Debates of Sept. 27th, 2018

Aung San Suu Kyi

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

(Motion agreed to)

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It relates to a convention of the House, and I will cite Beauchesne's sixth edition, page 151, with respect to “Documents Cited”. It is a convention of the House that when a member of the government, a minister or parliamentary secretary, reads a document into the record of the House, that document will then be tabled.

Today, the parliamentary secretary to the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. relations, the member for Orléans, appeared to read into the record the Liberal NAFTA plan, when he said “no deal is better than a bad deal”. We would like him to table the official Liberal NAFTA plan today.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

It sounds like that might be debate rather than a point of order and I do not see anyone rising to respond.

Business of the House

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the government House leader if she could let us know what the business of the House is for the rest of this week and next week.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I want to remind members, including my hon. friend from Cape Breton—Canso, that under the Standing Orders, members are not permitted to walk between the person speaking and the Chair. This is to be avoided in the future. I know he wishes he could go back in time to correct that.

The hon. government House leader.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue debate on the NDP opposition motion.

Tomorrow, we will start the second reading debate on Bill C-82, the multilateral instrument in respect of tax conventions act.

Monday, we will resume second reading debate of Bill C-77 on the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and of Bill C-78, the family law act.

Next Tuesday, October 2, shall be an allotted day.

Finally, for the rest of the week, priority shall be given to report stage and third reading of Bill C-79, the CPTPP implementation act; and the Senate amendments on Bill C-65, the framework for the prevention of harassment.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Housing as a Human Right

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

There are three minutes remaining in questions and comments following the speech of the hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I need not remind this place that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on housing, Leilani Farha, called upon the government to finally act on its commitments to provide the right to housing. Nowhere is that more critical than our indigenous communities in the far north for the Inuit, first nations and Métis.

I wonder if the member could speak not only to those concerns, but the concerns about the need for rural housing.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, rural communities are in desperate need. In many cases, there has been zero investment in social housing. Many indigenous individuals live off reserve. Housing can be hard to find for anyone, but on reserve, the situation is appalling. No new houses have been built. One can tell just by looking at the buildings. Absolutely nothing is happening.

Sometimes, several families crowd into a single dwelling together. Some people feel they cannot escape domestic violence because they are reluctant to kick their partner or ex-partner out for good. This is extremely important, and the time to take action is now. We cannot wait for the government to get another term in office. We need to invest in social housing now to help our rural communities and the indigenous communities in my riding and all over rural Canada.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member opposite say that there are no federal investments in housing for her riding and I beg to differ. In fact, taking a look at the investment in affordable housing, which is a cost-share program with the provinces that is 50% federally funded, there are programs under way in her riding at 541 Chénier in Rouyn-Noranda.

There are programs at Témiscamingue with Eagle Village First Nation. There are additional programs at the Council of the First Nation of Abitibiwinni. There are additional programs right across her riding. In fact, there is a grand total of almost $7 million that has been invested since we took office

The real question for the member opposite is this. She has made a very strong case for investments in rural housing and we absolutely agree with that. However, if you read the motion from the NDP, they do not mention one single time the word “rural”. They do not prioritize rural investments. They do not mention a target for rural investments. They do not qualify or talk about a program for—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Order. The hon. member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue has time for a brief answer.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if we had tried to address every single housing-related problem in our motion, it would have been 686 pages long. Obviously, we had to simplify so everyone can grasp it. I talked about investing in rural communities. I know my colleague has probably never been to my riding, but Rouyn-Noranda is a town of about 35,000. I mentioned communities with about 300 residents. For anyone who is not aware that Abitibi—Témiscamingue has about 100 cities, towns, communities and parts of towns that have been amalgamated but are still far apart, it can be extremely confusing. I do not expect my colleague to know much about my riding, but everyone should know the difference between a city and a small town that is struggling to deliver services.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Spadina—Fort York.

I am going to use my time today to talk about “reaching home”, our government's new initiative that will give communities the tools and funding to work toward a 50% reduction in chronic homelessness over the next 10 years.

