposing this bill because we believe in Canada and we believe in its people. It is time that members of this House got together.

Look at our party's record. I have a copy right here of the record of the last Progressive Conservative government from 1984 to 1993. It lists the number of units built and the amount of money that was put into the social housing of this country. We see a big difference between where we were and where we are. We are going backward in that regard but the years are going ahead. So are we backtracking here?

It has been an honour for me to speak about social housing and Bill C-66. Again, my party and I cannot support the bill because it has all the wording about social housing taken out of it. I cannot support a bill like that.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words about housing in Canada.

We have before us today a bill to make some changes to the CMHC. I emphasize that home ownership is a cherished value in Canada.

For most of my generation when we graduated from university we got married and the first thing we did was plan to purchase that first house. It is incredible when I think about it. At that time my wife and I chose to live on one salary. We decided that she would be a full time mom to our children. We were able to borrow the money and make the payments on my income of the day. I am sure everyone will be pleased to know and young people will be especially pleased to know that my salary when I was first working in my profession was a little under $6,000 a year. With that I was able to borrow money and start our first home.

A young couple starting today cannot do that. They cannot afford to have their children. They cannot afford to have a house unless they are both working. Even then with all of the taxes and the GST on top of all of that, it is really tough for young people nowadays to get started.

The bigger issue by far is the affordability of homes in this country. CMHC at least in theory and in its philosophy is supposed to support the notion of making housing more affordable. Through the CMHC the government, the taxpayer, takes on a certain amount of the risk of providing the money to purchase homes. That is one of the things government can do but I think the government should have done it in the past. I am talking about the governments of the past 30 years. We will go all the way back to 1970.

The governments since then have racked up so much debt and increased the payments of interest on that debt. I would hold the Liberal government, the Conservative government after that and the present Liberal government accountable for that. Young people nowadays have such a high tax load that it is very difficult for them to get their own housing.

I am basically supportive of measures that would provide for the ownership of homes or that would make it possible for young people to own their own homes. It is a good model of housing that we have. It is quite different from some countries where the thought of owning your own home or your own apartment is totally elusive. It is part of the dream, part of the initiative, part of the psyche of our country that can help us in this ongoing problem of productivity. It motivates us. There is something special about being able to own your own place, to make your own decisions on how you decorate it and how you live.

I have some concerns about the bill. I have some concerns about CMHC extending its industry around the world. I wish we would concentrate on the problems in this area within our own country. We certainly support helping other nations to a degree through our foreign affairs department and through our humanitarian efforts around the world. However when it comes to something like this, CMHC should concentrate on Canadian enterprise, Canadian housing, and not get involved in other countries to that extent.

The other thing that is somewhat troubling is that CMHC expends taxpayers' money, or at least it has the potential of doing so. It is supposed to be designed in such a way that it turns a small profit or operates evenly, but it does have the potential of spending public money. It should always be held accountable through the minister and through parliament to the taxpayers. This bill falls short in that regard.

There should be some amendments made to it so that the Canadian taxpayer is protected and we do not give a blank cheque to the minister to spend as much money as he or she wishes. We like to think that would not be out of control. Accountability is always important to make sure that does not happen.

I conclude by saying that a bill like this one deserves some level of support because there are some good things in it but amendments should be made. I emphasize over and over again that our first obligation to young people and young families in our country in terms of home ownership is to reduce their taxes so they have enough of their earnings left over and they can pay for their mortgages and own their own homes.

[Rick Laliberte, NDP, Churchill River, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to speak on the issue of housing.

It certainly is a wake-up call for a lot of Canadians, especially a lot of people in my constituency, to see the effects of Bill C-66 on our communities. It will mean wholesale changes in the structure of housing in my communities.

A lot of the responsibilities have already devolved from federal to provincial authority. There is also concern about on reserve housing in aboriginal communities and contributions that the federal government has made for the development of communities and their infrastructures.

When one sees social housing coming to an end as a national program, Bill C-66 seems to punctuate it. In Canada we have such pristine land that gives us natural resources of timber, rock, minerals and properties that can provide for meaningful homes, that can be designed for a new generation of children to come, that can meet the environmental needs, the non-polluting needs and sustainable development housing needs of the future. For the federal government to abdicate and abandon its responsibility now is very untimely.

