Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the members who participated in the debate and for the time they took to read this important bill and give their perspective.
I acknowledge that the province of Quebec has been leading the way in social housing. I came from a province that was leading the way in social housing but since the change of government there we have been going in the other direction and losing a lot of ground.
I appreciate some of the comments from the parliamentary secretary. I would agree that housing is not a unilateral solution. The bill advocates the need for federal, provincial, territorial, and aboriginal people to work together.
The parliamentary secretary said that the federal government recognized the need for housing. That is somewhat true but it has to be qualified by pointing out that it was only after an incredible amount of pressure by groups like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association or the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, or even a guy that I came across called Daniel Dufresne who on his own went out and collected almost 1,500 signatures on a petition to put forward the need for housing. There has been a groundswell from the community who have pressed the government since it bailed out in 1993.
I was curious to hear the parliamentary secretary say that the government supports co-ops. I am glad to hear that the need for an independent agency may finally come to fruition because the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada has worked for that for a long time.
In some ways it is such a sad irony because co-ops are a real Canadian success story. They were started in Canada. They are the living example of how to produce affordable, mixed housing where families can live in safety and security, and where a real sense of community can be developed. However there have been no new co-ops developed since 1993 when the federal government opted out of social housing and co-op funding. To me that is a real tragedy.
Even with this new agreement the province of Quebec will still continue to develop co-ops. That is great, but nowhere else is that likely to happen because unfortunately this framework does not have the teeth or the guts to bring to fruition some of these important points that have been made by various members in the House today. To me that is the real tragedy of what is going on here.
We have enormous capability and resources in this country to produce not for profit social housing, or co-op housing, yet we seem to let it go to waste because we have not had the financial program to put it together.
This debate has been important. I hope we are a little further ahead in recognizing the importance of people's individual human rights, to have basic shelter and adequate, safe and secure housing. I encourage the government to go beyond its framework agreement and to look at a real national housing strategy that gets us closer to the goal of providing 30,000 units a year, to build safe and healthy communities with the municipalities, provinces, territories, aboriginal communities and with local organizations that are now ready to develop that housing.