Reaching home will officially launch on April 1, 2019 as part of Canada's first-ever national housing strategy, our government's 10-year, $40 billion-plus plan to lift thousands of Canadians off the streets and get families out of inadequate and temporary housing. These are bold changes.

Under the national housing strategy, our aim is to see the building of 100,000 new housing units and 300,000 repaired or renewed housing units. This will create a new generation of housing in Canada. Our plan will promote diverse communities. It will provide housing that is sustainable, accessible, mixed-income and mixed-use. We will build housing that is fully integrated into the community, close to transit, close to work and close to public services. I want to emphasize that these goals and these numbers did not come out of nowhere, they came after more than a year of consultation from coast to coast to coast, a year in which we met with people with lived experience of poverty and homelessness and allowed them to guide the process.

I mention this because not only does it highlight our commitment to developing effective solutions, but it also stands in stark contrast to what the NDP has done and said on this issue. The New Democrats first promised only $50 million per year for the fight against homelessness in their 2015 platform. Our government recognizes the need for substantial investments to be made in housing and is taking action. Our goal is for a more equal Canada for all, including the most vulnerable, one where women and men are empowered to make positive changes that benefit their own lives and our economy as a whole.

As all hon. members appreciate, a stable and permanent home is a launchpad for alleviating poverty and improving the health and well-being of those Canadians who find themselves marginalized. Without a permanent, stable home all else can seem unattainable, and hopelessness gradually pervades until no room remains for even the most modest of personal ambition. As we know, homelessness has a negative economic and social impact on every community in Canada. Therefore, the aim of our government's homelessness strategy is to provide new and expanded supports because we believe that one homeless Canadian is one too many.

As I said, communities participating in reaching home will work toward a 50% reduction in chronic homelessness over the next 10 years. We are investing $2.2 billion over that period to achieve our goal. By 2021-22 we will have doubled annual investments compared to when we took office. We will build on the successful adoption of housing first as a best practice, and work with communities to develop and deliver data-driven system plans with clear outcomes. This new outcomes-based approach will give communities greater flexibility to identify, test and apply innovative solutions and evidence-based practices that achieve results for vulnerable Canadians.

Reaching home funding will also provide communities with the tools they need to deliver systems plans, coordinated access to services and better local data. While providing a strong framework within which the communities can work, the government recognizes that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Through reaching home, we will be reinforcing the community-based approach, delivering funding directly to municipalities and local service providers.

Throughout our engagement process, the government heard that the greatest asset of the current homelessness partnering strategy is that it is a community-based program. Through reaching home, the government will reinforce this approach and expand the program's reach to new designated communities. New communities will be added through an open and transparent application process to be launched later in 2018. This expansion will not affect the funding received by the existing 61 designated communities.

In Quebec, the homelessness partnering strategy is delivered through a formal Canada-Quebec agreement that respects the jurisdiction and priorities of both governments in addressing homelessness. Since 2001, five agreements for joint implementation of federal homelessness programming have been concluded, including the current agreement for 2014-2019. In order to implement reaching home and allocate funds in Quebec beyond April 1, 2019, negotiations will be undertaken with the Government of Quebec with the objective of concluding a sixth Canada-Quebec agreement.

We also need to better understand and address the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples in Canada's homeless population, and to help achieve, this our government will increase dedicated funding for indigenous-led homelessness initiatives. This funding will support the availability of culturally appropriate services for indigenous peoples living in vulnerable conditions, including indigenous women, youth and mothers with children.

Reaching home will also create a new territorial homelessness funding stream that will collapse existing regional funding streams into a single envelope and offer more flexibility in how funding can be used to address the unique homelessness challenges in the territories.

Over the last year, we worked in consultation with stakeholders, provinces, territories and indigenous partners to understand how Canada's federal homelessness program could be redesigned to better reduce and prevent homelessness across Canada.

Before that consultation, the committee that I chair, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of People with Disabilities, conducted a poverty study. Many members who have read that study know that a huge pillar of that study was affordable housing. In my riding, we helped frame the national housing strategy with some foundational work that we did on that study.

