Debates of Oct. 30th, 2023

Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, never in our history has Canada been so short on housing, has rent been higher or has it been more expensive to buy a house. Never has housing been further out of reach for regular Canadians.

How can the member stand up in the House of Commons with a straight face and declare a victory over housing or any kind of success whatsoever on behalf of his government?

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

Madam Speaker, I do not disagree with any of the challenges that he pointed out. All those challenges are real, and I spoke about them in my speech. I am not sure if he was listening, or if he came into the chamber just moments before I concluded. Perhaps he was listening out in the lobby, and that would be good.

I never said that we were declaring a victory. As a matter of fact, I talked only about the various programs put in place to work to create solutions. There will never be victory on this. He is talking to somebody who has been involved in affordable housing since 2005. I have seen the waiting lists in Kingston go up and come down. This is something that we will always be working on. I will never stand up and declare victory, because I know there is always more work to be done.

The problem is that the Conservatives, for all their talk, do not actually put forward any kind of plan. They have not said what they are going to do, other than rebrand what we have already done, which is the housing accelerator fund.

I know the member is going to get up and speak soon. I do not want to hear more complaints about it. I want to hear what they are actually going to do. They can debate me by telling me why my policy is not good and why theirs is better, but they have to actually talk about a policy. The problem is that they do not have one.

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

Madam Speaker, I grew up in co-op housing, so I know how important it is. Back when I grew up in the era of non-market housing, we were actually building non-market housing, at about 25,000 units a year. This was before the Liberals pulled out of the national housing strategy and then the Conservatives carried on with building nothing.

Right now, we are at 3.5% non-market housing. Europe is at 30%. Can members guess where we are at 30%? It is for REITs, the corporatized ownership of residential housing. We should not have that. Long Beach Auto in my hometown of Tofino is closing its doors because the owner cannot find staff housing. His brother-in-law, Ryan, who owns Mobius Books, says his biggest challenge is homeless people everywhere. It is impacting small business.

The free market is having a free ride. While the Liberals are claiming victory, are they going to finally step back in and make up ground on non-market housing in this country?

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

Madam Speaker, the member gave a bit of history there. He forgot the part where the Liberals, in the mid-2000s, actually tabled a plan. I know about this because I was on city council at the time. We were excited about it, but then Stephen Harper ended up getting a majority government. The member may have to remind me as to how that happened, but I think we all know.

The point is that we have seen it come and go several times. That is fair enough; I am not going to argue that. I think there is lots of blame to go around, but at the end of the day, we have plans that we have put in place. We are working with municipalities. We have been investing. Will it ever be enough? Probably not, but we can always strive to do more. That is what is important to us as policy-makers: to always push to do more.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, my friend and colleague emphasized the importance of working with municipalities, provinces and everyone in the sector. The Leader of the Opposition has taken the approach of blaming municipalities, municipal councillors and mayors, who are our partners in this space.

Could he elaborate on why it is so important, as a former mayor and municipal representative, to work with municipalities, rather than blaming them for the challenges we have nationally?

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

Madam Speaker, it is because, at the city council and the mayoral levels, people could not care less who is in government in Ottawa. They are looking for a partner. They are looking for programs to work with the government on to make communities better.

Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition has no interest in that. All he is interested in doing is picking fights in various municipalities by threatening people. That is not what we are going to do. We want to work with municipalities. As a former municipal leader, I know that is the better way to do it.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is always great to rise to speak on behalf of my constituents of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, and it is always great to rise on the topic of housing, something that is near and dear to my heart.

I am one of probably a handful of people in the House who have lived in social housing, and that was through the 1970s with my family. I have that perspective of being a tenant. My perspective of living in a social housing unit is probably a lot different than my mother, who had two small kids in tow when we moved into the unit on Oriole Crescent.

It is important, when we talk about the financialization of housing, that we focus on what many have talked about today, and in other debates, and that is the perspective of the tenant and the challenges they face in trying to make ends meet in a very challenging market. That has happened historically. We have heard that through the decades. We have seen the rise and fall of interest rates. We have seen housing challenges with supply issues. Those challenges, of course, are back today. There is no denying that we have a crisis today.

