moved that Bill C-416, an act to provide for adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-416, the housing bill of rights. This is an important debate. I will begin by outlining the purpose and intent of my bill.
The housing bill of rights addresses the need to create a national affordable housing strategy. It may be surprising to Canadians that this is something we do not have in Canada. We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have a national housing strategy.
However the bill would do more than that. It would entrench in law the right to affordable housing for all people. As a signatory to the 1976 United Nations international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, Canada already recognizes and protects the fundamental human right to adequate housing. Under Bill C-416 the right would be formalized and enshrined in Canadian law and not merely in international covenants to which Canada is a signatory.
I will talk about the scope of Bill C-416 and what it would do. It outlines that individuals would have the right to secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing without discrimination. These rights would extend to security of tenure as well as protection against arbitrary eviction, forced relocation or any other form of harassment. The right to housing would include housing appropriate to individual or family specific needs.
Bill C-416 would guarantee the right to privacy and a safe and healthy environment free from the threat of violence. It would ensure housing was affordable. It would provide for protection from rent increases, property tax increases or other costs that were sudden or excessive and had the effect of diminishing housing as a basic human right. That is the general thrust of the bill.
It is important to enshrine these rights because many people take for granted that everyone in Canada is well housed and that we are a wealthy country. The reality is that growing numbers of people in Canada do not have adequate, safe and affordable housing. This is in part because we have not recognized housing as a legitimate right in Canadian society.
I have brought the bill forward because for a number of years we have seen a growing crisis in Canada. Four years ago the Federation of Canadian Municipalities declared homelessness a national housing disaster. Municipalities across the country passed resolutions urging the federal government to develop a national housing strategy to respond to the growing crisis. The Toronto Dominion Bank, the Toronto Board of Trade and many other organizations have recognized that we have a housing crisis in Canada. As I have mentioned, we are the only western developed nation without a national housing strategy.
I will speak briefly about the crisis before us. It may surprise some people to learn that about 250,000 Canadians will be forced to sleep in emergency shelters this year. Almost one in five rental households, or about 800,000 Canadians, pay more than 50% of their income on rent. Between 1991 and 1996 housing need as defined by CMHC, not by me or anyone else but by the government's own housing agency, skyrocketed upward. Some 1.7 million Canadian households are now defined as being in core need. That means people who pay more than 30% of their income on rent.
I find it quite shocking that the number has increased by 40% over a five year period. Half the tenant population in Canada can afford to spend only $580 per month on rent. Yet what we have seen, particularly in our urban communities, is the lowest vacancy rate in history since statistics were adopted by CMHC.
We are facing a crunch not only for people at the bottom of the economic ladder who are destitute on the streets. We are a facing a crunch for tenants who work, students, seniors, and families who find they are paying more and more of their often meagre monthly incomes for shelter costs which are becoming exorbitant. These are some of the things that contribute to the housing crisis
I am sure when some members of the House, particularly from the government side, get up to speak they will say there was a problem but the federal government fixed it by signing a housing agreement in Quebec City last November with the provinces and territories. I was there when the agreement was signed. I have worked with many of the organizations that have monitored it. While the agreement is an important step it has in no way created a financial or policy foundation from which to develop a truly national housing strategy.
In the six months since the deal was signed only one of the provinces, the province of Quebec, has lived up to the commitment it made in terms of the money it has put in. Five of the 10 provinces have gone the other way and cut money for housing.
This information has been monitored by the National Housing and Homelessness Network. The network put out a report card a week ago which clearly demonstrates that the agreement has been a dismal failure. First, it does not provide for an adequate number of units. Second, only one province has made a real commitment to put money into developing affordable housing.
As the National Housing and Homelessness Network has pointed out, the agreement is flawed. It offers no guarantee that affordable housing will be produced. It allows the provinces to replace provincial money with federal money. This is happening in my own province of British Columbia. Some provinces are sidling around the agreement and doing a bit of a shuffle game. They are robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are serious flaws with the agreement the government signed with the provinces and territories last November.