Our reaching home initiative is possible thanks to the points of view and encouragement we gathered from Canadians throughout those numerous consultations.

So to reiterate, as a starting point, we will continue to deliver funding directly to municipalities and local service providers to support the most vulnerable Canadians in accessing and maintaining a safe, stable and affordable home.

We will also give communities more choice. Of course, the housing first model has proven to be very useful for reducing homelessness in Canada and it will continue to be a priority for reaching home. However, we will remain open to innovation in service delivery, to better support any vulnerable population that is at risk of ending up on the street, such as youth, women fleeing domestic violence or people suffering from addiction or mental health problems.

We will work with communities to help them target and reach specific results together. Our national housing strategy supports community engagement to meet local needs and this is why reaching home supports a collaborative, community-based approach.

Simply put, reaching home will adapt to people instead of making people adapt to the program.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague referred to the Canada-Quebec agreements. I had the chance—anyone could have joined in—to walk with the people from FRAPRU, the Quebec social housing coalition, who left Ottawa roughly a month ago to travel to Quebec City. They will arrive in Quebec City tomorrow. They walked 550 kilometers and stopped in all sorts of towns and villages along the way to talk about social housing.

I had the opportunity to welcome them back home in Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, where we walked 1% of the journey together. These people have deep convictions and they are walking on behalf of an entire community of people who need social housing.

In Longueuil—it is not for nothing that they stopped by—there are major housing challenges. The waiting lists are appalling. My team was on the phone with a friend in my riding who is a young professional, a single parent with two children. She came to see my team because she could no longer make ends meet. She pays $1,000 a month in rent.

These situations are commonplace in Longueuil. Fortunately, there are fantastic solutions. People have stepped up. The people on this walk were invited, for example, to have breakfast at Habitations Paul-Pratt, Manoir-Trinité, where seniors have been able to find great social housing and a wonderful quality of life. That is important. These are urgent needs.

I am wondering why we are talking about this today when the government made some lofty promises about great funding, which we were very pleased with. However, 90% of this money will only be disbursed after the government is re-elected. I believe it is horribly Machiavellian to deal with these issues in this way. I can say the same thing about cultural issues. I just blasted the Minister of Canadian Heritage because his committee will release a report in 2020, after the election. That is just appalling. The needs exist right now.

Why does the government not see what people across Canada and especially in Longueuil are dealing with?

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I too have met with homelessness activists in my riding a number of times. People are very passionate about this issue, and it is an issue that we should be passionate about.

In my riding specifically, there is a gentleman by the name of Paul Tavares. I have spoken about him in the House before. He did a 90-day out-in-the-cold program. He literally spent 90 days outside in the middle of winter in downtown Cambridge to bring awareness to the homelessness issue in Cambridge.

We have the same issue. We have a waiting list with the names of over 3,500 people on it. We know this is a big problem. It is why this government has made it such a priority. It is why not $50 million but $2.2 billion has been put toward this.

I understand the passion of the member opposite. I understand the desire to snap our fingers and have this all done immediately. This is a 10-year plan and we are moving forward with it. In fact, we have already seen programs in my riding. We have a brand new $4.2-million facility in my riding to help with our issue. However, the problem is not gone and we will be working toward fixing it.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the 2015 mandate letter given to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development talked about the federal land surplus. The prior Conservative government had worked on a surplus list. Part of this whole development could be about what could be done to help when it comes to affordable social housing.

If we are looking at the surplus list, how is that going to help with the strategy? I still have not seen how those inner workings are going to be there and what the government is going to do when it gives up these surplus lands.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I travelled with the committee when we did the poverty study. We miss her on our committee and we would welcome her back any time.

She knows perfectly well this is something we are looking at and have given incredible attention to. I am reminded of the situation we had in Medicine Hat, Alberta, which took a very innovative approach to homelessness. The city partnered with the province to build. It brought surplus land it had to the table. It was able to show that it could leverage the assets that particular community had to build homes for those who were truly in need.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I remarked earlier today about it never being a bad day when the Parliament of Canada is focused on providing housing for Canadians in need and today has been a very good day for that indeed.

