moved:
That the House recognize that Canadians are faced with a housing crunch of rising costs and growing waiting lists due to chronic underfunding of affordable housing from 1993 to the present, and call on the government to work with the provinces, territories, municipalities, and with First Nations, Inuit, and Metis, to immediately renew long-term social housing funding and reinvest in the development of affordable housing units.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to note that I will be sharing my time with the member for Hochelaga.
Canada's affordable housing crunch has been growing, and it has been growing for at least 21 years, since the Liberal government broke its promise and shunned federal responsibility for housing. Canada is the only G8 country in the world without a national housing strategy, thanks to the Liberals, who downloaded the responsibility for housing to the provinces.
Today, three million Canadians live in housing insecurity due to irresponsible housing policies from successive Liberal and Conservative governments. With a growing number of homeless people and long delays in obtaining access to safe and affordable housing, the government must stop ignoring the problem. The Conservatives' blatant disregard for social housing is creating a critical situation where the need for social housing is increasing at the same time as the quantity of affordable housing is declining.
In 1993, the federal Liberals took the position that they would not act on the task force that they had so gallantly put forward in 1990. In fact, it is a classic example of the Liberals indicating that they are going to go in one direction and actually going in the exact opposite direction. They took that task force, co-chaired by the esteemed Joe Fontana, and made the suggestion that the Conservatives, who were in power at the time, were cutting social housing and it should be stopped. In fact, they said that more money should have been spent on social housing and affordable housing. However, their first budget cut was $128 million from CMHC's budget, most of which was allocated to affordable housing programs. That was in 1995. In 1996, the Liberals downloaded the responsibility for social housing to the provinces and territories, effectively ending Canada's national affordable housing program.
Canada is the only major industrialized country to not have a national housing strategy.
The Liberals also slashed transfers to the provinces and territories at the same time that they expected them to take on responsibility for this all important program for social and affordable housing. In 1999, the Liberals announced a bit of money for homelessness programs, but as Michael Shapcott of the Wellesly Institute said, “The federal homelessness funding will make homeless more comfortable, but it won't make them any less homeless”.
Some more money was added in 2002 and 2004, but those agreements and that money did not have any accountability programs. Therefore, the accountability issue regarding the housing money that was being spent meant that although Ontario claimed to have created 46,000 units, after research of the audit was done, only 63 homes had actually been built. There was no accountability for whatever was being spent by the federal government.
In 2005, when the Liberals proposed giving huge tax breaks to corporations, Jack Layton and his NDP colleagues helped to rewrite that budget and divert $4.6 billion in corporate giveaways to important priorities, like affordable housing, training and public transit. It included $1.6 billion for affordable housing construction, including aboriginal housing. This was the first time any real commitment to affordable housing had been made in well over a decade.
Then the Liberals were defeated due to corruption before the funding was fully implemented, but the Conservatives implemented most of that funding. Although the Conservatives voted against it at one point, we still have some of that funding in our supply.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives, for their part, have now announced they will not be renewing the long-term social housing operating agreements or continuing to invest that funding in affordable housing. Essentially, they see this as a budget line item that they can strike out of the budget, and take $1.7 billion out of affordable housing in our country. That $1.7 billion is currently earmarked for assistance to individuals to meet their rent obligations. When that money disappears, those individuals will effectively become homeless. The Conservatives do not seem to care that those individuals will become homeless as a result of their actions.
About 620,000 households were supported by that $1.7 billion, and as many as 200,000 housing units will be lost due to the loss of operating funds or insufficient capital for much-needed renovations.
Despite what the minister said earlier, these are not all mortgage subsidies. Some of these buildings are leased from other organizations, and when the subsidies end, so ends the rental accommodation support that has been going to seniors and other individuals who really need the support.
An example of this lack of strategy is no more evident than in my home city of Toronto, and in particular in my riding of York South—Weston, where as a result of the lack of investment in social housing over more than two decades, and as a result of the fact that when the federal government downloaded the social housing units to the City of Toronto, they inherited a three-quarters of a billion-dollar fix-it bill for those units. That fix-it bill is now being paid for by the City of Toronto by selling social housing units. They do not have the capital to fix these units, and the government is not forthcoming with money, so it is having to get rid of social housing units to be able to meet the demands for the repairs that are necessary in these units. It is like eating our own seed potatoes, as is said in the Maritimes.
The city of Toronto is a great example of what the lack of funding for social housing construction really means. There has been virtually no new social housing constructed in the city of Toronto in the past 20 years. As more and more people find it impossible to afford the ever-growing rents and the ever-growing cost of buying a home in Toronto, they are faced with the prospect of seeking social assistance and seeking to be in Toronto community housing buildings. The wait-list has over 90,000 applications on it. That is 170,000 people who are looking for accommodation and support. There are only 90,000 units in the first place, so there are as many people on the wait-list as there are units. The wait-lists in some circumstances are 10 and 12 years long.
Individuals have to survive somehow, and they survive by moving into overcrowded units, by moving into units that are poorly maintained, and by moving into units they cannot afford. There are individuals in my riding who are paying 70% and 80% of their income for shelter, because the minimum wage in Ontario is so low. It is $10.25. If people who make minimum wage on a full-time basis have to pay rent at today's market rates in Toronto for a two-bedroom apartment, it is 70% of their earnings, and for a three-bedroom apartment, it is 90%. The 90% figure is completely unaffordable. People could not eat or possibly raise a family spending 90% of their income on housing, yet that is what people face when they are on a waiting list for supported housing that cannot possibly be met. It will be 10 or more years before they ever reach the top of that waiting list.
There was a recent study by the University of Toronto, partly in my riding, that determined that 90% of the individuals who currently live in apartment blocks in Toronto that were built between the fifties and the eighties face homelessness in some measure. One-third of those people, which is thousands upon thousands of people, have a critical risk of homelessness. Those individuals could be homeless almost immediately.
What does “homeless” mean to people like that? It means finding a shelter, but there are no shelters. It means finding a friend, relative, or neighbour they can bunk with for as long as it takes to find another place to live, but that means they are now in overcrowded housing. That means they are now in housing that is not designed to support as many people as are expected to live in it.
That is another example of why this is a crisis. It is a national crisis. It is not limited to Toronto. All over Canada we have a growing need for affordable housing that we are just unable to meet.
Today the Federation of Canadian Municipalities said it supports the motion and our continued focus on fixing Canada's housing crunch. The president, Claude Dauphin, said he supports my motion and supports our moving forward to ease the burden by immediately renewing long-term social housing funding, reinvesting in the development of affordable housing units, and reinforcing the role of municipalities as key stakeholders in the process.