The agreement outlines that over a five year period $680 million should be committed at the federal end to housing. Maybe that will produce 5,000 units per year, and that is a qualified maybe. We have documentation from CMHC and other organizations that says the need in various communities across the country is about 30,000 units annually.
This should give members an idea of how far short the agreement is from what we need to do to develop a national housing strategy. Even the government's own task force, the Prime Minister's caucus task force on urban issues which was not an all party task force, called for a national strategy. I will quote from its report. It recommend that the Government of Canada:
Establish A National Affordable Housing Program that could include:
--Strengthening the mandate of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporationto develop A National Affordable Housing Program in collaboration with allorders of government, and housing providers--
It made the recommendation after the agreement was signed last November, so clearly even the Liberal task force is aware of the grievous shortcomings of the agreement signed last year.
I am one of the people in the House who continually raises housing issues. I found it ironic that the Deputy Prime Minister who is the minister responsible for CMHC and housing responded to a question of mine last week by saying no one noticed he had responsibility for CMHC. It was alarming that the minister responsible for housing would joke about the fact that no one knew he was the minister of housing because of all his other duties.
We see the Prime Minister shuffling his cabinet. I sure as heck wish he would shuffle in a real housing minister. We would then have someone on the government side who was clearly responsible for this most basic human right and need in Canadian society. The Minister of Labour is the co-ordinator of homelessness. However we have not yet seen a minister truly responsible for taking on this important question.
I find it quite ironic that parliament has not had a debate on housing policy since I came here in 1997. It is a demonstration of how the Liberals have not been committed to a proper affordable housing program.
When I started working on the bill and putting out information I wrote to organizations and individuals across the country. I received some wonderful mail. I will quote a few people who wrote to me. I got a letter from a fellow in Kelowna, B.C. who cannot afford housing. He said:
I agree we need more affordable housing. I am 44 years old and have had to leave the workforce at 33 due to health problems. I would be writing to you by computer but I do not have one. I am on a disability pension, but now there is nothing out there to rent for $325 a month.
I also have a letter from the National Union of Public and General Employees, often referred to as the national union. In a letter to the finance minister in support of my bill the union pointed out:
While your government sits on the largest budgetary surplus among the OECD countries we have a growing housing crisis in this country.
This is a shocking fact. We do not have a housing crisis because we lack the financial capability to deal with it. We have a housing crisis because we have lacked the political will and leadership to make it a priority and make sure it is adequately contained in the budget.
I have a letter from the Carnegie Community Centre Association in my riding of East Vancouver. It says:
Given the Carnegie Centre's situation in the centre of one of Canada's poorest neighbourhoods, the crisis of homelessness is particularly critical for us as we have constant and immediate contact with the extreme suffering it causes.
I want to underscore this. It is not some sort of academic or hypothetical situation. A week or so ago a video was released in Toronto that showed the conditions in an emergency shelter. It showed people sleeping on mats on the floor inches away from each other in violation of even the United Nations' policies for refugee camps. We are talking about Canada, not refugee camps.
I have visited shelters in Toronto. I was appalled to see people sleeping on the floor on mats with only one washroom for the men and one for the women. I am talking about extreme suffering. I am talking about people freezing to death and people who have TB because they are out in the cold and living in unhealthy conditions. This speaks clearly to the suffering caused not by individual failure but by the failure of the government to do anything about it in terms of public policy.
Bill C-416 is a good bill. It is well written. Many people have commented on that. I want to acknowledge some of the groups that contributed and helped produce the bill, particularly Dr. David Hulchanski, a professor at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hulchanski is one of Canada's foremost housing experts. He has helped monitor Canada's progress in meeting its housing commitments under the social and economic covenant.
The National Housing and Homelessness Network has done a tremendous amount of work to keep the pressure on the federal government and bring the issue forward. I also acknowledge the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee and the Tenants Rights Action Coalition.
I have received about 2,000 petitions in support of Bill C-416. I hope the bill will bring about a real commitment from all members of the House to recognize housing as a human right, act on it and make it a reality for Canadians.