Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to what is called the 2015 budget. However, to my perspective, it is actually the 2017 budget because none of the money for cities will arrive for two years.
We will hear in conversations from the other side about how the Conservatives have put all kinds of money into cities through the gas tax. I would remind everybody here that this was a Paul Martin Liberal Party initiative. To take credit for it is to give us credit for forward thinking.
However, the budget has been described by the minister on the other side continually in question period as having three Ts, and I agree with him. There are three Ts. This budget is totally useless, totally unnecessary and totally unfair. For cities, nothing highlights this more than the housing promises.
There is a provision in the budget bill to forgive mortgages held by CMHC taken out by public housing providers and to put a fund in place to pay off the penalties for discharging mortgages and refinancing, and that is taking up a second mortgage with a second, private sector lender. What is not detailed, but has now come out through questioning, is that when public housing providers take advantage of this so-called opportunity, they lose their subsidies for the rent-geared-to-income units in those buildings. In other words, they would give up a mortgage, take on a new mortgage and somehow, magically, would be expected to finance subsidies for low-income seniors, people with disabilities and other individuals who need assistance. They would actually end up spending more money, relieving the federal government's obligation to people who need housing.
That is the most cynical bait and switch I have ever seen on the housing file. What it ends up situating is one of two opportunities. Either low-income Canadians are subsidizing the government so it can provide tax cuts for affluent Canadians, literally Robin Hood in reverse; or else, the housing providers are given an opportunity to refinance the housing, but in doing so they send the poorest in the housing sector out onto the streets. Out west in Manitoba, where the minister resides, most of those people, close to 5,000 of them, are seniors on fixed incomes. Putting those people at risk is unfair. The fund is totally useless and the response to the needs of the housing sector is totally unreal.
However, it is not just that. There is a promise of $1.7 billion being spent every year as a result of provincial and federal agreements. The Conservatives said that would be continued, that there would be no cuts to this program. They know damn well that those funds actually shrink year after year as subsidies disappear and as mortgages expire. The suggestion is that because they would have no mortgage, they could somehow have a poor neighbour subsidize a less affluent, even poorer neighbour. That is just not fair.
What is really cruel about this is that the assumption is that because housing providers have retired their mortgage they can finally find sums to pay for the subsidy. The truth of the matter is that the funds that are needed when these mortgages retire are there for state of good repair. Because there is no federal capital funding to repair old and aging housing stock, the money that suddenly becomes available to housing providers is dedicated for that, not for subsidies for other poor people. It is the most regressive way of running a housing program we have ever seen.
We have a housing policy, and that policy is more than a plan to have a plan. It involves partnering with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and funding directly, through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to create supportive housing programs with an endowment. The second part of that is to renew the co-op and housing agreements and to step back into the housing market, but then also to take those savings as they accrue to the department and reinvest them once again in sustaining and building more co-op and affordable housing across the country.
The final piece of this is that with a shrinking CMHC and pulling CMHC out of the housing market, we also need to ensure we do not just focus on affordable housing but housing affordability. That housing affordability is critical in places like Calgary, Saskatoon and Edmonton where, because of the drop in commodity prices, the housing market has suddenly become very fragile. We need a federal government that protects middle-class homeowners, access to rental housing and access to the market for first-time buyers. Instead, what we get is some sort of laissez-faire attitude that says “do what you will”. We have not indexed, for example, the tax breaks for first-time homebuyers, so it is still stuck in the 1980s model as opposed to being updated annually and making housing accessible to everyone who wants to gain that opportunity.
These programs need to arrive. The government on the other side has no program other than to pull money out fo the public housing sector and use it to subsidize tax breaks to the affluent.
The NDP, to its credit, has a plan but it is only a plan to have a plan. If we read Bill C-400, we see it is to have a big meeting. There are no actual specifics as to how to solve the housing crisis in the country.
When we speak about it and folks criticize an earlier government, they are fine to go off and build a time machine, and go back and prosecute that election. It is time to start building housing in the country and the Liberal plan would do that. This budget does not address one iota of that.
On transit, it is even sillier. There is no money for two years and then it comes in dribs and drabs. The program the government has proposed is too big for small cities and too small for big cities, and it will not get transit built in a timely way. Cities need that money now, and not just for new projects. The state of good repair in places like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver is a critical issue facing urban centres. Without additional dollars, not earmarked for ribbon-cutting exercises but earmarked for the development and sustaining of existing transit systems, those transit systems will fail.
Stepping in and providing that revenue is critically important today, not in two or three years' time. If it arrives in two or three years' time, the new transit does not arrive for five to ten years, and that is not a response to gridlock. In fact, what the Conservative government is saying with this budget is, “Wait at the side of the road. Wait for the bus for two or three more years. Wait, wait, wait, we'll get to you at some point”, because right now it is more important not to provide the assistance to cities for which they have asked.
Finally on infrastructure, two years ago there was a 90% cut. Last year, there were zero dollars in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, and small communities and small towns right across the country. The odd dollar arrived, but the bulk of the program, once again, is back-end loaded for 10 years. For critical infrastructure, to build strong cities, in which close to 82% of Canadians live, there is no new money in this budget. There is not a new timetable. It is absolutely unacceptable, and the cities know this.
This budget has to change, and it has to change to support those very programs I just mentioned. If it does not change, cities will not grow, our country will stagnate, and 82% of all Canadians will see their cities fail as the government promises tax cuts that, quite frankly, do not even address the socio-economic needs of the people who live in those cities. This is a huge problem and it needs to change and it needs to change with a go-forward argument, not a debate about what happened 25 years ago.