I want to quickly push away some of the mythology which has been presented to us by the opposite side that there is no new money in the housing system right now. Let me assure Canadians and Parliament that in our very first budget, not waiting for the $40-billion national housing strategy but in the first budget, we tripled the dollars being partnered with the provinces. The tripling of those dollars has had a huge impact. We also immediately doubled for the first time in the program's history the dollars going to the homeless partnership strategy. It went from $100 million to $200 million, which is a lot more than the $10 million the NDP promised to increase the fund by. It was a substantial increase. Those dollars are being spent year by year and day by day in communities right across this country.

The previous government was only spending $2.36 billion on housing, so when we inherited government, we immediately, with those commitments in the first budget, boosted spending to $5.8 billion. In the next year, last year, we spent $6.8 billion. Those are new dollars building real housing for real people and we are proud of that. That was referred to at the time as the down payment to get us to the national housing strategy.

This myth that the money comes after the next election is just wrong. We started spending the day we took office. We have invested in strong housing programs from coast to coast to coast. We have also renewed the social housing operating agreements, in particular, the federal co-ops. Those dollars are real. They are in real people's lives protecting affordable housing right across the country.

The $40 billion that we have now put into the first ever national housing strategy is an important investment and the NDP in today's motion asks us to front-end load half of that into this calendar year and then just let the next nine years drift off to God knows where. When we build 100 units of housing in Sarnia, when we build 100 units of housing in London, or in Abitibi, when we build 100 units in Montreal or Toronto or Vancouver, if we do that year after year after year, we go from having 100 new units to 200 new units to 300 new units. If we do not back-end load housing programs, inflation and the growth of the program itself effectively de-houses the people we housed in the first year by the end of a 10-year program.

Every expert we consulted with from every university, every housing sector, every government provider, every non-profit agency said that if we put money on the table for housing, do not front-end load it, and to make sure we come in with a substantial investment and then make it grow over time as the housing sector grows. That is what we have done with the $40-billion investment. We are very proud to have done it that way because that is what is called listening to experts as we develop new policy.

I would also like to talk about the new homeless partnership strategy now called reaching home. The Conservatives have criticized that we have moved away from simply doing housing first. I will tell members what housing first did for young people. They had to be homeless, on the street, with no support for six months before that program would help them. We took the most vulnerable youth in this country and said that we are not going to help them until they have lived on the street for six months, and the few that came back, came back with more complications, more damage done to them, and more hardship. The cost to fix those problems was off the charts. One of the most critical things we heard as we reprofiled that money was to stop forcing young people onto the streets before government would step up to help them.

The same situation was emerging for women. Women who were escaping violence were told to go anywhere but the government, to get housing money somehow, but do not come to the government for help until they had been on the street for six months because the government would not help with the housing first program unless they had lived on the street. For young women in particular, it literally pushed them into the sex trade on the street. The most dangerous, most precarious, most violent situations encountered by women in this country are a direct result of a housing policy that refused to help people unless they had been acutely homeless for six months. That was wrong, so we removed that. We allowed the program to move into prevention as opposed to response.

We have also allowed communities to make the decisions for themselves as to whether they provide services that keep people housed or rent supplements to house people who have fallen onto hard times. That blend as we start to house people needs to be flexible so that local communities can solve the problems in a local way.

We are very proud to have changed that policy, but communities across the country know that if we are going to deal with addiction issues, or violence against women issues, or mental health issues, or brain injury, or all the other dynamics that cause much of our homelessness, we have to house a person first before we deal with those other issues. If we force people onto the streets for six months, all of those issues compound and get worse and quite often multiply.

I also want to talk about the fact that we doubled that money in the first year. We took it from $100 million to just over $200 million. We have now locked that in with provincial and federal agreements over the next 10 years. That is good news.

If the NDP members want to know what their approach was, they can check their platform. Their promise was to increase spending on the homeless by $10 million. That would not have solved the problem in any one of the major cities, let alone the new centres we are extending funding to as a result of our $40-billion, 10-year program.

