Madam Speaker, I always find it interesting to be in the House and to listen to the Conservatives and the Liberals fight about who did housing worse. As the NDP, we can tell them that they both did it terribly. Both governments decided they were going to walk away from their responsibility to offer safe, human-right housing in Canada and give it to the market.
Now the Liberals and Conservatives are seeing the fruits of their misguided decisions in the fact that people in my community and other communities across this country are living rough in tents, in parks, on benches and in their cars. Meanwhile, right beside them are 20-, 30-, 40- and 50-storey luxury towers. We only have to go to Vancouver and see the chandelier that is hanging under a bridge as public art steps away from Canadians who are living in tents. They cannot afford to get into these luxury towers and they are having their housing removed. I would ask the Conservatives and the Liberals, as they come to what the Liberals called a meaningless debate today, to think about what they have done and how it has manifested.
I want to say a big thanks and really recognize the member for Vancouver East, my colleague in the NDP, who was years ahead on the issue of the financialization of housing and the role and impact it was having on people. I say to the member from the Liberal side that the amendment of adding impact is important because there has been an impact. We can think about this study and about what my colleague the member for Vancouver East saw in her community in Vancouver, people becoming homeless and more and more people finding housing out of reach while luxury condo after luxury condo was being built. I saw the same thing in my community of Port Moody—Coquitlam, where purpose-built affordable rental units were bought up by wealthy developers and financialization landlords to create more housing that the people they were displacing could not afford to get into.
I think about when one of the very first luxury condo projects got approved in my riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam, back in 2014 and 2015, and the developer came and said they were going to do rental housing beside it. They were going to do two towers and do rental housing. Back in 2014 and 2015, we thought that would be great. What they did build was a luxury building. It was a luxury rental building not accessible for the people they had displaced when they bought up the old affordable purpose-built rental housing and built their two luxury towers.
I want the current government members to know that their decisions, and the decisions of the Conservatives before them, have made people homeless. It is not just me saying this. The federal housing advocate said the aim of these people, these corporations, involved in the financialization of housing is to maximize their profit by increasing rent and cutting services for tenants. They are doing it on purpose.
I will go back to my colleague from Vancouver East, who put a dissenting report together for this financialization of housing report to say that the government needs to stop this loss of affordable purpose-built rental housing and to start protecting these buildings. I want to give credit to the B.C. NDP government, David Eby and the housing minister Ravi Kahlon. They immediately put forward a $500-million fund to protect affordable purpose-built rental housing in our communities across B.C.
What did the federal government do? It did nothing. It was asked over and over again to protect affordable rental housing and the government members let it ride with the market. It is totally unacceptable and it is why we are in this position we are in today. The government is missing in relation to protecting affordable housing and creating affordable housing.
Do members know why? It is because the Liberals are propping up these landlords. These financialized corporate landlords are their donors. They are their friends. They know them personally. They are protecting them in committee. In fact, as the NDP, when I asked for one of these financialized landlords to come to committee and talk about what it does with respect to its housing, the Liberal parliamentary secretary for housing protected it and voted against having it come in. It was the same with the Conservatives. We have not heard from these landlords that are financializing housing because they have been protected by the Conservatives and the Liberals.
I will add that Starlight Investments, one of these financialized landlords, was invited twice to committee to testify and twice it refused. Instead of the Liberal government saying that was not acceptable as it is accountable to Canadians, it said it was fine. In fact, during the summer, the chair of that committee said that it was fine and he would let it send in a written response. No. It needs to come to committee, talk about its business practices and what it is doing.
I also want it to talk about its partnerships with the federal government because it has connections to these financialized landlords through asset management. The financialization of housing is not just happening out there in the market with these landlords; it is happening right inside our pension funds with choices being made by the Liberal government.
Therefore, there is a lot of work to do here. Who is suffering? The most vulnerable people in Canada. I want to talk about seniors. Seniors are some of the longest-holding purpose-built rental tenants. For 10, 15, 20 even 25 years they have been in those apartments. They are the ones who are being targeted by these landlords who want to financialize. They want to get them out so they can jack up those rents. It is absolutely disgraceful. In B.C., for the first time ever, people over 55 are finding themselves homeless. This is absolutely unacceptable.
I go back to the Liberal member who made a speech earlier and said that this debate is meaningless and does not do anything. That is their choice. The Liberals have decided to do nothing, to let seniors, persons with disabilities, single moms and immigrants to this country become homeless. The Liberal government is involved in that decision to let financialized landlords kick them out of their homes. There was recently some research on this that came through the CBC. There is some very strong research that proves that these financialized landlords raise rents through these above-guideline rent increases more than any other type of landlord. Not just that, they evict at a higher rate. Where is the federal government to stop this exploitation and the pushing of people out onto the streets? It is nowhere. It does not even want to have a discussion about it at committee. It is protecting its financialization landlords. It is not taking this crisis seriously. I ask the government this. How many more seniors, persons with disabilities, single mothers and indigenous women having to give up their kids because the shelter does not allow them to bring their kids with them—