Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to the motion moved by my Liberal colleague from Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. The motion reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister of Canada should hold annual First Ministers’ Conferences.
I find it somewhat ironic that the Liberals are moving this motion, considering that between 2000 and 2006, as we have heard a few times today, when the Liberals were in power, former prime ministers Chrétien and Martin only met with their provincial counterparts twice in six years. However, this is not the first time that the Liberals have contradicted themselves, and it will probably not be the last time, either. As my leader, the member for Outremont, likes to say, the Liberals like to signal left but then turn right.
As my NDP colleagues and I have pointed out repeatedly in the House, this government has a serious problem with consultation, co-operation and transparency. It is as though the government were allergic to those things, or they are simply not part of the Conservative vocabulary. Sitting down at the table with anyone who is not part of the Conservatives' inner circle does not seem to be part of this Prime Minister's management style or that of any members of the Conservative government. One only has to sit down at a parliamentary committee meeting to understand what I am talking about. The Conservatives do not listen to the opposition's comments or the witnesses' comments, and they automatically vote against everything put forward by another party.
Furthermore, to date, the Prime Minister has been refusing to even meet with his provincial and territorial counterparts on a regular basis. For the sake of the record, I would simply like to remind the Prime Minister that Canada has been a federal state since 1867 and, accordingly, the Parliament of Canada and the legislatures of the federated entities or provinces are sovereign in the areas of jurisdiction granted to them in the Canadian Constitution. With that in mind, in order for everything to run smoothly, the various levels of government need to co-operate and work together effectively. When the Prime Minister fails to consult or discuss things as equals with his provincial counterparts, he is simply denying that fact and harming federal-provincial relations.
Nevertheless, in 2006, this same Prime Minister promised to promote an open federalism and create new ties with the provinces. Indeed, the Conservative Party's 2006 election platform indicated that the party would do the following:
Support the important contribution the Council of the Federation is making to strengthening intergovernmental and interprovincial cooperation, expanding the economic and social union in Canada, and advancing the development of common standards and objectives of mutual recognition by all provinces.
Unfortunately, history decided that this party would take office, and since then, the Prime Minister has been denying the wonderful promises he made regarding co-operation and openness by simply ignoring the requests of his provincial counterparts and taking a unilateral approach to governance. A unilateral approach can have serious consequences for a federal state. Since it took office in 2006 and especially since the 2011 election, this Conservative government unilaterally made major changes to a number of federal-provincial programs. Take for example the $36 billion in cuts that the Conservatives made to health care transfers. I do not need to spell out the devastating effects that that decision had on the provinces, which have jurisdiction over health care and will now have to manage with considerably fewer resources.
That is not even to mention the employment insurance reform, the reform of the temporary foreign worker program, the $300 million in cuts to the Canada job grant or the search and rescue centre closures. Did the Conservatives consult the provincial premiers before making those decisions? The answer is obvious.
There is no shortage of examples when it comes to the challenges of housing and homelessness. I will elaborate on that. For years, the NDP has been proposing a collaborative approach to housing. My colleagues from Vancouver East and Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot have both introduced a bill in the House to implement a national housing strategy.
The main purpose of this bill was to ensure that the federal government would sit down with the provincial and territorial governments and stakeholders from across Canada to address the housing crisis in this country.
When I say crisis, I mean crisis. According to the 2011 national household survey, 30.7% of households in Canada live in rental housing because many do not have real access to home ownership; and 40% of them pay over 30% of their income on housing. That means that two out of five families live in housing that is not considered to be affordable.
In Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax, this is even higher. Fully 19% of families spend more than 50% of their income on rent. In Montreal, it is about 20%, and in my riding of Hochelaga it is still higher. In Vancouver, it is 24%.
One in ten families who rent in Canada spends more than 80% of its income on housing. My colleagues heard right. That excludes food, diapers and school supplies for the children.
This situation is unacceptable for me and my NDP colleagues. To address this problem, we were simply asking the different levels of government to work together on a plan to address the housing crisis. What did the government do? It used the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as a propaganda machine to assess the alleged costs of implementing such a strategy and justify its refusal to support it. That is unreal. Since when do discussions about a possible collaboration to implement a strategy to deal with a crisis come with a price tag? There is no price tag. I just could not get over it, and that is not all.
In the meantime, the federal government is slowly and unilaterally pulling back from funding social housing by refusing to renew the funds allocated to the long-term agreements with a number of social housing projects across the country. This represents $1.7 billion in investments that enable the poorest Canadian families to find housing at a reasonable price so that they can meet their children's needs.
Once again, instead of working with the provinces, the government is off-loading this problem onto them, and they will have to foot the bill.
In the fight against homelessness, the Conservative government has also acted unilaterally and has taken a paternalistic attitude towards the provinces by refocusing its homelessness partnering strategy. Now, a large portion of an already too-small envelope for homelessness initiatives will be used to finance projects that the government has deemed to be better than the existing ones.
There was an outcry in Quebec, which recently adopted a homelessness strategy. Organizations, mayors of several major cities and two unanimous motions in the Quebec National Assembly called on the federal government to mind its own business and to maintain the general character of approaches to addressing homelessness. This would not have happened if the federal government had worked with Quebec.
Nevertheless, the Conservatives are staying the course. Obviously, the members opposite will say that, in the end, Quebec signed a framework agreement to implement the homelessness partnering strategy's new strategic direction. However, when a province is backed into a corner and told that they can take or leave an offer, we are no longer talking about free negotiation.
Just ask the public sector union members under both this government and its Liberal predecessor. They know exactly what I am talking about.
It is great that one or more of the other provinces agree with the new approach imposed by Ottawa. Federalism is about responding to different regional and cultural realities. Meanwhile, many groups in Quebec are going to lose their funding and some will have to close up shop because of the stubbornness of a paternalistic Conservative government that does not think about the long term. You can imagine who will suffer.
In closing, I obviously agree with the principle of this motion. However, I think that the Liberals could have used their opposition day to talk about another subject. There are so many important ones. All they had to do was wait a few months and vote for the NDP. Once the member for Outremont is elected prime minister, there will be not just one but two first ministers' conferences a year.