Part of that program is the co-investment fund. This is one of the most innovative new proposals to come from a federal government in a generation. These dollars do not require matching grants from the provinces. We now have provinces—we heard about Saskatchewan—pulling out of the housing sector, literally pushing seniors on to the street by cancelling rent supplements. The new co-investment fund is not a program that flows to provincial capitals. The federal government will work directly with housing providers anywhere in Canada, including rural Canada, northern Canada, coastal communities, major urban centres, and small towns to realize housing projects that they bring forward. We work with municipalities in particular to deliver these programs.

This $13-billion is already building programs from coast to coast to coast. I spent my summer opening those programs. In fact, every time a member opposite stood up and said there is no housing in his or her riding, we listed the new housing that is being delivered as a result of the doubling and tripling of the funds that we have put on the table already as we move toward the $40-billion mark.

The other component to this is the Canada housing benefit. Previous governments used to attach subsidies to addresses and bricks and mortar. We have changed the approach in the Canada housing program. We have put the money into the hands of provinces, which deal directly with individuals. They are most likely to have the intimate relationship with those people to assess what their housing needs are and what the rental needs are.

The Canada housing benefit is now tied to people. If someone is living in a big town and a job is available across the city, the person can actually move the subsidy closer to the job and cut the transit time to make the new salary he or she is getting even more effective in supporting his or her life. If someone is living in a small town and wants to move to a larger town, or lives in a large city but wants to move home to take care of his or her parents but lives in public housing and sees an impediment to that, the subsidy can travel with the person. This gives people with low income the flexibility and the choice and agency in their lives.

We think this is an extraordinarily important investment. It starts in a year, because the provinces have asked for time to deliver the programs. However, that investment is substantial. It does force provinces to match, which is good, because if Saskatchewan pulls out, we are going to be making sure they move back into that sector.

The whole program is framed with an approach to housing called the right to housing framework. It is a human rights framework that effectively frames the program and requires Parliament to be held accountable if there are sectors of the population not being housed. We heard rural communities are having trouble getting funding. We know that certain populations do not get the housing they need. Veterans are an example in some parts of the country. People with significant disabilities are another problem in other parts of the country. We have targeted programs for some of those groups now, but as new groups emerge and the systemic failures in the system are presented to us through the housing advocate's office and the people with lived experience council we are putting together, we have a way of remedying those situations systematically to make sure we realize in a progressive fashion the right to housing.

No UN covenant, no UN official, and the UN rapporteur quite certainly have ever said the right to housing should be a charter right and so one prosecutes legally as an individual through a federal piece of legislation. What the UN talks about, what the UN rapporteur talks about, what our legislation is aimed at achieving is making sure we have a systemic approach to create a housing strategy and a housing response across the country to make sure there is a systemic way of measuring and assessing its strengths and weaknesses and a systemic method of remedying those failures when we see them, so we do not fail Canadians ever again.

The right to housing legislation will be presented to the House as soon as we have finished with the drafting of the presentation. We have done consultations all year on that.

Finally, on indigenous housing, we will not achieve reconciliation, we will not address and reduce significantly the poverty, we will not end the housing crisis in the country without four forms of indigenous housing. We have to have first nations housing on reserve strengthened substantially, and there are investments above and beyond the $40 billion to achieve that. We also have to meet with the Métis. The House heard in my questions today that there is a $500-million program with the Métis to achieve just that. We also have to sit down with the Inuit and specifically address through their council how they want housing built for their communities.

There are additional investments, close to $2.5 billion in last year's budget, that add to the $40 billion already committed. However, we absolutely, fundamentally must deliver an urban indigenous housing strategy. In Ontario, 80% of indigenous peoples live in urban centres. If we do not have an indigenous housing strategy for urban indigenous populations, we will never solve the housing crisis. We will never achieve true reconciliation. We will never solve the problems that colonialism, racism, and history have delivered to Parliament. On that file, I submit my unwavering commitment not to rest my voice until that urban indigenous housing program is funded equally to the rest of Canada's programs. In the interim, we have made every one of the programs I just described available to indigenous housing providers.

