Debates of Jan. 31st, 2019

Opposition Motion—Affordable Housing

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

I would just say, Madam Speaker, that everyone who is interested in Canada can just look at the story in the Star, “Did the federal government really help 1 million Canadians find housing?” by Alex Ballingall, posted Tuesday, January 29, 2019. Canadians can learn the truth for themselves.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to talk about this very important issue and the motion that was tabled today by my hon. colleague from Saskatoon West, whom I would like to thank for her hard work and advocacy on housing issues across Canada.

Just to put this in context with the history of how we got here, we know in the 1970s and 1980s there was a robust program to build non-market housing and co-op housing across our country. I was a beneficiary of that. I was able to live in a co-op housing unit with my family, and my parents were able to save money and then buy into the free market, which of course is the most desirable place, which people want to advance to, so it worked. It worked for a hard-working family like my parents. My father is a transmission mechanic. My mom worked as a clerk. It helped them advance their lives and get some stability when they certainly needed it.

Ten per cent of our housing in the 1980s was non-market housing. The Liberal government, in the early 1990s and Paul Martin's government, axed the program to invest in Canada's housing program and downloaded on the provinces, which of course then downloaded on local governments. I was fortunate enough to serve in local government in the municipality of Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Like every municipality, we were scrambling as to how to address this difficult issue of affordable housing without the capacity, aptitude and sometimes the leadership.

Our community struggled until recently, when we found a strong leader. Our mayor, Josie Osborne, is leading a council that has put housing as a priority. We have seen some municipalities have success, like Whistler, which has 7,000 non-market housing units that it has pulled out. Most municipalities have really struggled right across our province. It is becoming a huge problem.

As we know, real estate on Vancouver Island, for example, has risen 53% in just three years, while wages have remained stagnant. People are struggling, not just to make ends meet and buy a home but just to pay rent. Over 20% of renters in my riding are paying over 50% of their income toward housing. Over 45% are paying over the 30% threshold that we deem affordable for the amount of money we should be spending on housing. We are in a crisis.

I talked about where we were in the 1970s and 1980s when we were at about 10% non-market housing. Today we are at 4%, so we have completely fallen off the charts. By comparison, Europe is at 30%. We can look at Vienna, Austria, where people have had great leadership and built co-op housing that is fantastic housing. The standard of living is quite high.

We saw, over the last decade, the Conservative government follow the practices of the Martin government, downloading on the provinces and municipalities. No action was taken and the result is where we are today, with many people struggling to pay their bills and to pay rent and many people homeless. The Conservatives' answer to this was that a free market and supply will solve this issue. Clearly that is not working. We know it is not working. We need to build non-market housing.

The Liberal government of today was elected on a promise to develop and deliver affordable housing across our country, which the Liberals say they are doing. However, in my riding all of the affordable housing that has been developed and built is by the Province of British Columbia, which is building half of the non-market housing in this country.

[Adam Vaughan]

That is 50% federal money.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I am being heckled across the way and being told that it is from federal money. In fact I ask about every project that is being developed in my riding, as I go to the ribbon cutting to celebrate the provincial government, the B.C. NDP and Green coalition, as it builds housing. It understands what the sense of urgency is and how to deal with a crisis, unlike the current federal government. We do not talk about a crisis in our own personal lives and say that we will deal with it in 10 years or roll it out after the next election. We start doing it now. We start delivering now. That is what the B.C. NDP is doing.

As we saw last night, the result was very clear that British Columbians are happy to see a government showing leadership on this issue when they elected their new MLA, Sheila Malcolmson, the former member of this House for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. I want to congratulate Sheila and I want to congratulate the B.C. NDP for the leadership it is showing in this country on affordable housing and developing non-market housing, putting people first instead of money first. I would like to congratulate her while I am here.

I was just talking to someone whom I care deeply about, a constituent of mine who reached out and who has been struggling. Her name is Marcy Remington. She said, “I wish I had a microphone. I wish I had a way of telling people that I need help and this is how it's playing out.” I told Marcy that I was going to the House of Commons tomorrow and I would be her microphone and make sure that she is heard.

I am really glad I have this opportunity to bring Marcy's voice to the House of Commons. Marcy lives in the Comox Valley, and according to The Huffington Post, the Comox Valley is now one of the world's least affordable cities in the world. It is in the top 20 of least affordable places in the world.