Being a municipal councillor for so many years, I had the opportunity to serve on our municipal non-profit. CityHousing Hamilton was the largest non-profit housing provider in the city of Hamilton. We managed 7,000 of the city's 14,000 affordable housing units. I worked with an incredible team, including people such as Tom Hunter, Sean Botham, Leanne Ward, and Adam Sweedland, who is the CEO now, who are the front lines in providing support.

As my friend and colleague just mentioned, for those who are on the front lines providing support to tenants who are in need and those looking to find an affordable place to live, there is really no issue of who the government is or what political stripe they are. What housing providers are looking for, in this case for units that were owned and managed by the municipality, is financial support and policies that protect tenants, as well as policies and legislation that would make investments in housing.

When I think back to my time serving for over a decade on our municipal non-profit, and for the last seven years before my election here, I served as its president, I look at the challenges that we faced at CityHousing Hamilton, and the other housing providers that we worked in consultation and co-operation with. They were people such as Jeff Neven at Indwell services and his team, who provide incredible support, not just in Hamilton but in southern Ontario as well. There are the organizations such as Mission Services with Carol Cowan-Morneau and her team there, including Sue Smith and others, who do tremendous work in assisting some of our most vulnerable Canadians and Hamiltonians.

Another organization is Good Shepherd. I had the opportunity to speak to Brother Richard the other day at the ONPHA Conference in Toronto. At the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association Conference, Brother Richard was talking about projects Good Shepherd has on the horizon.

All of those groups and organizations look to all three levels of government for support. As has been referenced earlier today, and I have relayed this point many times in the House, for 30 years, non-profit housing providers have been left to their own devices. Back in the 1990s, the federal government decided to exit the sector. They passed on and downloaded that responsibility onto the provinces.

In the province of Ontario, when that was downloaded, Mike Harris and the common-sense revolutionary guard in the Legislature decided to pass those services and the costs for social housing on to municipalities. Municipalities have struggled to not just provide quality services for those services that were downloaded onto them, but they have struggled to get at the affordability housing wait-list. Those units I mentioned earlier, thousands of them, were passed on to city hall with the keys and no resources attached.

Here we had thousands of post-war units that were providing support for tenants, a safe place to call home for many, and the municipality was then left to its own devices in trying to incorporate the costs of repairing and renovating those units in their municipal budgets, which is unheard of. It happens nowhere else in Canada, except the province of Ontario, where a Conservative government would see fit to download those services to the municipalities.

As members of CityHousing, we had to find unique ways to make ends meet. We were land rich and cash poor and looked to our holdings of land to provide opportunities for development. We went out to the private sector and found unique partnerships to try to encourage the private sector to build on properties that we owned and to provide new units. The units people were living in were post-World War II units, for instance, where the windows were leaking, the roof was leaking and maybe the elevator did not work in a medium- or high-rise building. We needed partners who had resources, and we allowed access to our lands in order to provide density and new units, trying to get at that 6,200- to 6,400-unit wait-list we had.

When I look at the national housing strategy and what it does, it is providing support to housing providers. I just listed a handful of many dozens in the city of Hamilton. The national housing strategy was a game-changer. Municipalities, since the early 1990s, had asked consecutive federal governments for resources for renovation and repair. Many of the units that stakeholders and housing providers managed in the city of Hamilton could not pass a property standards inspection because of the state of disrepair. They asked for resources to get at the wait-list. Some of our most vulnerable Canadians sit on that list, including seniors and persons with disabilities. We know that indigenous people make up a greater percentage of those on the wait-list than the general population in Canada does. We looked for ways and means to renovate, repair and build units on our own, but we just could not make it work.

The national housing strategy, when it was announced early in the first mandate, was a game-changer for municipalities. It was a program that provided opportunity and hope for housing providers that there would be resources and that we would not have to continue to try to make ends meet on our own.

I look at the investments that have been made. I will use Hamilton as an example. The co-investment fund meant that we had tens of millions of dollars in federal resources available to get at our oldest units, to get at energy efficiencies, to reduce greenhouse gases and to make our units more accessible for people with disabilities.