Previous governments said that one could only go through INAC to get indigenous money. The program that the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith talked about, which was a brilliant program, was funded through the innovation fund. These are additional dollars added to our indigenous housing commitments. We do not disqualify indigenous housing providers from a regular program, which is part of the way we are re-profiling dollars to ensure we house every Canadian and give them safe, affordable housing as part of a human rights approach to making our country fairer.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when is a right to a housing framework not a right to housing when it is a framework? Contrary to what the member alleged in the House, it is simply not fact.

This is what Leilani Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, actually said:

...it is impossible to have a human rights based housing strategy that does not recognize the primacy of the right to housing as a legal right subject to effective remedies.

It is very clear. A right is only a right when it is binding in law.

How much longer are we going to hear from the Liberals, now in power for three years, that they are working on, thinking about, consulting on, and eventually we will have an urban aboriginal housing strategy? They have had three years. Then when we look at the funding that has been allocated, the vast majority will be released after the next election.

I wonder if the member would like to speak to that. Why do we not have that strategy right now?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we do have the strategy right now. We did not wait for the housing strategy to be launched as a set piece over the next 10 years to double and triple our investments with the provinces, municipalities and indigenous groups immediately. In fact, close to $12 billion has been spent on new housing programs in the first two years of office. To put that into context, that is approximately $10 billion more than the NDP promised. It is real money for real housing. The NDP thinks we can build housing, I guess, with fairy dust.

The issue is this. On the right to housing, what the UN rapporteur talks about, and I have talked to her on a regular basis as we moved forward, is having a systemic approach that requires the government to provide a housing system that people have a right to access, that the system needs to be held accountable in a public way through Parliament and that the remedies have to force government into a position where we have to remedy those situations.

At no point have they talked about individual rights being assigned to Parliament. Those individual rights are covered through provincial law and provincial human rights codes and individual cases are managed under our system by the provinces. However, the national housing system we create needs to be held accountable. People have a right to expect it to meet their needs, but not necessarily deliver a specific house to a specific person in a specific way.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have three points for the parliamentary secretary on this.

First, the portable housing benefit is up for debate. For some areas, including the greater Vancouver area, it was indicated that up to $250 perhaps would not close that gap whatsoever. I want to know what the parameters are on that, including those who choose to move from smaller communities to larger communities where their rent may double. What will the government's role be in that?

The second is about federal government lands. We talk about the federal surplus. Where is it and how is it being used?

The third, as the member asked me earlier, is on affordable housing. What is he going to do about affordable housing when we know that some of the housing markets have gone up from 25% to 75% across Canada?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Canada housing benefit is an $8 billion program and it is spent through provinces. Provinces are designing how it applies to individuals. It is hard for us to say at this point exactly what that looks like because from province to province and territory it will be different.

However, what we said in the budget, the one the member referenced, was that this was the dollar amount that a person received and this was how many people would receive it. It was simply to try to put it in terms that individuals could understand, because $8 billion does not necessarily translate in someone's rent cheque very easily when trying to conceptualize that. Day by day, person by person it will be different. It will wrap around the person rather than simply be a one-size-fits-all program.

In terms of federal lands, it has been very frustrating. We received a list of federal lands when we asked the departments and on some of those lands there already was public housing. It just was not being used by the department. It was part of a 99-year lease to affordable housing providers in the city of Vancouver.

Getting the surplus piece down pat is absolutely essential. It is part of the $13 billion co-investment fund. We will be using federal lands, like we are in the city of Toronto on the waterfront, to deliver affordable housing to people as part of federal housing programs. It has been very successful.

The final piece of the puzzle to which the member references is housing affordability, which I think is the intent of her question.

As we see in the private market, where 80% of Canadians get their housing needs met, housing costs are being pushed beyond the reach of even semi-affluent Canadians. In the city of Toronto, the average one bedroom apartment rents for $2,300. It requires a $90,000 salary just to live in a one bedroom apartment. We need to focus in very clearly on this part of the market.

