Mr. Speaker, I am here today because I asked a question of the minister about a woman in my riding named Pat.
Pat is now 80 and was desperately ill. In fact, her family was not certain how long she would be with us. The good news is that Pat got better. The bad news is that during her time of having a hard health issue, she did not have a home any more.
The reality for Pat is that she was told by the hospital that she would have to leave. She had nowhere to go and ended up spending months in a hotel where the rent was $500 a week, which was much more than the pension she had.
When we look at the reality of seniors across Canada who are facing the same challenges that Pat is, we want to make sure that they have a safe place to go, that seniors are not homeless and put in this situation.
It is important to recognize that in our communities, including the communities that I represent in North Island—Powell River, that there are a lot of organizations working hard every day to address issues of homelessness and the high risk of homelessness that is happening in so many communities across Canada. I would like to name just a few in my riding: the Campbell River and District Coalition to End Homelessness; Grassroots Kind Hearts Society, which feeds people in Campbell River every day; the Salvation Army Lighthouse Resource Centre in Port Hardy, which provides lunch five times a week; Port Hardy Seniors, of which I am a member, that feeds seniors lunch every Tuesday and provides many opportunities for activities in the community; Homelessness Partnering Strategy funded in Port Hardy through the Sacred Wolf Friendship Centre; Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness; Dawn to Dawn in Comox Valley, which does so much to support those who are at high risk and homeless; Community Resource Center of Powell River, which recently received 20 beds to provide emergency shelter; Powell River committee against homelessness; and the Salvation Army, which has shelters in several of the communities I represent.
These are just a few of the organizations that work hard every day with people across our communities who are facing significant challenges with housing.
It is so important that we recognize that in rural and remote parts of Canada, housing is a significant crisis. The organizations I mentioned before do everything they can, but they need a more active partner in the federal government.
In B.C., we are actually seeing what an active partner looks like. Recently, the housing minister of B.C. made a significant announcement in investments for housing. What I really appreciate is that rather than leaving the majority of the resources at the back end, like the federal government currently is with 90% not even beginning to move until the next election, the housing minister is making sure that it is in the front, as the housing minister said in an announcement about the housing crisis in B.C.
She said, “We’re frontloading because it’s so desperate...It breaks my heart every time I hear a story, and I heard another one today, of a community, an Indigenous community that is reeling from two suicide deaths of young people.” This is from an article in The Tyee.
I want to be really clear. This provincial B.C. government is dedicating funding for 1,100 units of indigenous housing both on and off reserve. Provinces do not usually fund housing on reserve. Usually, they step out of that and see it as a federal responsibility, but as the article said, on-reserve housing has been a federal responsibility since 1867 and has been chronically underfunded.
When we look at stories like Pat's, we know that there is a significant issue for seniors across this country, and we need to make sure that they do not fall through the cracks. I want to make sure that today in the House that people understand that seniors simply cannot wait.