I look at the rapid housing initiative. It pulls people out of encampments and seeks to address the issue of women fleeing domestic violence. The rapid housing initiative, of course, came at a perfect time. It came during the pandemic, when municipalities were struggling to build new units with supply chain issues. When I look at the resources that were passed along there and look back to my participation on our board, I would say that irrespective of what one's partisan stripe was on city council or who participated as board members for a municipal non-profit, we were just thankful that a government recognized the need and recognized that municipalities and housing providers had their challenges.

I look to the Canada housing benefit. It provides a portable rent supplement to people who are looking for a market unit to live in. It also provides a top-up for them to go out and find an affordable place to call home.

I look at the housing accelerator fund, which we have talked about extensively here, and the assistance it is providing in working with municipalities as our partners and working with stakeholders in municipalities across the country. Instead of casting blame on municipalities, small-town mayors and councillors, we are working with our municipal partners.

What I have heard is interesting, because many of the people on the opposite side of the House in the Conservative Party are former municipal representatives. Every time the Leader of the Opposition gets up and chastises the gatekeepers, this fictitious bogeyman entity to blame for the housing challenges we have, members who were municipal councillors get up and encourage him to do more and say more to chastise municipalities.

It is important to recognize the inroads we have made with the national housing strategy. It is a fluid document. Members are going to continue to see changes. The GST waiver is an important initiative that we just announced. They are going to see movement on the co-op file. They are going to see other initiatives that have been called for. I am hoping for an acquisition strategy at some point in time. We know our rural partners need additional supports.

For me, these are all important initiatives and they prove that the federal government is listening to the stakeholders. It proves that we are providing those investments contrary to what we have seen for the last 30 years.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I was listening to my colleague from Hamilton, and the history lesson that we just got was interesting. The member talked about downloading, but he failed to recognize that it was the Paul Martin-Chrétien government that cut $25 billion to the provinces, and he was blaming the provincial government of the day under Mr. Harris for downloading it and causing all of this disruption to the housing market.

I remember those days when friends of mine who are plumbers could go out to City Hall at 8 a.m. and have a permit to get to work by noon. Now, they are waiting six to eight weeks.

The member was talking about this bogeyman, the gatekeepers, but he sounds like a gatekeeper. Could he please address the fact that it started at the top with $25 billion taken out of the provinces' hands for these types of services?

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would be happy to speak to that.

I have been very consistent. I said “consecutive federal governments”, and so I think all parties are to blame for the federal government's exit.

I also mentioned that for 30 years municipalities asked for support, including from the previous government. It was our government who stepped into that space for the first time in 30 years with a national housing strategy and $82 billion worth of support for everyone in this sector, including the private sector.

So, when the member opposite starts to talk about the lack of support and who is to blame, the Conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. They had their opportunity to provide a strategy and they did not.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague the following. In his opinion, how many additional housing units will we be able to build if the amendment proposed by the Conservatives is adopted? Will it really improve the situation of families in Quebec and Canada who are struggling with housing problems?

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the report speaks for itself in terms of the recommendations.

I mentioned just now that the national housing strategy is a fluid one, and we are going to continue to see changes. Unfortunately, what we have seen from the other side of the House are delay tactics. There were delay tactics at committee to get the report here in terms of finding consensus on recommendations. There have been delay tactics with other housing initiatives and votes that we have had in this House. So, my answer would be that I think we are going to continue to see this pattern of behaviour continue, with obstruction and delays, trying to prevent the government from moving forward with legislation that is going to help Canadians.

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

Madam Speaker, the Liberals try to pat themselves on the back and say that everything is great, but all we have to do is go outside and we will find homeless people everywhere. It is not working.

We lost 800,000 units under the Conservatives. They failed to deliver. In fact, they said that they were going to commit to making sure there was housing for 50% of homeless people within a decade. That is not good enough. The member before him started talking about how they will not be able to house everybody.

What we need is a wartime-like effort with a commitment and a timeline so that we actually do build housing for everybody. However, someone at home is listening to this government saying, “Sorry, we cannot promise that we are going to make sure you have a roof over your head.” What kind of country do we live in?