There are eligibility components to the program that allow for non-profit home ownership programs that are becoming more and more successful. We continue to work in this area, but it is a tricky area. If new purchasers are put into the market quickly, it will stimulate inflation. If we drop the price of housing quickly, Canadians will lose the equity they have in their homes. On that piece, there is work to be done.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in the House and represent the people of Timmins—James Bay.

I will be splitting my time with the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou.

I am going to begin on what maybe people think is a side issue, but it fundamental to it. It is the issue of children.

We just brought home the body of 13-year-old Karlena Kamenawatamin to Bearskin Lake this weekend. We lost a 10-year-old there last year. I mention her name because she died in a home with no electricity—in Canada.

We are going to talk about the mental health needs of children and ask how this crisis is happening. For a child to have no water and no electricity, she was ground into hopelessness and poverty.

Yesterday we received the report on the 12 children who died in Ontario foster care, six in three months, 12 in three years. I am going to name some of their names and tell some of their stories, because it pertains to what we are talking about: 12-year-old Amy Owen from Poplar Hill First Nation whose parents said she lived in so much pain that she was broken by the age of 12. Then there is 16-year-old Courtney Scott from Fort Albany, whose family and sister I met. What they went through in foster care is a horror story. Nobody defended those children and she died.

Chantel Fox and Jolynn Winter from Wapekeka were 12 years old, and the government was found culpable in their deaths by the Human Rights Commission because it did nothing to respond to the community's urgent pleas to help those girls.

Kanina Sue Turtle also died in care.

I do not have the names of the other children because they are protected.

The report tells us that these children grew up with inadequate shelter, unsafe water, lack of access to food and no access to equitable education or health and mental health services. It said that many of them lived in overcrowded houses without electricity or running water.

That is the face of the housing crisis in our country, like 13-year-old Sheridan Hookimaw from Attawapiskat, whose family I know so well. She was ground into poverty from the sewage backups and living with 21 other people in an overcrowded mould-infested home. She just gave up one day, could not live anymore, and died by suicide.

The cost of the complacency of this nation for the treatment of its children is being counted in the body bags that have flown home to Treaty 9 and all the other communities of the far north. It is the poverty that has ground them down.

If we go to Kashechewan, Attawapiskat and the other communities and go into the homes, we will smell the bleach, because the mothers and the ku-kums try to keep the homes clean for the grandchildren and the children. They are proud. The walls are full of pictures. When there is a graduate, those pictures are everywhere. However, if we look at the floor in the livingroom, everything has been moved out for the mattresses. There could be 18 and 21 people living and sleeping there at night. That is the nature of the housing crisis.

For government, it is always an issue it will deal with next year and the year after. It is going to have another INAC program. It is going to have another funding plan. The obligation to ensure that children in our country do not live in fourth-world conditions has never been a priority. It will never be a priority until we insist on the fundamental principle that housing is a human right, so that the 300 families in Kashechewan that have no homes, that live with their relatives and their cousins, or travel around and around trying to find a bed in that little community will have homes. That is the nature of the housing crisis.

We recently saw the government come up with all these solutions. One of them was that it would have a contest for first nations to find an innovative solution. What is this, The Hunger Games? The Liberals love this stuff. They have smart city challenges. One of their smart city challenges is they will use AI to help us deal with climate change. We have to love the Liberals. They are going to promote an app for homelessness so the homeless will know when the shelters are full. They are ridiculous. They think people are stupid. They announce they are going to deal with the housing crisis in the first nations. They are going to put $30 million away for the most innovative solution and work with them—winners and losers.

From having worked on this file for a long time, I can tell members that the impediment is not the people's innovation. The impediment is government bureaucracy and policy that time and again sit on projects that are good, that undermine self-financing projects in communities where people can go to the bank and get their own financing. Yet, they have to go through the minister of INAC because he acts like the great white father, who can sign off on their financial plan when they already have an agreement with the bank. We can have innovative housing, but one needs the government as a partner.

Therefore, to me, the idea that we are going to have a smart challenge for indigenous people to compete for the money is probably one of the most ignorant things I have seen from the government and shows its lack of respect.