As I said, real estate has gone up 53% in that community, and wages have remained stagnant. Someone has to earn $141,000 to qualify for the median household price in the Comox Valley. Less than 7% of people living in Comox Valley actually qualify for the price of a median house, where the vacancy rate is at 0.01%. There is nowhere to live.

Marcy, who has lived in the Comox Valley for decades—and loves it, because it is her home—had been living in her van until recently. She was fortunate enough to get off the streets in her van and graduate to a fifth wheel. She has been living in this fifth wheel, and now she has learned that she cannot live in her fifth wheel because it is parked illegally. She knew she was rolling the dice, not sleeping night after night because she knew that someone might come along and tell her to move her fifth wheel. Sure enough, someone came along last week and told her she had to move it. She has nowhere to go. She is worried about her safety. She said, “I can't legally park and live in my van. I can't tent in the forest. Where do they expect us to go?”

Good question, Marcy. It is a good question for the government, which is dragging its feet and says it is going to house 50% of homeless people in the next 10 years. What about the other 50%? What about Marcy? I am here bringing her voice to this House of Commons. We need a federal government that matches every dollar the province rolls out and shows some sense of urgency. That is what we need.

This is not just about Marcy and people who are struggling to get out of their camper and graduate to an affordable place to live; it is affecting the economy. As the critic for small business and tourism and critic for veterans affairs, I have listened to people in the community. There are six chambers of commerce, all of which identify affordable housing as the number one issue. These include Jen Dart, the executive director of the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce; Lara Kemps of the Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce; Bill Collette from the Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce; Dianne Hawkins of the Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce; and Kim Burden at the Parksville & District Chamber of Commerce.

There is Anne Dodson as well. Anne Dodson was just in the Qualicum Beach News talking about how Qualicum Beach tourism is booming but businesses are facing staffing struggles. In fact, they have shuttered more businesses in the past few years than in recent decades. She is hearing over and over again that housing and transportation are the major issues for business owners when it comes to staffing. This is a huge issue right across my riding.

We hear about first nations and the lack of affordable housing for indigenous communities. There are 10 first nations in my riding. Members across the way know this very well, because they have heard me bring their issues to the House of Commons repeatedly. I was talking with Chief Greg Louie from Ahousaht First Nation the other day, and he said that there were 21 people living together in a mould-infested house. They were given promises. The federal government said that it would build housing there. He said Ahousaht needed $1.8 million just to get going for two 6-plexes, and the government came back and said that it had $1.2 million. They needed $1.8 million, but he said that they would take it and build whatever they could, so they are building substandard housing to meet the needs of their constituents.

I received a note the other day from Rob Bullock, executive director of the Ahousaht First Nation, which stated:

Imagine two parents with 5 children in a one bedroom 1960s house, with black mould, thin insulation and a leaky roof. Several years later, with 7 more family members, they move to a two-bedroom 1990s equally mouldy, smelly, unhealthy and cold home.

Those houses are where this strong, driven woman calls home in...Ahousaht, a 35 minute boat ride, in the open waters of the Pacific Ocean, north of Tofino.

Waiting on one of four CMCH houses, this mother patiently waits for funding to finally be delivered to the Nation only to be told the funds will build less than they would have had just one year ago. Still a wait for a 4 bedroom home will be worth it for her one true love--her Ahousaht family.

She does not want to leave her community. She wants to stay in the nation where she is from, where her language and all of her culture exists.

The government needs to take action immediately.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for bringing the voice of people with lived experience to the floor. It is important to hear those voices and to make sure our housing programs respond directly to their needs.

I would also like to thank him for identifying one of the big problems with fighting homelessness, which is that those people with capacity who live in overcrowded houses are not necessarily counted as part of the chronically homeless, because they are not in shelters or on the streets. When we build new housing, those are the people most likely to access the new housing, because they have such extraordinary capacity to survive. We need to support them, but we also need to take that into account as we try to model or rightsize the housing.

The member opposite said there is no money being spent in his riding by the federal government. Let me assure him that when we tripled transfers to the provinces in our first budget, the B.C. government was one of the first governments, as a Liberal government, to sign on to that. However, let me be even more precise: The NDP government in B.C. has been the most aggressive at delivering housing dollars, and 50% of those housing dollars are federally funded.

