Madam Speaker, I am very happy to have an opportunity today to try to help clarify the terms affordable housing, poverty and homeless.
This is a topic of great interest to me, all the more so as I am a woman. When one talks about poverty, the homeless and affordable housing, the majority of those affected are women. I am also the Bloc Quebecois critic for the status of women.
I will begin right away by saying how very disappointed I am in the answer given by the member opposite. I thought that we were here this afternoon to clarify, as set out in the motion, the terms affordable housing, poverty and homeless, and not to list off what the government is doing with respect to affordable housing, poverty and the homeless.
Since the beginning of this parliamentary session, the Bloc Quebecois has repeatedly asked questions on these topics. We have tried in various ways to find out whether the government is on the same wavelength as we are, if its understanding of the concepts of affordable housing, poverty and homeless is the same as ours.
As the House knows, the federal government stopped funding social housing in 1994, and perhaps that is why we have been asking so many questions. It is no longer providing any funding for this. It chose instead to put in place an affordable housing program, which is totally unacceptable for Quebecers and Canadians.
The federal government is about to invest $680 million in housing that does not meet the needs of the poor and the homeless.
The motion brought forward today will give me the opportunity to explain the difference between social and affordable housing and to give a clear definition of the words poverty and homeless, and I thank the member for Edmonton Centre East for that.
As the Bloc Quebecois critic on the status of women, I will cannot claim that I live in what would qualify as poverty. I am one of those women who, through their work, were able to make a decent living.
However, I went to meet people, to meet groups in Quebec as well as in the rest of Canada. I went to see if these groups had a definition of social housing. I went to see what they thought of affordable housing. I went to see what the words poverty and homeless meant to them.
The idea of affordable housing is directly related to the issue of social housing. Social housing means housing designed exclusively for unattached individuals, elderly people, men, women, families and households with a very low income. It means that these people pay at least 30% of their gross income, and maybe more, to have a decent place to live, including heat and electricity. We are talking about more 1,670,700 households, the majority of which are single parent families headed by women.
I believe it is important to define what social housing is because it is not affordable housing.
During the last election campaign, the Liberals promised affordable housing. Today we can state that they have not yet begun to fulfil those promises, because negotiations between the federal government and the provinces are at a standstill.
Promises were made about the construction of housing by independent building contractors, with a minimum investment of $12,500. We know that decent housing requires an investment of at least $25,000 investment. I am referring here to four-room accommodation. This is housing that will then rent for between $600 and $800 a month in Quebec. My colleague from Edmonton Centre East has said that the rent would probably be far higher in a certain other region.
During the election campaign, the minister responsible for social housing stated on a radio program that this type of housing would be made available for families. Thus, the affordable housing would be reserved for families able to afford this amount of rent. That is not what social housing is all about.
Obviously, the Liberal government does not have the same definition of poverty as we do, or perhaps it does not even realize what poverty is, or it just does not want to acknowledge its existence.
People need social housing because they poor. When one is poor, one cannot pay $600 a month for housing. When one is poor, one often depends on food banks or soup kitchens. When one is poor, one often faces a dilemma: pay the rent or buy food, pay the rent or pay for drugs. A growing minority is no longer able to pay the rent and services like electricity or gas at the same time.
Poverty amplifies another problem, that is the discrimination one faces when looking for housing. Owners of rental housing are increasingly invoking the presumed insolvency of poor people as a reason to reject them as tenants. These people are often forced to accept inferior housing.
As for the homeless, what I earlier called the problem of homelessness, and I would only like to say to my colleague of Edmonton Centre East that that it is not an illness, it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to housing problems.
It was said earlier, more than one million tenant families are inadequately housed, a record number of people are condemned to live on the street in every big city and people living in the street are there for a number of reasons, many of them having to do with housing.
Community groups that have this expertise on homelessness agree on the following definition of homeless: people who are of no fixed address and who do not have the assurance of a stable and safe dwelling for the next 60 days; people with very little income who do not belong to any group on a stable basis; and people who have mental health problems or problems with alcohol or social disorganization.
These people are often too poor to have access to a dwelling or a room, and when they do, it is often in slums. Social housing units for the homeless are too rare. We know that there are other reasons for homelessness, but we can say that the housing problem is one of its structural causes.
As we can see, the three themes in this motion all relate to poverty. Based on what we saw, it was obvious that the concept of affordable housing did not at all reflect the needs expressed by the public.
It is my hope that today's debate will develop an awareness among members and make them more vigilant regarding the affordable housing policy to which this government is committed. In our opinion, the government is headed in the wrong direction in this area.
If, as my colleague from the party opposite said, there are as many definitions of housing as there are regions in Canada, why does the government not give the money to the provinces so that they may meet the needs of their citizens?