Mr. Speaker, setting up and speaking to this bill is of extreme importance to those of us who represent urban areas and municipalities, in large part because the need to deal with these issues defines the quality of life in our cities. Without a concerted effort on this, what we will end up with is a scattergun approach that will, quite frankly, leave sectors in our cities in a great deal of trouble.
The issue of housing is an example that has been raised here several times. We know that the housing agreements have been renewed across the country, but they are sustaining the status quo and providing a dribble of new housing. In my city, perhaps 60 units of housing per year will arrive out of the new renewed arrangements. With a 92,000-person waiting list, 60 units of housing per year is effectively a 1,500 year waiting list.
Without a new era of co-operation and without new programs to address poverty, the urban strategies, and struggles that cities and towns have across the country, we will be in significant trouble in Toronto. That is one of the reasons why child poverty is growing at such an alarming rate, while the city takes its place as one of the wealthiest places in Canada, if not the world.
The ranking of Canada as a safe place to live comes as cold comfort to those communities where housing conditions are so deplorable, access to social services like child care and education is so limited, and isolation due to poor transportation infrastructure is so profound. To call it one of the greatest places in the world to live leaves families and, particularly, young people gobsmacked. Something needs to change here.
What needs to change is not simply cutting taxes for people without incomes and providing income splitting and billions of dollars to affluent communities and individuals, as low-income communities struggle. What we need is a series of programs that deliver on the urban agenda.
As the urban affairs critic for the Liberal Party, I have had the privilege of meeting with dozens of mayors across the country in the last six weeks. Contrary to what we hear from the government side, mayors across the country are asking for just this kind of legislation. They are asking for a return to the kind of advanced thinking that defined Paul Martin's tenure as prime minister, when the gas tax was created, when infrastructure funding was stepped up and committed to, and when a housing program was put on the table. Even the plight of urban aboriginals was part of a national dialogue to resolve issues, rather than simply believing that a tax cut could build a bridge, get a subway delivered, or suddenly make day care appear even if people had an extra $100 in their pocket.
Something needs to change, and what this bill would do is highlight the areas that need to be focused on to build stronger communities right across Canada. As someone who sat on the municipal council for eight years and who has come to Ottawa to try to strengthen this partnership, I am challenged that it is simply a plan to have a plan. Cities cannot wait for thinking on this issue. They need action.
It is all well and fine to propose theoretical solutions and to aspire to strong language, but what we need are strong programs and specific programs that fit directly into municipal budgets on an ongoing basis and in a consistent way that delivers these programs. We need this particularly for housing and transit, but also for the management of water.
One of the challenges that municipalities are having right now is that climate change has happened. It is not a theoretical possibility. If we listen to Fox News, we hear it is not even a reality. Sometimes, when we listen to the Conservative government, we hear it is beyond its grasp as well. Nevertheless, climate change has happened, and it is doing extraordinary things to civic infrastructure and civil engineering.
We had a flash storm in one part of Toronto, while another part of Toronto was in sunshine, which drove so much water into the sewer system that it blew a 40 feet by 100 feet by 4.5 feet reinforced concrete cap on a sewage capacity holding bin at the waterfront 60 feet into the air and flooded the entire waterfront of Toronto. This was in downtown Toronto, while Scarborough was in sunshine.
These sorts of thing are not happening every hundred years, as predicted by the insurance models or by civic engineering standards; they are happening once every two or three years. Sometimes, they are happening every six months in some parts of the country. The government needs to step up and address the infrastructure needs of Canada and assist cities on all of the other fronts, including transit and housing. If the support is not there, the partnership is not built, and the money is not defined and delivered in a direct, predictable, and robust way, cities and municipalities will not have the capacity to deal with the fundamentals of urban living, which are the delivery of water and the picking up of garbage.
We need a comprehensive approach to municipalities, we need a comprehensive approach to dealing with poverty and we need a comprehensive approach to setting the stage for a stronger relationship with our country. Infrastructure needs must be led by housing. They need funding programs that directly deliver dollars to cities, without complex subscription models and costly subscriptive programs that require pages of applications to simply fund and get the state of repair attended to and housing built. We need to ensure that co-ops in particular are protected, that their agreements are renewed with other affordable housing providers and that the subsidies are sustained. We need to lean on the co-op model to deliver more capacity, not shrink our footprint and our federal program in that area.
We also need to pay attention to the social needs of cities as we build the physical infrastructure. That is why things like daycare are so critical. Arts funding and recreation funding are also critical. Without a solid perspective and a platform on these issues, cities struggle.
We have been critical of the Prime Minister this week for not having met with the premiers. However, the Prime Minister should also be sitting down on a regular basis with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities at its annual conference. He should also should be pulling together the big city mayors conference, which was a program initiated under Paul Martin, to talk about where some of the significant economic challenges are emerging in large urban centres. That is where most of our immigrants settle and where most of the social problems are embedded in affluence and therefore not directly attacked under some of our national programs. It is where the majority of Canadians live.
We have the most urbanized country in the G7 and yet we are the only G7 country without urban strategies on some critical files. It is time for that to change.
I have talked to mayors in Kitchener and Waterloo, Cambridge, Burlington, Oakville, Regina, Calgary and Vancouver. They are meeting soon in Toronto with the new mayor of that city, with whom I have also met. There is not a mayor among them who thinks the federal government is stepping up and meeting its obligations. One of the critical areas pronounced daily in question period is on the question of infrastructure. The funding is back-end loaded.
Cape Breton and the city of Sydney have not had a penny from Ottawa in two years. They have no hopes of getting money this year, and the money they need for a $450 million infrastructure rebuild of their water plant is not even part of the 10-year capital program. In fact, if Sydney, Nova Scotia had to build that water plant itself, its annual budget is only $140 million. That is its annual tax draw. The project will cost $450 million to build to give clean water to people living in the regional municipality of Cape Breton. It would have to shut down the city for three years to build this by itself. The reason it needs to rebuild this is that federal standards changed on water supply.
The federal government is side-loading and downloading and not meeting its responsibilities. Small towns and big cities are all falling behind on the infrastructure file. When they do, the social dynamics and the social status of the lowest-income Canadians are hurt the most. Housing, transit and social services are fundamental to the health of cities. They are as important as the roads, the bridges and the rail, yet the federal government has walked away from all of those capacities and has not funded them properly.
The back-end loaded infrastructure program is a joke in city halls and town halls across Canada. There is not a mayor, or town reeve or city councillor who does not understand that the money is not coming for 10 years. That money was needed yesterday. It was needed last year. Instead what we get are $29 million worth of billboards. Frankly, sleeping under a billboard is not what I call a housing policy.