Kennedy Stewart, a former member of this House, is now the mayor of Vancouver. When I met with him this week, he said that when he was on the other side of the House, he used to criticize Liberals, but, he said, we are doing extraordinary work. He said B.C. thanks us because without the federal government's partnership with the provincial government, none of what is being built would be possible.

In your riding, $8.9 million has been invested, and those dollars have supported the construction of seniors housing, have supported the subsidies, and we promise to do more and do better because we have a good partner in that province.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I would remind the member to address his question to the Chair, because I am sure the number he quoted is not what the government has provided to my riding.

The hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the government for the investment in seniors housing in my riding. That project is going to make a difference in the lives of seniors, but it falls so far short. I articulated quite well that there is a vacancy rate of 0.01% and that real estate has gone up 53%. More and more people are homeless day after day in my riding, and Liberals are not delivering. While they are patting themselves on the back and Marcy is living in her van, they need to do more.

I am going to be going to a ribbon cutting next week for a shelter being opened in the Alberni Valley. Not a single dollar is coming from the federal government, not one dollar—

[An hon. member]

Half of it is.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Not half, not one dollar.

I just want to remind the member across the way that while he is patting himself on the back for projects that are funded by the provincial government, he should support the hard work of Wes Hewitt and John Douglas and the Port Alberni Shelter Society and its board of directors, who are doing the right thing and putting people first instead of profit, unlike the government across the way.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Courtenay—Alberni for his contribution to today's debate. We have worked together on a lot of Kurdish issues.

I want to go back to this number of one million dollars that one member in the government caucus likes to use often. I am going to refer to the article in the Toronto Star with the headline “Did the federal government really help 1 million Canadians find housing?” It states, “I mean, obviously we’ve double counted to rhetorical advantage, but that’s how much money is in the system. That’s why it’s $5.7 billion.”

Then it goes on. Reporter Alex Ballingall says, “However, [the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development] said the government doesn’t actually know how many individuals are affected by this spending, because it doesn’t have statistics for how many people live in each unit constructed, repaired, or targeted with a subsidy.” The article goes on to say that David Hulchanski, a professor at the University of Toronto, called the government's numbers “opaque and confusing”. Can the member comment on that?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

First, Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my good friend from Calgary Shepard for his support. I appreciate his interventions in the House, which are well thought out and well researched. He has the same questions I have.

The government comes up with these numbers and spins them. It is like the $40 billion for affordable housing: Liberals are stacking it. They are counting municipalities and provinces and money that is not even federal funds and talking about rolling it out again over the next decade.

What we need are numbers. We need numbers about delivering and building houses now, like the provincial government in British Columbia is doing.

Instead of talking about futuristic numbers, if Liberals get re-elected and form government after the next election, which is doubtful, we would like them to roll out a plan right now, while they are in power, in the next budget that shows action and urgency in responding to the experiences that people are living. They need to demonstrate to Canadians that these numbers are real. They need to do it now, not in the future. They need to stop stacking numbers and deliver real numbers.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, today I have the pleasure of speaking to the opposition motion.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands.

I am happy to have a chance to talk about the impact that our government's investments in housing are having in Quebec.

Last week, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development was in Montreal to announce three new affordable housing projects valued at more than $27.6 million. One of these projects will provide housing for 78 families and individuals, including newcomers.

It is very exciting to see community partners coming together to support this project by the Société de gestion Querbes. The Caisse d'économie solidaire Desjardins is also contributing to this project, and the Regroupement des organismes du Montréal ethnique pour le logement, or ROMEL, will offer a wide range of support services to the newcomers who will be living in this building.

This project is a great example of what can be achieved through the national housing strategy, a suite of unprecedented federal housing investments in communities across Quebec and Canada. From coast to coast to coast, the national housing strategy offers housing solutions that meet local needs and are supported by the community.

Another great example is a building slated for construction this March in Quebec City. It will have 131 rooms for emergency and support services for homeless and vulnerable individuals, as well as 18 transitional housing units for people living with a mental health condition. Services will be provided by Maison de Lauberivière, and a $32.5-million joint investment by the governments of Canada, Quebec and Quebec City will cover construction costs.

More and more projects like this are taking shape, and more and more families are moving into quality affordable housing units located in inclusive communities. Other projects will be announced in the coming weeks for Quebec. These innovative projects will meet the needs of vulnerable people and middle-class families.

