Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to stand and speak in the House, especially when the motion in front of us involves housing, in particular the proposal to try to get us to do the work we need to do, which is actually work the Liberal government is already engaged in doing.
I referenced my father in an earlier comment. I will reference my mother now, who once told me that if people want to make a point, they vote NDP; if people want to make a difference, they vote Liberal; and if people want to make a mistake, they vote Conservative. I raise that issue because, while the theory behind what the NDP is proposing is good as it reflects our throne speech, our campaign commitments and the record of this Liberal government, it is the practicality of it that I do not understand.
I asked members a question earlier. During a campaign debate with my opponent, I said that they had referenced one tax seven different ways, and it was all spent on pharmacare, but it also promised to deal with different housing programs. Dental care was added into the program, and other things, but the same dollar kept getting spent over and over again, even though it was only one dollar. The Conservatives like to say there is only one taxpayer, but I think the NDP needs to be reminded that its tax increase is only one tax increase. It has layered several different programs on top of this, claiming that there are savings that will flow from these investments. Those savings, I would remind the NDP, are downstream. There are upfront costs to all of the NDP's proposals, which the Parliamentary Budget Office identified. There are also unintended risks to what the New Democrats are proposing, and if there is no plan to put their theory into place, then they are just words.
The NDP is great on slogans. All of these slogans are good. All of these ideas have value, but what is not there is the practical plan to achieve them, and without a practical plan to achieve them, they are just empty words. I will give the House a couple of examples. Finally the NDP has talked about the issue of urban, rural and northern housing. Finally the New Democrats are beginning to address one of the most critical housing issues in the country, and they say we have done nothing to address it.
That is just wrong. We identified it in the national housing strategy as the chapter that we are currently working on, and we are about to deliver on that. The throne speech makes that commitment, and the work is already under way, but in the interim we created an indigenous stream and increased funding in the indigenous stream in reaching home. We made all of the programs eligible to northern, rural and urban communities for indigenous-led housing providers. Additionally, we put carve-outs into the northern housing strategy, specifically for northern housing accomplishments, because we knew that previous programs had a gap there. On top of all of that, we also made sure that our investments into things like the rapid housing initiative are focused on, and eligible to, indigenous housing providers.
In the interim we have actually invested in those programs while we pull together and work with urban indigenous, rural indigenous and northern indigenous leadership to make sure we set up a by- and for-indigenous housing program. That work is under way. Those investments are coming. When I ask the member for Vancouver East to give me a dollar amount, a housing target or strategy, or to say who she is working with, and we have asked these questions repeatedly, the NDP just says, “Do it now and do more.”
I appreciate doing more. It is a great political slogan. I have no problem with trying to do more, working to accomplish more and actually delivering more, which this government has done. However, just jumping up and down and saying, “Do more!” is not governing. It is a chant in a protest, and as my mother said, if one wants to protest, one has a party. If one wants to get things done, one has a government.
On the issue of recovery for all, I invite the members of the NDP to look at that campaign and see which member of Parliament appears in the campaign. They should check the video for it. They can tell me whether they see my face there, or their leader's face there. They should check the video, because that campaign is being put forth by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness: an organization we work with day in and day out to get better strategies in place to support homeless individuals. This is not just during COVID. We have been doing this since we first got elected.
The rapid housing initiative, the reprofiling of reaching home and the advancement of the legislation to achieve the right to housing were all done with the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. If members read all six points of the recovery for all program, they will see our government has already started to respond to those six calls to action with investments such as the billion-dollar rapid housing initiative, and the almost half-billion dollars invested into reaching home to protect people during COVID and to build a stronger network of organizations to fight homelessness across the country.
When members talk about the urban, rural and northern housing strategy, they can talk to the member for Winnipeg Centre. We have been working very closely together, not only to get a study done in Parliament, but also simultaneously with urban indigenous housing providers, and their allies in rural and northern communities, to formulate what the receiving side of that program would look like and how we would work with housing providers across the country to achieve what we need to. All of this is being worked on.
When it comes to the right to housing, I recall a story I heard from my sister in Victoria. The NDP candidate came to her house, knocked on the door and said the government had done nothing about the right to housing. They laid into the national housing strategy as if it did not exist and said there had not been a penny invested in Victoria. This simply is not true.
Mayor Helps and I have met dozens of times, formally and informally, to talk about Victoria's progress in getting to functional zero. Without COVID, we are pretty sure we would have gotten there this year. Why? It is because we steered a $3 million block-funding initiative right into the greater Victoria area, with the provincial government and the regional housing authority. When they ran into a wall, we topped it up by $10 million.
I have opened programs and buildings in Victoria, yet the candidate went to my sister's house, stood on her porch and said the government had not even been there. My sister's response was, “Every time he comes to Victoria he stays with me. I know he comes to Victoria to make those announcements.”
Can we do more? Absolutely. We are working hard on that. Are we delivering more dollars in real time in a real way? Of course we are.
I invite the NDP to stop screaming “more” and start talking about “how”, because that is the way results will end up landing in people's lives. It is not by protesting in front of Parliament Hill. It is by working on Parliament Hill. It is not by talking about more money for housing. It is by building, subsidizing and repairing more housing.
I remind the House leader of the NDP that last term he said repairing housing is not part of a national housing strategy. What a ridiculous claim to make. The next week I was in Burnaby giving money to a co-op to fix housing so that people did not have to move out. Good housing systems will repair housing, subsidize housing and build housing. That is how we build a national housing strategy. We do not just chant “do more”; we actually get more done.
I have no problem supporting the concept of the motion before us. In our throne speech, we talked about exploring ways to make the tax system more fair by looking at the way wealthy Canadians may be able to pay more of their fair share, because the system has changed over time and is no longer as fair as it could be. On page 19 and 20, we said we would end chronic homelessness, that there would be a northern and indigenous housing strategy and that we were going to invest in social and co-op housing. Those programs are currently being constructed and will be in front of the House in short order.
As for the right to housing, we are halfway through the appointments process. We have moved the legislation through the House and we are moments away from signing off on the advisory council. The housing advocate will be constructed with the housing advisory panel, which will include people with lived experience. All of these things are part of what the UN rapporteur for housing, who helped us draft the legislation, told us we needed for achieving on those files.
I am not going to stand here and be told by the NDP to get back to work when I am doing the work. I will tell the NDP to stop chanting “more” and start showing us how, because the lack of practical application of their ideas is why they are in fourth place. It is why they fail to take government. The chants, protests and slogans remind me of somebody: the Premier of Ontario. They can govern with slogans if they want, but they do not deliver results. We have to be practical, we have to be real, we have to achieve concrete budgetary items and then we have to work with partners to deliver.
As for housing, things are getting better and better. Is there more work to do? Yes. Do I push our government to do better? Absolutely. Do my constituents demand it of me? They do, every day I am in the riding.
I cannot get past this proclivity to chant slogans and chant “more”. I see this motion as a chance for the NDP to say there are five things the government has said it is going to deliver and then demand the government does this now. Then, when it does, they can try to take credit.
The number of times NDP members referenced Tommy Douglas is quite interesting, and I will tell members something about Tommy Douglas that I really respect. He built the health care system before he came to Ottawa and then scaled it across the country. He did not land in Ottawa with an idea and just screamed, “Do it, do it, do it.” He got it done first and then shared it with the rest of the Canada.
That is the practicality I look for in the NDP, but I never see it in that party anymore. It disappoints me, and it is why I ran for the Liberals. It is why I beat the NDP in my riding. It is why we will continue to do the good work we are doing. We are getting it done, not just talking about it.
