Mr. Speaker, first of all, I have never spoken in the House from this angle. I am usually at the other end. This is a new experience. I will try to get used to it.
A lot of the discussion in this place and during the past couple of years has been around this issue of a democratic deficit. It has struck me that there is a democratic deficit, perhaps, in the nation and that maybe one of the things we need to do when we look at it here, if we really want to enhance the role of members of Parliament, is that we should have a situation where the opposition does not simply criticize and the government simply defend.
Maybe we should analyze the issues as they are before us. Perhaps some of us on this side of the House, if we want to have an enhanced role as a member of Parliament, as a backbencher, should be asking some of the tough questions, and maybe the opposition should listen to them.
I read the Speech from the Throne and of course I could stand here and say that I think the commitment to the environment is wonderful and I think the commitment to children is terrific, and it is important, it is all very Liberal and it is what we all believe in, et cetera, but I want to talk about things that I did not see there that I am a bit concerned about.
There is only one spot in the entire document where I saw the words “affordable housing”. We talk about a new deal for cities. It is fine if we are going to give more money to cities and municipalities and fund it directly. Can we then be assured, number one, that the provincial governments or the territorial governments are not going to simply claw back the same amount of money from their contributions? Can we be assured of that? I do not care where the money comes from: GST or gas tax, it does not matter. Can we be assured that it is going to go to the services the municipalities are claiming they cannot afford to provide for their communities? We cannot be, not unless we have some agreements in place.
I would argue that one of the things I would have loved to have seen in the throne speech is a commitment to use Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a crown corporation, as a true housing company to deliver programs directly to communities and municipalities, and frankly, in the way they used to. I would argue that we have a crown corporation with some of the finest staff in Canada, and with a tremendous board, politically appointed but very much tuned in. These people could work with our municipal partners. They could work with provincial governments where appropriate, but they could also then work with private for profit and non-profit corporations, communities, groups or whatever to deliver affordable housing.
I do not see that in the throne speech. What I see is a blanket statement that says we are going to cut a new deal for cities. Let us get real. The cities want to keep their taxes low and I do not blame them. My wife is a municipal politician and I was one myself. No one wants to increase their taxes. If I can get the federal government to increase their taxes and give me the money, then that sounds like a pretty good deal. It is called lack of accountability and lack of transparency.
I just give a message. If this is the new role for backbench MPs in the government, my message to the government is, “Do not give the ship away. Do not just say to municipalities that we are going to give them all this money without making sure that we have an agreement with provincial and territorial partners who are going to participate equally and who are going to ensure that we in fact do address the shortfall”. Never mind the democratic deficit. Let us talk about the affordable housing deficit, because it is real.
I was in Saint John, New Brunswick, where I saw some of the problems. Saint John has a vacancy rate somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6%. If we take away the homes that we would not allow our dogs to live in, that vacancy rate goes down to 1.5%. Who is doing anything about that?
We announced a contribution of $1 billion total, two tranches of money, $680 million plus $320 million, to be matched by the provinces to build affordable housing. We have not seen it happen in Saint John yet and it is a terrible, unacceptable situation.
We talk about the number of children living in poverty, but do people know that in the greater Toronto area there are 5,000 kids living in shelters? This is in Canada. This is unacceptable.
My message is for those under all governments, and if people want to be partisan, be partisan, but the provincial Tories did not do anything about it either. I am not talking about partisanship here. I am talking about how we should all work together on both sides of the House to solve some of these problems. The first place to start is for us as a government is to admit that there is a problem, that there is a deficit.
What does a kid say when he goes to school and walks into a schoolyard? The first thing somebody says to him is, “Hi, what's your name?” What is the second question? It is, “Where do you live?” We know what the answer is for those 5,000 kids: “I live in a shelter”.
In the city of Calgary, 50% of the people who live in shelters have jobs. They actually go to work every day. They walk out the door. They send their kids to school and they go work at a minimum wage job. They meet them back at the shelter that night and, God willing, have something to eat and a place to sleep. What does that child say in the schoolyard? “I live in a shelter. I live at the Y”.
This is unacceptable. I want to say to my government that it is time we admitted there is a problem. We cannot fix it overnight. The problem did not occur overnight. It is from decades and decades of neglect by all governments, municipal, provincial and federal. All parties involved in the process have stood by and neglected this situation. Now we find, in a country with as much wealth as Canada, that we have 1.8 million Canadians living in core need, which means they are paying 50% and 60% of their gross pay for shelter. This means that at the end of the month there is not enough money left to buy food so they go to a food bank. This is unacceptable.
As a member of Parliament, I am willing to accept my share of the responsibility. I think everybody should. Instead of just standing up and saying, “you bad government, you must fix this”, why do we not collaboratively come up with a way to fix it together?
If we want to do something about the democratic deficit that allows backbench MPs in the government to stand up and do something other than just sing the praises of throne speeches, that is fine with me, because I have seen the problems on the ground. I was the minister responsible for eight months and I cried some nights when I saw the depth of the despair that Canadians are living in. It is absolutely unacceptable.
There is another deficit that I want to talk to members and the Canadian people about. We have a serious problem that has occurred in this country since 9/11. That is where the real deficit is. There is racial and religious profiling going on in our communities. It is going on in our police departments. It is going on in the RCMP. It is going on in CSIS. It is going on in government. Anybody who looks like me would not understand it, because it does not happen to me, but it happens to dark-skinned people in this country. Whether they are Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, it does not matter. It happens.
I can tell members first-hand the story of Mohamed Attiah, who worked as an engineer--and still does, thank God--for AECL at Chalk River. Ten days after 9/11, CSIS and the RCMP walked into his office, interviewed him for a couple of hours and left with no charges, allegations or anything. He went to lunch, but when he came back from lunch his security pass had been cancelled, his door locks had been changed and his employment had been terminated. Why? Supposedly some kind of connection to al-Qaeda. I investigated this with the solicitor general and we found that Mr. Attiah was totally profiled and targeted for no reason other than the fact he was a Muslim. He has been in the country 30 years and is a Canadian citizen.
It is absolutely unacceptable. It is happening in Canada right under the noses of parliamentarians. I call on every member in the House to stand and say we are not going to allow it to continue, that we are going to fight that deficit. That, Mr. Speaker, is the true democratic deficit in this country.