Will my colleague and his government put forward a plan with a timeline to ensure that every Canadian in this country has a roof over their head? We need a wartime-like effort. We need it urgently. It is impacting everybody.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I attended committee again today, and we had CMHC representatives there as well as representatives from infrastructure who manage our Reaching Home program, and we talked about the inroads that we have made.

For me, the most pressing issue of all the issues related to housing are encampments, and I think we need to provide additional assistance. However, it is a great first start in terms of the resources that we provided to those who try to get people out of encampments and into transitional supportive housing. We need to do more of that. I think that is the most pressing issue for those people who are living rough and do not have the services in order to deal with their mental health issues, in many cases, or addiction issues, and it is an all-of-government approach. I think I have been very consistent, as has the government, in terms of working with partners in this space to serve that population.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, it has been really interesting to sit in the House today and listen to Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker declaring victory on the housing situation, talking about all of the fantastic things they are doing right now and announcing new fancy program title after new fancy program title. We have seen, over the last eight years, ever-larger announcements in terms of spending, but never as part of the conversation do we get to actual outcomes. By “outcomes”, I do not mean the fancy titles or the big numbers; I mean actual homes being built for Canadians.

It has been eight years that the government has been in power, and it is now in partnership, coalition or whatever we want to call it with the NDP. We have never, ever, been so short of homes in this country. Rents have never been higher than they are right now. The cost to purchase a home has never been higher than it is right now. It is harder for Canadians to get housing than it has ever been in our history. Today it is harder than ever, after eight years of the Liberal party's being in government, yet speaker after speaker has come out there and, with a straight face, declared victory and made ever bigger pronouncements.

I do have to point out that I will be sharing my time with the hard-working member for Peterborough—Kawartha, and I thank my colleague beside me here, who snuck a little note in. Some might have noticed that, and every colleague of the House knows what that is like.

The interesting thing about this is that it has never been worse, but the only time it was even close was in the disastrous Trudeau years of the seventies and eighties. Many, but not all, members of the House remember the disastrous Trudeau legacy. We had a housing crisis, an inflation crisis and an economic crisis. We had a unity crisis. Does that sound familiar? Sometimes it gets a bit confusing when I talk about the disastrous Trudeau legacy, and some Liberal members from time to time bounce up and get defensive of their own government right now, another disastrous Liberal government. I understand the confusion, but if we remember those days, the real difficulty around them and the real tragedy around what happened in the seventies and eighties were not just the 14 deficits in 15 years that led to that unbelievable economic pain for families. Many of us remember it; we have just heard another member talk about how difficult it was during that time. However, we were not trading short-term pain for long-term gain; we actually had long-term pain as well, so it was short-term pain and long-term pain, because in the mid-nineties, from 1995 to 1997, another Liberal government had to pay the price for all of the deficits we ran up.

We ask this question on a regular basis in the House: How much interest is the Government of Canada going to be paying today on the debt it has run up over the last eight years? We never get an answer from the Liberals, but the answer is that it is in the $44-billion range, and the suggestion is now that, because of interest rates, that number could be higher. We pay the same on interest, on nothing, as we pay in the Canada health transfer right now in this country, after eight years of a Liberal-NDP government. We are throwing away between $44 billion and $50 billion a year on interest payments that we could be spending on other things that are important. We could be unlocking the potential of our housing sector if we just got a handle on our economy.

The Liberal answer, if they had that money, might be to just spend $50 billion, do a big announcement and call it something fancy, but we would say on this side that our leader today did a fantastic speech as he introduced his bill, Bill C-356. I would highly recommend that people check out his speech on social media: on X, Facebook or Youtube. His message is resonating with a growing number of Canadians. There are many points in the speech that people can reference. If people want to get a bit of hope and a bit of wind in their sails as they are trying to deal with crisis after crisis that they have seen befall them because of actions undertaken by the NDP-Liberal government of the day, they should read Bill C-356 and watch the speech the Conservative leader, the future prime minister, made today. I guarantee them they will find some hope in that speech.