Like all provinces, Quebec has affordable housing issues and not enough affordable housing to meet demand. In Montreal, that might mean there is a need for more affordable housing for newcomer families and at-risk populations. In the regions, recent consultations revealed needs that are different but just as worrisome.

In September 2017, we were fortunate to have a visit from the minister. He consulted with people in the community, including homeless people, people in vulnerable situations, and representatives of affordable housing groups. When it comes to housing, we often talk about metropolitan areas and the regions, but the suburbs have their own challenges. That is why the minister came to hear what stakeholders in my region had to say and get a feel for the situation. There are some very worrisome housing situations in my riding, particularly in Longueuil, where there is a shortage of accessible housing for seniors.

The low vacancy rate in Canada makes it clear that the supply of housing is insufficient to meet the growing demand. As a result, the cost of rent has gone up, which is making life increasingly difficult for those struggling to make ends meet.

As the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development said earlier, our government recognized right from day one that people across the country are having trouble finding suitable, affordable, good-quality housing. That is a serious problem that threatens the well-being of our families, our communities and our economy. That is why we started to make historic investments in our very first budget in 2016.

Since then, the Government of Canada has invested $5.7 billion across Canada, including $996 million in Quebec. Those investments have resulted in more, higher-quality affordable housing for 362,000 households, including families, seniors, women and children fleeing domestic violence, indigenous people, people with disabilities, people with mental health problems and addiction issues, and, of course, veterans and young adults.

Now the national housing strategy, which is currently being implemented, will have an even greater impact on the lives of Quebeckers.

As the minister mentioned earlier, this is a 10-year, $40-billion plan that will create 100,000 new housing units and help 530,000 families in housing need. While the member for Saskatoon West would like to see a greater emphasis on the construction of new housing, we know that it will take more than that to solve our housing problems.

We need to reinvest in renovating existing affordable housing so that families can keep living in them, without having to worry about overcrowding, drafty windows, mould behind the walls or dangerous staircases. That is why our plan will help repair and renew over 300,000 housing units.

The NDP platform makes no mention of reinvesting in existing housing and renovation. That is an important detail.

Our plan recognizes that tackling chronic homelessness requires more than just new construction. Our plan includes a comprehensive strategy to reduce it by 50%. I have already talked about homelessness in my riding. Consultations have been held regarding Canada's homelessness strategy, and the community shelter in Saint-Eustache is going to receive $281,000 between 2015 and 2019 so it can address homelessness in Saint-Eustache and the Lower Laurentians.

The national housing co-investment fund is a major pillar of the plan that supports the two projects I mentioned earlier. The objectives of the fund are ambitious, namely to build up to 60,000 affordable homes and to repair up to 240,000 existing affordable and community homes over the next 10 years.

This program focuses on local partnerships that meet the community's unique needs. We are supporting projects that bring together all levels of government, private and non-profit housing providers, and many community organizations.

In addition to this fund, there is the rental construction financing initiative, which provides low-interest loans specifically designed for developers to encourage the construction of more than 14,000 housing units in areas where the need is clearly demonstrated. By 2021, this initiative will have received $3.75 billion, which will be used to develop rental housing projects.

The $2-million affordable housing innovation fund is another initiative brought in by our government. It was launched in 2016 and will be used to finance 4,000 new housing units through new funding models and innovative building techniques.

These programs, all run by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, prioritize projects that exceed requirements in terms of affordability, accessibility and energy efficiency.

Quebec families trying to make ends meet will benefit the most from this fund. Investing in solutions to meet their housing needs will also benefit Quebec's economy. It will create employment in the residential construction and renovation sectors. It will also make communities more equitable, inclusive and prosperous.

Housing partnership agreements reached with the provinces and territories are another key element of our plan. We are working very closely with the newly elected Quebec government and discussions are well under way. The two levels of government are negotiating with Quebeckers' needs and interests in mind.

I am extremely proud of the collaboration and productive partnerships fostered by the national housing strategy. Developers from both the private and non-profit sectors are behind us and are keen to be part of this movement, which will make our communities stronger, more inclusive and more resilient. Best of all, a growing number of Quebeckers will be getting an affordable and better built home.

I hope that all members, especially my colleagues representing Quebeckers, will be asked to support the national housing strategy and to encourage people in their ridings to take advantage of the incredible opportunities afforded by the strategy.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I remind the member that she is not to include ministers' names when she is preparing her speech.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for the member. I have a very interesting riding. There is a wide variety of housing available, from shelters to middle-income and high-income housing. There is also a very large modular home park, and those who are living in this modular home park are running into a crisis for a number of reasons.

