Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this bill. The NDP will be encouraging all members of the House to vote in favour of Bill C-363 in order to get it to committee for further debate and discussion. I thank the member from the Bloc for introducing this bill.
In part, this bill comes before the House because of the lack of action over the last several decades on the part of the Conservatives and the Liberals. This bill is asking for the profits from CMHC to be reinvested in social housing.
The National Housing and Homelessness Network has put together some figures. In the most recent fiscal year Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, our national housing agency, reported equity of $3.4 billion and a net income after taxes of $950 million. CMHC projects that its equity will go to $8.3 billion by 2009, with a net income of $1.2 billion.
The national housing and homelessness initiative acknowledges that it is critical that money be put aside for risk management, but it seems only reasonable that we reinvest this kind of money in social housing. We have a housing crisis in Canada. It is shocking that a nation as rich as Canada would have people sleeping on the streets.
One of the things that the National Housing and Homelessness Network has done over the last while is put together a report card on what has happened with housing in Canada. It also pointed out that this whole shameful situation in Canada started under the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. It cut $2 billion from the national social housing program starting in 1984 and then cancelled entirely all new social housing spending in 1993. That is the legacy the current Liberal government stepped into.
I like this line out of the National Housing and Homelessness Network's press release dated September 21. It started its press release by saying, “Too much political spin, not enough truly affordable housing”. That speaks to the issue here.
It talks about the fact that four years ago, in September 2000, the federal, provincial and territorial housing ministers emerged from a meeting talking about having a working plan to create more desperately needed affordable houses. Six weeks after that meeting the federal Liberals promised to fund up to 120,000 new affordable homes over four years. Four years later in 2004, Canada has no comprehensive national housing strategy, just a loose patchwork of funding and programs that have delivered just 10%--I will repeat that number, just 10%--of the new homes that were promised.
The housing release goes on to talk about all the promises that have been made. It says that ministers have made promises, signed agreements, issued announcements and called press conferences but have failed to build new homes. That is why the National Housing and Homelessness Network has graded federal housing efforts over the past four years as a failure.
The network has done a very good job in its report. The National Housing and Homelessness Network went through a whole series of reports and basically graded the efforts over the last several years as D or F. We are just not making the kinds of inroads needed in housing. It talks about the fact that the best estimates from the national housing and homelessness initiative is less than 12,000 new homes, or 10% of the promise, have actually been committed. This is a shocking set of circumstances.
I want to talk for one moment about what is going on in my own riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan. Last week in the city of Duncan, which has a population of about 5,000 and the Cowichan Valley has around 70,000, a vacant building burned down. That vacant building was the only venue in the Cowichan Valley for people who do not have homes to live. Six people were in that building when it burned down. Two were seriously injured and four others had some minor injuries.
The shameful part is there is nowhere to send people who are homeless in the Cowichan Valley. People are couch surfing, sleeping under the local bridge and in a dangerous vacant building. Where are these people going? After the building burned down, four of the people were put into temporary shelters but because of some other issues, they have been evicted from them. There is nowhere for them to go and they are back on the street.
The local MLA, who is the housing critic for the provincial NDP, has called upon both the federal and provincial governments to get their acts together and build some new homes. He said, “We are seeing a combination of a lack of affordable housing and a total lack of treatment for addiction and mental illness. More and more people are living on the street in more and more desperate circumstances”. MLA Routley is calling on the provincial government to do an inventory of public buildings which could be used for emergency shelters for the homeless or converted to low income housing. We do not want to see people living in vacant buildings and then at risk should arson happen and the building burns down.
There are a number of other initiatives in my riding.
In April of this year a survey on homelessness was done in Nanaimo. The Nanaimo Working Group on Homelessness Issues interviewed 110 people. What is really frightening is that of those 110 people, 45% of the people living on the streets were women and many of those women had children. The study also found that women were far more likely to be homeless longer than men. Fifty-three per cent of the population interviewed were men, and the men were older than the women in general. Forty per cent of the income made on that day was from the sex trade and 11% from drug dealing.
This was a snapshot of the situation. People feel that this under-represents the number of people who are living on the streets in Nanaimo. It is a shameful situation. There is a lack of affordable housing and a lack of addiction treatment centres. There is nowhere for these folks to go.
Another initiative is being undertaken right now in Nanaimo called the Willow WAI, which is the wrap around initiative. This initiative is an integrated case management approach that uses flexible funds to assist the homeless or at risk individuals to remain in sustainable housing. This initiative draws on community partners and other professionals and existing resources. The initiative offers wrap around case management to participants in the community at large. It provides services and flexible funding to ensure access to housing. The sad thing about this initiative is that the funding runs out in 2006. At risk women and children will be back on the street.
The government talks about sustainability for affordable housing. It is very difficult to raise community funds. Three hundred thousand dollars are needed to keep those houses open, and the situation is getting desperate. It is now October and the participants have six months to raise that money before federal funds run out. It is criminal that more women and children will be put back on the streets.
Why should we have affordable housing? Why is social housing a good thing? The Nanaimo affordable housing group put together an evaluation which looked at a project that was taking place in Nanaimo. The group wanted to demonstrate that by having housing in place, it saves money in the system. They have undertaken a project for at risk individuals who have psychiatric problems or disabilities. This is a quote from the study:
Before moving into the building the participating tenants had 63 medical admissions totalling 703 hospital days. Since moving into the complex, there have only been 10 medical admissions totalling 54 days. Before moving into the building there were 31 psychiatric admissions totalling 729 days. Since moving into the complex, there have been 10 psychiatric admissions totalling 82 days.
If we just want to talk about dollars and cents and nothing else, we know that by providing people with affordable, sustainable, good quality housing, we save money in our health care system.
I want to close with one more quote from the national housing initiative. It talked about the fact that federal and Ontario politicians have a habit of announcing the same units over and over again. Ontario promised 46,332 new homes, but delivered 63, and yet it had 11 major announcements involving the same units.
Part of the reason this bill has come before the House is that we are tired of hearing the rhetoric about building new houses and having nothing happen. I encourage all members of the House to support sending Bill C-363 to committee so that we can have further conversations about what is needed to protect the homeless in this country.