However, we are dealing with the issues we have right now, and we could be dealing with this issue for two more years. It was very interesting today to hear NDP speakers. Many of them are very passionate about these issues and have very different views of the world than I would have. They have very different ideas than we have over here on how we achieve results for Canadians. It was very interesting to hear them speak so critically of the Liberal government and meanwhile every single day they vote to keep the government in power. As bad as an incompetent Liberal government is, it is even worse to be the party that is voting consistently to keep its members in power and is propping them up day after day.

I will touch on another thing that is kind of interesting. Over the last few days, when we talk about the economic situation, these things all connect together of course as we deal with the devastating economics. As we learned from the Trudeau debacle of the seventies and eighties, everything is connected and eventually there is a cost.

Over the last couple of days, we have had this conversation around the carbon tax. Apparently there are places in this country where Liberals hold seats but they are worried they will not hold them for very much longer. We found out that those Liberal members of Parliament have a lot of influence over their government, because the government is so scared it is going to lose those seats as it looks at the polls. It not just Atlantic Canada; it is other places too.

The Minister of Rural Economic Development told the entire country, in an interview, that the reason people are getting a break in one part of the country on the carbon tax is not because it makes environmental sense or even because it makes economic sense but because it makes political sense. If someone votes Liberal, they will be rewarded with tax breaks, but if someone is in a part of the country that does not vote Liberal, they do not get those same rewards.

As we are having this conversation, I started thinking about where this goes next. Is there going to be another interview next weekend that is going to talk about a housing program, for example, that is going to benefit municipalities that vote Liberal? I do not think the NDP has this kind of power, but does it maybe extend to NDP ridings too? I do not think NDP members have been strong enough negotiators to work that into their deal, but perhaps. These are reasonable questions Canadians might have. Where does this end?

The Liberal Party is clearly panicking. It is clearly plummeting. It is in a free fall right now and making decisions that, in a normal context, would not make any sense. It has been making those types of decisions for the last eight years, which has brought us to where we are right now, but Canadians are waking up to this.

My hope is our NDP colleagues start to see this as well and that at some point in time we have an opportunity to have a confidence vote in this Parliament, like we have on a fairly regular basis. Maybe this confidence vote would be different. Maybe rather than just saying with words that they do not have confidence in the government, because we all understand that, they will actually vote that way on behalf of their constituents. Maybe we can have these debates in a meaningful way, get this country back on track and have these debates during potentially an election time even. That is how dire the situation is right now.

As I wrap up, I really look forward to questions. I hope in the questions coming from the Liberals' side maybe they will ask us about Bill C-356. I have some points I can get to if they are curious to know answers to some of the challenges we have.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I had the opportunity to read Bill C-356 and it sounds a lot like our housing accelerator fund. I guess the best form of political flattery is political plagiarism.

I have had the opportunity to look through the last several housing plans from the Conservatives. They have talked about money laundering, about making land available through the Canada lands initiatives and addressing amortization periods. They have talked about everything except providing support to people: seniors, persons with disabilities, the people who sit on affordable housing wait-lists.

My question to the member opposite is: Why?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, it would be hard to accuse me of not standing up for the rights of people with disabilities or vulnerable Canadians in this House.

The Liberals fearmonger about cuts all the time. The only time that significant cuts were undertaken, unbelievable, mind-numbing cuts, was under a Liberal government, when 32% was cut from the Canada health transfer and the Canada social transfer in two years under a Liberal government because of the disastrous Trudeau economic legacy of the seventies and eighties, 14 deficits in 15 years.

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

Madam Speaker, I find it quite ironic when Conservatives rise in this House and blame the NDP when they are responsible for losing 800,000 units when they were in government.

Also, they have not negotiated or gained any housing in the whole eight years I have sat in this place. New Democrats have been trying to get getting housing built. If we were in government, there would be much more. We would have a plan to make sure that everybody has a place to live. We were able to negotiate over $7 billion for indigenous people.

All I hear about the Conservatives' plan is to sell 6,000 public buildings and 15% of federal public lands. We know how that works. We saw Doug Ford in Ontario do it with the Greenbelt. He lined the pockets of a handful of developers for billions of dollars, $6.8 billion.

