Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Perth—Wellington mentioned that I had a chance to visit his constituency over the course of the summer for a couple of days. It was a great honour to meet the folks in his community who are working hard to address homelessness and affordability. Of course, it is shocking to see the number of homeless encampments that exist not just in big cities but also in smaller communities like those he represents. I will say that it is not like they were surprised to see him; he is an active, engaged leader in his communities and is well known for compassionate leadership, so I thank him for it.
I also thank him for moving a motion to concur in the report, because it is, of course, in many ways the issue of the day. The Auditor General tabled the report on November 5, 2022.
I have said before, and I am sure it is the position of everybody in the chamber, that Canada cannot reach its full potential until everyone has a safe, warm bed to sleep in at night. No human can reach their full potential unless they have a safe, secure bed to sleep in at night. In a country as rich as Canada, this cannot just be a dream. It should not be something we just work toward. We have to do better than that. It must be an achievable reality. As hon. members of the House, we see the most vulnerable all the time. We see them as we walk up the steps to Parliament Hill. This is avoidable.
Yesterday in this place we had a historic vote where the House unanimously declared that Canada is in a housing crisis that requires urgent action by the federal government to end homelessness. This is not hyperbole; there is a crisis. The unfortunate reality for too many Canadians is that the numbers prove that we are in a crisis. Since 2018, the number of homeless people in Canada has increased by 20%. The number of chronically homeless people has increased by 38% relative to 2018. This is what the Auditor General examined in the report: chronic homelessness and the Liberal government's failure to do anything to change it.
Chronic homelessness is long-term homelessness, meaning that someone was without a bed to sleep in for 180 days or more last year. What did the Auditor General have to say about chronic homelessness and the Liberal government's effort to do anything about it? On page 7, the report says that Infrastructure Canada, ESDC and the CMHC had no idea whether their efforts improved housing outcomes for people experiencing homelessness or chronic homelessness for other vulnerable groups. They did not know.
Page 8 of the report says that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, as the lead on the national housing strategy, which we all remember was announced with great fanfare in 2017, spent about $4.5 billion of a $9-billion commitment, “but did not know who was benefiting from its initiatives.” CMHC also took the position that it was not directly accountable for addressing chronic homelessness.
In simple terms, Canada's Auditor General concluded that the Liberal government does not know whether the programs for which it announced billions of dollars of spending aimed at reducing chronic homelessness made any difference at all. What is worse is that CMHC, Infrastructure Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada were all of the opinion that not one of them was actually in charge or the lead on the file. They all pointed at each other saying that it must be the other as it was not them.
We can be clear. We know who is in charge; it is the Prime Minister. It is clear that he has failed Canadians when it comes to homelessness. Perhaps the most damning part of the report is that when the Liberal government was faced with the rise in homelessness as a result of its policies, it firmed up that it did not even think it was in charge. It said that there is a housing crisis. It is more than that; it is a crisis in leadership. It is an absence of leadership.
Again, in the Auditor General's report we learn that Infrastructure Canada spent $1.63 billion on reducing homelessness as part of its Reaching Home program, yet the audit found that the department did not know whether homelessness had actually increased or decreased during that time. Canadians must know what the Liberals and the gatekeepers do not seem to know: Homelessness is up under their watch, and we see it everywhere.
The Homelessness Services Association of B.C. found that 4,821 people identified as homeless in the Vancouver area this year, compared to 3,634 in 2020. That is a 32% increase, the highest spike between consecutive counts since reporting began in 2005. In 2023, the nationally coordinated point-in-time count in Nanaimo showed that the number of people experiencing homelessness has been steadily increasing, and since 2016 it has almost tripled.
According to the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, the number of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in the Halifax Regional Municipality jumped from 119 in August 2019 to 879 in August 2024. That is an increase of a whopping 639%.
In Toronto and the GTA, as of May 5, there were 256 encampments on City of Toronto property. The latest Parks, Forestry and Recreation numbers from March 15, 2024, show that there were a total of 202 encampments recorded at 72 separate locations across the city. In 2023, there were 82 encampments at 24 sites.
It is not just the big cities. In northern Ontario, according to the “Report Card on Homelessness for 2023”, there were 237 people experiencing homelessness in Greater Sudbury, a jump of 164 people since 2022. According to that same report card, the number of encampments in Greater Sudbury jumped from 25 at the end of 2022 to 113 at the end of 2023. There are approximately 359 people on the by-names list of individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness in the city of Timmins.
In Kelowna, there were a record number of deaths among the city's homeless in 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, the annual average number of deaths among homeless people was 143. In comparison, the annual average between 2021 and 2022 was 305.
These are damning statistics, but the reality of the people behind them is far more painful. They are not just numbers. They are human beings who our system has completely and abjectly failed.
When I was mayor of Huntsville, there was a housing crisis brewing already. We had done all kinds of things as a municipality, but in Parry Sound—Muskoka oftentimes homelessness is hidden. People are couch surfing or sleeping in vans. I will give the example of Lions Lookout, a beautiful spot in Huntsville where occasionally we would see a van parked overnight because somebody was staying there. Today, this happens with a lot more frequency; it is all of the time, and not just one van but multiple vans. Rental vacancy rates in Huntsville, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Parry Sound have been under 1% for almost a decade.
The government talks about affordable housing and homelessness, but after nine years, the situation is demonstrably worse. More than 235,000 people in Canada are estimated to be homeless, in core housing need. We are talking about people who are actually homeless. As to those who are not visibly homeless, there could be between 450,000 and 900,000 people.
All of this exists within the context of the government's national housing strategy, an $80-billion plan that was supposed to be life-changing and transformational, the Prime Minister said. We have seen the transformation. We have seen Canadians' lives change, and it is quite clearly not for the better.