I come here with many experiences on the issue of housing. I see it across my region. I see it with seniors who cannot move from the old housing their kids grew up in to affordable seniors housing. It does not exist. The waiting list is so long that people will die before they ever get one.

I worked in the urban centres in downtown Toronto with the homeless before Paul Martin killed the national housing strategy. When we were working with the homeless in Riverdale, in Toronto's east end, it was possible to get people into rooming houses. We still had rooming houses, and one could get someone sobered up, get them into cheap housing, then onto the list for social housing. There was such a turnaround in lives. I saw it. I spent every night of the week and the year at detox centres and emergency wards, and we were able to get people stable housing. They were not a burden on the system anymore. Some of the people I have known over those years went on to live very good lives because of housing.

At that time, when Paul Martin pulled out of the national housing strategy, the housing market was already beginning to change, as were the neighbourhoods in the east end of Toronto. Paul Martin, who was king of the private market, told us not to worry because the private market would step up. However, it did not step up, and we have seen a steady gap growing. My old neighbourhood of Riverdale had some amazing mixed income co-operatives, where single moms and university professors lived. Those were solid neighbourhoods. When I go back to my old neighbourhood now, it has become a neighbourhood of the super rich and the super poor. The balanced neighbourhoods we had are disappearing because people cannot afford them. They call it the “hollowing out” of these neighbourhoods.

The young people, who want to raise families and work in the city cannot afford to live there. I will give a shining example, coming from the musicians' community. There was a time when Toronto was the centre where all the bands came, and Montreal was sort of seen as the dance capital. Well, Montreal is the centre for music now. Why? Because there are no musicians who can apply their trade in Toronto and pay the rent, so all the young artists are moving to Montreal. We see creative communities no longer being able to live there because they have been forced out of the city.

What is the solution? It is mixed income housing. There will still be the private sector, but we need to have a commitment to housing to build co-operative and mixed income housing in order to maintain neighbourhoods where we can still have young families whose children can go to school and parents who work in the inner city. It also comes down to this fundamental notion that housing is a human right, which is something the government will not recognize. It talks about it.

Leilani Farha, the United Nations special rapporteur, expressed her deep concern about the Liberal government and what it is doing. Of course, the two great tricks of the Liberal Party in the last 150 years is, first, that it will break all of the promises it makes to first nation people as soon as the people turn their back. The second great trick of the Liberal Party that has gotten them into power time and again is to tell people to vote for them in the election because it will do something right, that if people return the party to power, it will look after them.

Liberals are now saying they are going to have a housing framework, but the United Nations special rapporteur says she is concerned that the government is not recognizing the right to housing in implementing legislation and will not recognize the primacy of the right to housing as a legal right subject to effective remedies. Until we have a government willing to commit to that, there is no reason to believe and vote for the Liberals, as people did in 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2003, as a result of that red book of promises, which is always just over the hill, just waiting for the next election, just waiting until the right moment as long as people re-elect them will get done.

If the government is serious, it will commit to that strategy as a human right.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to acknowledge and pay respect to the member opposite for his strong and tireless advocacy on behalf of individuals, communities and treaty organizations of the indigenous people of his riding. We respect that and it helps us do our job better, even when it hurts sometimes to listen to the failures that all governments have delivered with regard to those communities.

In terms of the right to housing, let me assure the member that the UN special rapporteur on housing, Leilani Farha, and the minister and I are in constant conversation about how to get this right, to make sure that the right to housing is exactly what the UN expects of us and is consistent with the covenant we have signed. We will not stop working until we make sure we achieve that.

I have a very interesting question for the member opposite. New Democrats complain about our spending money, more money than they promised, and spending money well into the future, more money than they ever envisioned. When they put their platform together for the last election, their total commitment for this calendar year to all indigenous organizations across the entire country for critical infrastructure, which includes housing, water, schools, hospitals, everything, was $25 million. How can I take their tears seriously if $25 million was the extent of their imagination and response?

Would the member opposite not agree that $25 million is a pathetic gesture? Adding in one last piece of context, they were only going to do that if they could balance the budget.