What is my colleague going to do to make sure that does not happen with federal lands and buildings if that is the Conservatives' plan?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I have been hearing talk back and forth. Some people seem to want to answer questions when it is not their time to answer. Some people want to ask a question when it is not time. I would ask them to wait for the proper time.

The hon. member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

First of all, Madam Speaker, let me say that I have a lot of respect for the hon. member and the work that he does. He and I disagree on a lot of things, but I have a lot of respect for his passion and commitment to people.

The member talked about the influence that the NDP has had on the government and pointed to some things that he calls results, but if we look at the reality, the situation in housing in this country has never been worse. After eight years of the government, the situation for Canadians regarding housing has never been worse, and Conservatives look forward to turning the tide on that.

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

Madam Speaker, I am looking for what the plan is. If the plan is to put pressure on local governments to create density, what are the Conservatives going to do to ensure that a large part of that housing is going to be non-market housing?

Right now in this country, there is 3.5% non-market housing and 30% corporate ownership of housing, something I am sure the Conservatives are very supportive of. Europe has 30% non-market housing, but if we go to Europe, we will not see homelessness.

I want to work with my colleague. He is a friend. I respect a lot of the work we have done together on mental health and addictions. I want to hear what the Conservatives' plan is so that we can find some common ground in this place. That is really what is needed right now from all parties. I think there is a willingness, but we have to find a pathway to get there.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, the reality is that even in the member's second question, he uses lingo and terminology that does not talk about results. We need housing. If the government is going to transfer money to municipalities for housing, it would be reasonable for the government to hold those municipalities accountable for actually creating housing. That is what Conservatives are going to do.

I do not have enough time to give any more background on the Conservative leader's speech. I would just encourage Canadians to find it online and watch it.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. It is always a big honour to stand in the House of Commons to speak on their behalf.

Without a doubt, the biggest issue facing Canadians right now is housing. If anybody would argue that with me in the House, I would definitely die on that hill. It is the number one issue across the country.

Tonight, we are talking about the Liberal national housing strategy. This report came out of the HUMA committee, which I sit on, so I was part of it, and I want to go through a couple of things.

The report says the Liberal-NDP government “announced their national housing strategy in 2017, with great fanfare”. I guess it was not the Liberal-NDP government at that time. It was just the Liberal government. It went on:

The Prime Minister even went so far as to call the [national housing strategy] “transformational”. The [national housing strategy] is supposed to:

Remove 530,000 Canadian families from housing needs.

Reduce chronic homelessness by 50%.

Protect 385,000 community housing units.

Provide 300,000 households with affordability support.

Repair and renew 300,000 existing housing units.

Create 100,000 new housing units.

But here is what has happened since 2015 under the Liberals and their [transformational housing strategy]:

House prices have doubled in Canada....

Monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled to over $3,000 per month.

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities is $2,213, compared to $1,171.

Nine out of ten young people in this country who do not own a home believe they never will.

It now takes over 60% of Canadians' income to cover the cost of owning a home.

According to the OECD (2023), Canada has the largest gap between home prices and incomes among G7 nations.

Canada has the fewest number of homes per capita in the G7.

The CMHC is predicting that housing starts will decline by up to 32% this year.

That is the situation we are in. I am 44 years old, and never before in my life have I seen a housing crisis like this.

Today, at committee, we had the opportunity to welcome back members of CMHC and Infrastructure Canada. For people who are watching at home, Infrastructure Canada oversees a program called Reaching Home, the program that is supposed to fight homelessness. What I am about to tell members happened today at Parliament in Ottawa. The bureaucrat from Infrastructure Canada said that it had seen “tremendous results” with the money from this program. Tremendous results in homelessness, I would say.

We are less than a mile from the ByWard Market. Anybody who has come to Ottawa in their life knows that was the place to go. There was BeaverTails. It was where they went when they visited Parliament Hill. When people come to Parliament Hill now, they do not even recognize it. That is the situation across this country. In my community of Peterborough—Kawartha, there are tents; encampments; homeless people, families and seniors; and homelessness. However, we have seen tremendous results.