First, I am told that a mortgage on a modular home is treated as a chattel mortgage and that people have a better chance of getting a chattel mortgage on a used car than on a modular home. They are treated badly by banks. They are considered high risk. However, the modular community in my riding is a high-quality, beautiful community, with mature trees, a community centre and an active community league.

Second, the problem is that the lands are owned by private people. In this case, they are people who do not even reside in my province. There are complaints that they are not maintaining basic water and sewer services, and the residents are running into serious problems.

I wonder if the member could speak about the action the federal government is considering to assist people. There is a lot of interest in modular housing. I think it is incumbent on the federal government to have a clear strategy on how we can enable that. Perhaps it could make federal lands available or persuade municipalities and provinces to make land available so that this is possible as affordable housing.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her specific question about what she sees in her riding. The goal of the national housing strategy is absolutely to help Canadians. Our government is proud of helping nearly one million households and more than one million Canadians access a safe and affordable home. This is one of our objectives.

Our investments provided access to these millions of safe and affordable housing units, but the goal is to have new housing, and then to repair and renovate these units. The goal is to ensure that everyone has access to a safe place to raise their children.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Edmonton Strathcona for that intervention, because it is an incredibly important idea. Modular housing is one of the programs for the innovation fund that we supported in Vancouver. The mayor of Vancouver is looking to add additional housing at the Burrard Bridge with one of the indigenous communities that has territory in Vancouver. We are looking to provide support for that. We also provided support for an indigenous centre in Nanaimo that created passive housing, which is another innovation.

As we move into a new national housing strategy and the importance of innovation, not only to provide support for new forms of home ownership but to make sure we get energy efficiency and innovative energy-efficiency programs, how proud is the member that our government has made it a requirement for new housing so that it not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions but is cheaper to operate and rent for the residents who live in it?

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the parliamentary secretary.

Indeed, energy efficiency is a big issue in Canada. This is something I hear often in my riding. Constituents often talk to me about the environment and energy efficiency. We must therefore invest to ensure that the new housing units to be built are safe and energy efficient.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I want to ask my colleague how important it is that the Government of Canada continue to work with other agencies, such as provincial, municipal, and indigenous entities and the many different stakeholders, so that there is room for us to work and grow so that we are all-encompassing in the ongoing development of a housing strategy.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.

Indeed, all levels of government will have to work together to address the needs of different communities. No two ridings in Canada are alike. That is why it is important that all elected officials at all levels of government and stakeholders work together to find solutions tailored to each community.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour today to rise in the House to speak to what is such an incredibly important issue, not just throughout my particular riding or Ontario but indeed in the entire country. We have heard various stories from people today about the pressing need for affordable housing.

Even before I was involved in municipal politics in the city of Kingston, my first entry into politics was as a sitting member of the affordable housing development committee in the city. This was at a time, in 2004-05, when new money had been coming along thanks to the newly elected Liberal government in Ontario. A decision was made, with the federal government, to invest in housing because of the need and how badly we needed to start moving in the direction of building more affordable housing.

We had the opportunity in my riding, and in my city in particular, to look at how that housing was going to be developed, the various strategies for building affordable housing, whether it was building social housing, investing in co-ops or looking at residential complexes that would have a certain portion of affordable housing and would reduce the rent on those units.

What I have come to learn over the years as a result of my involvement in affordable housing, particularly in the Kingston area, is that there will always be more work that needs to be done on this important issue. In my opinion, we will never hit a place where we can say that we have enough affordable housing and can stop building it. There will always be a need for affordable housing. We should always do more to improve the quality of people's lives.

In my opinion, housing as one of the first building blocks for an individual in terms of how that individual is going to contribute to society is absolutely essential. If people do not have access to housing, they are much less likely to succeed in so many other aspects of our society.

The discussion today is really about what this government is doing versus what we are perhaps being asked to do. I am proud of the direction our government has taken when it comes to affordable housing.

Since 2016, when our first budget was introduced, which started the discussion on the housing crisis and put resources toward solving the housing crisis, more than $5.7 billion has been spent since then on nearly one million families across Canada, as we have heard many times today. Since 2016, over $2 billion in federal funding has been provided to the province of Ontario specifically.