As a national vision we should be empowering our youth. When they leave high school are they trained to understand how to build a home, the basic need of a shelter? Can they renovate the property they will eventually own as students, workers or parents? What about the maintenance of the heating, cooling and electrical systems or the plumbing? All these are housing needs and basic skills that people need to take care of their homes and to make them sustainable.

In a high tech world everything has become a case of calling 911 when people are in trouble. People call the plumber when there is a leak, the electrician when there is a power outage, the computer specialist when viruses are coming down from the online system. We are making people dependent.

The social housing program has been utilized by many generations of families and individuals. In future they will have to try to find their way through the provincial and local community administrations.

As well, this bill will abdicate the corporate for profit social housing programs. That is a very dangerous venture for this country to go on.

I believe that our young people, our homeless people, our disadvantaged people require the state to look at these interests and to find the means to create opportunities to put before us. The state should make the challenges. It should make them local challenges.

My first career, coming out of high school, was as a carpenter. In 1976 there was a major infrastructure development in northern Saskatchewan which included housing. I learned to build a house. Today I am proud to be a carpenter who can still build a house, but if it was not for the social housing program that was in place in my community I would have not attained that skill or that trade.

Today, if for profit corporations build social housing in our communities, they hire local people at minimum wage for a very specific, short period and then they leave with the profits they have made. There is no advantages for trade development or skill development. I guess the bottom line is one of self-awareness and self-pride, self-esteem in housing.

If families can provide homes, if communities can provide for the well-being of their citizens and if the country can provide for the well-being of its citizens, then we will have self-esteem in the country. With Bill C-66 we seem to be going to the common marketplace to look at social housing delivery in the country.

In Canada we have a housing shortage in the middle of the boreal forest. That is a mindless situation. It is not a housing problem, it is a social problem. It is a sick society when we have a wealth of resources in the backwoods of our communities and we have a housing shortage. Young families are starting up. Some families have 15 to 20 members living in one dwelling. They have issues of health, discipline and economic plight.

Housing is also an industry. We have to create industries in our communities in all necks of the woods, so to speak.

We recently had the birth of Nunavut. We watched the celebrations take place in the capital of Nunavut, Iqaluit. This is a growing, young population, the majority of which is under 25 years old. They are going to need housing in the future, but there are no trees in Nunavut. There is an abundance of trees in northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. We have to create an economic cycle within our own country. We have to trade among ourselves. We have to prepare ourselves, but we have to take care of our people first, before we trade worldwide.

Let us take care of Canadians in a responsible way. I call on the government to reconsider its support of Bill C-66 at this time. I call on the government to reconsider in the new millennium renovating and rejuvenating our pride, as well as renovating this House. Why not? This House has a housing problem of its own. We should reassess how we populate it, and redesign the House which came from the British form of government. Let us redesign something collectively for the new millennium.

The whole structure and foundation of the government, the foundation of the country, is compassion for everyone. We must have compassion for each other.

Those people who have been using the social housing program for years should be the people sitting on the CMHC board of directors. They should be the ones administering the bureaucratic structure of social housing. Why not consider these people for positions on the board of directors? Instead, the government, the minister or the prime minister will appoint whomever they want.

The government should look at the standards of housing in this country and consider our northern climate. The government should consider climate change and the effect that will have on our environment. It should consider the use of energy.

It is a major challenge for us to empower and to teach our children that in the future we should build our homes in a respectful and honourable way, but by no means should the federal government abandon its responsibilities to the citizens of this country.

I believe that a further review of the CMHC is needed for the new millennium, but consultations should take place at the community level, not at the federal level. I call on the Liberal government not to adopt any past government's ideas of making for profit corporations' interests a priority. The government should support the non-profit and co-operative movement that has taken place in social housing. These organizations should be financially and politically supported to make it possible for people in the future to have houses.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

Pursuant to Standing Order 45, a recorded division stands deferred until Monday, May 10, at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think you would find consent that the House would be prepared to consider the time to be 1.30 p.m.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker]

It being 1.30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business, as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from March 12 consideration of the motion that Bill C-393, an act to amend the Competition Act, 1998 (negative option marketing), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Competition Act

[The Deputy Speaker]

Before I call for resumption of debate, I have received notice from the hon. member for North Vancouver that he is unable to move his motion during private members' hour on Monday, May 10. It has not been possible to arrange an exchange of positions in the order of precedence. Accordingly, I am directing the table officers to drop that item of business to the bottom of the order of precedence. Private members' hour will, thus, be cancelled and Government Orders will begin at 11 a.m.