I am just going to do a quick google here. I am not sure what tremendous results they are speaking of, but here are just a couple of headlines from the last month. “Metro Vancouver homeless count up 32%”. “Homeless encampments at ‘all-time high’ in Ottawa”. The Ottawa article goes on to say, “According to data from Brown's department, city staff have responded to 375 encampments so far this year. That's way up from 343 during all of last year and 248 in 2021. In 2020, the first year with comparable data, there were just 65.”

Going from 65 in 2020 to 375 in 2023 means tremendous results. It was shocking and unnerving to hear the justification that they are doing a great job when all we have to do is go to any downtown in this country to see otherwise.

I asked people on Facebook to write and email me because it is critical that we listen to our constituents. There is obviously a disconnect from reality. We see it. We see the political game. We saw that this past weekend with the carbon tax. First they were saying, “The carbon tax is great. It is wonderful. It is really helping everything”. The Conservatives have been sitting over here for years saying that it is not working and it is not a good plan. Now they are saying, “You know what, we might be losing seats. We'd better change our approach”. This is about political science, not about humanity.

I want to read this to the House because it really summarizes the Canada that the Prime Minister has created. My constituent wrote:

Hi Michelle, I don’t normally get involved in politics or ever even wrote to a politician. But the issue around addiction and homelessness is really starting to frustrate me. And the reason is I live in the south end of Peterborough and we are constantly having issues with people trying to get into our cars. Yesterday we had someone walk right up our driveway in front of my wife and go into our backyard and snoop around before leaving. On multiple occasions we have had people sleep in our kids mini houses in our backyard and my wife sees them when she goes to work at 5:30. As a parent of two young kids we can’t even let our children play in our own backyard for fear of people coming back there and we don’t know what these people will do. The fact that they now do it right in front of us and that we can’t do anything is a bit worrisome. I don’t know the solutions I just wanted to share a bit of my story so hopefully something can be done about this. So kids can get back to being kids and not have any fear of who or what is in there toys or if there toys will even be there when they want to use them because someone else has stolen them. Thanks for reading and hopefully something changes through all levels of government.

That is one of thousands of emails I have. They are an indication of the country we live in. It is chaos. It is a public safety nightmare. At the core of all of this is housing.

There is the Reaching Home program, which is supposed to help with homelessness. According to the website, “Reaching Home has 4 regional funding streams that provide funding to communities to address local homelessness needs.” We did the work to go online to see how to access these funds, and as of October 27, the designated communities funding stream is closed, the indigenous homelessness funding stream has no way to apply, the rural and remote homelessness funding stream is closed and the territorial homelessness funding stream has no way to apply. That, my friends, is what we are talking about when we say “bureaucracy”. That, my friends, is what we are talking about when we say “gatekeepers”. They talk about these programs that no one can even access.

Let me mention another a little thing about the Reaching Home strategy. It is all fine and well to have access to programs that no one can access, but there is no plan for treatment and recovery in any of this. There is a very wishy-washy, wraparound support system and them saying, “Yes, we are going to offer supports”.

I challenge any member in the House to find out if somebody in their local community has had timely access to the supports they need to get out of addiction, to get out of abuse, to be successful, to leave the environment they are in, because it is certainly not in here. If someone wants success in this country, they have to help people, and “wraparound supports” is a really nice term, but it means nothing if nothing is in place. There is nothing in this country under these Liberals, and after eight years of Justin Trudeau, that is designated and that focuses on treatment and recovery—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member mentioned the Prime Minister by name. She knows she is not supposed to do that. I am sure it was an error. I would just ask her to be careful.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, the reality is this: homelessness is the worst that it has ever been. I, along with my Conservative colleagues, came here to fix it. That is why I ran. We have to do something. This national housing strategy is just more paperwork. Every expert has said that we need the private sector to close the gap. We need more supply, yet the Liberals and NDP punish people who want to build homes.

I ask everyone watching to please vote Conservative and please pay attention. We need more houses built in this country, and we are the only party that would do it.