How is this government's approach to affordable housing different from some of the other options that have been presented? I would argue that the most important component of this was the decision to take some time and plan out exactly how this would be implemented.

Based on the motion before us, the NDP would rather just throw a bunch of money at something. From having worked, when I was mayor of Kingston and as a city councillor, with Kingston & Frontenac Housing Corporation and Town Homes Kingston on projects, I have learned that one cannot just throw money at organizations and ask them to build stuff.

For quite a while, there was very limited access to funding. These organizations do not have the capability or the capacity to take what is being proposed by the NDP and inject it without having a plan as to how they are going to do it. That is where the national affordable housing strategy becomes so important, because we plan out how we are going to spend that money and how we are going to effectively deploy the resources to the different components that contribute to affordable housing.

After making the announcement in budget 2016, funding for the national housing strategy started to roll out in 2017. Last year, this government unveiled $40 billion over a 10-year period. There has been a lot of criticism from the opposition about rolling it out over that time, but as I said, these particular plans take time to develop and implement. Twenty-five per cent of the investment will go toward projects for women and girls specifically.

When we talk about women escaping violence, pay equity situations and single mothers, my mother worked for the Kingston Interval House for a number of years when I was in high school. She became aware of some of the problems and situations women and girls were going through as a result of domestic violence and how that impacted their housing. It is so critically important that when we develop a plan like this, we ensure there are safeguards in particular to protect vulnerable segments of our communities.

I will talk about the national strategy, the 10-year plan and the rental construction financing of $3.75 billion to support construction of affordable rental housing low-cost loans. Through the Canada community housing initiative, we will invest and continue to fund the provinces for half a million units of social housing to help keep affordable housing and pay for repairs. This is so critically important.

Something the NDP is perhaps missing is how important it is to repair our housing stock. The member for New Westminster—Burnaby said yesterday that repairing housing was not housing people. Coming from a background where I have been exposed to these housing corporations, I could not disagree with him more. It is vitally important that we continue to maintain our stock of housing.

In Ontario, in the early 1990s, the NDP government of the day, and some of the current members of Parliament were in that cabinet, made a decision to only invest in building new housing and totally neglected the existing stock, because it looked great. The NDP members were able to talk about the numbers and how many houses they were building. Nobody really cared about maintenance and infrastructure repairs.

As a result, when Harris came along in Ontario, after the NDP government, he downloaded all that housing, which had not been maintained and properly looked after by the Ontario NDP, to the municipalities. Now it was their problem. As a result of that, we ran into a situation where municipalities were faced with the responsibility of repairing and bringing the housing stock back up to standard.

It is critical that we invest in repairing affordable housing at the same time as we are building new housing.

I know I am getting close to the end of my time, but I want to address this. I have heard NDP members on a number of occasions today talk about the political posturing of the Liberals, what we are doing to position ourselves, what we are saying and how numbers are being reused. Let us look at the motion itself.

The New Democrats had an opportunity on an opposition day to bring to the House a motion that, by and large, could contribute to Parliament and government policy. Instead, they brought forward a motion that starts off with “That, in the opinion of the House, the government is failing to adequately address Canada’s housing crisis...” They know, right off the bat, that there is no way this side of the House can support that. Then they go on with a whole list of demands with respect to what the government should do.

Who is playing politics? All the NDP is doing with the motion, and it is important that Canadians realize this, is purposely setting ut up, knowing it will never pass. Therefore, in the election, the New Democrats can say they told the government to create half a million units of quality affordable housing, but it would not do it. Talking about politics, there is nothing more political than the motion that has been brought before the House today.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. He is saying that there are no politics in the government's way of doing housing. Did he read the article in the Toronto Star, in which the government's parliamentary secretary actually went on the public record to say that the housing units had been double counted, that they exaggerated the count? What was the reason for that? Rhetorical advantage, that the housing units that were supposedly built or existed. Who is actually playing politics?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, through the member's question, she never addressed that I am was accusing the NDP of playing politics. Rather, she tried to spin it around and tell us that was what the we were doing. However, in reality—

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Have you read the article? Those words are not mine.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member had the opportunity to stand and tell us that this was not what was going on, but she did not do that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the member for Vancouver East that she had an opportunity to ask a question. If she wishes to do so again, she will need to stand and be recognized.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.