Madam Speaker, first, I would like to thank the member for Edmonton Centre-East for bringing forward this important motion today. It gives us an opportunity to debate the issue of definitions around affordable housing, poverty and homelessness.
I will begin by saying I represent the riding of Vancouver East which includes very low income areas, in particular the downtown east side.
One constituent I visit fairly frequently lives at Main and Hastings in an old building that was probably built 80 years ago. She lives in what the member referred to as a single room occupancy, the room being barely 8 feet by 10 feet. She has a sink but shares a toilet and a shower with probably 25 other people. It is an eight storey building where the elevator does not really function, so people climb up and down the stairs.
That young woman is only 30 and in very poor health. She lives in poverty and is on social assistance. Luckily the housing is managed by a very good non-profit housing society, but the housing conditions she endures are something that no one in this room could endure. It is something I think most Canadians would describe as appalling in a country as wealthy as Canada. To me she could be characterized as someone who is homeless.
A young man came to see me a few weeks ago. He had a shopping cart that he pushed around on Terminal Avenue. The cart was filled with clothes that he tried to sell. However it was confiscated by the city engineering department because it was getting tough on panhandlers and people who lived on the street. That man, who lives in poverty, was literally trying to sell the clothes off his back in order to make a few bucks so he could buy a cup of coffee.
I met another man a few days later who could not get a prescription filled for pain killers. His teeth were so rotten they were falling out and he was in incredible pain. Although he was covered by pharmacare, he could not get his prescription filled because of the way he looked. It was a clear example of what we call poor bashing, which is discrimination against poor people.
When he went to the pharmacy and handed in his prescription to get some painkillers. The pharmacists looked at him and said they thought he would sell the drugs on the street or do something wrong. Therefore they did not fill the prescription. He continued to try to find a pharmacy that would fill his prescription, all the while in pain because he was so poor that he could not get his teeth fixed.
I use these examples because the real issue before us today is not so much the definition of poverty and affordable housing and homelessness. It is what the heck we are going to do about it. I have met people all across the country, beginning in my own community in east Vancouver, who are suffering under the oppression of poverty, homelessness and lack of housing every single day. This is as a result of government policy.
I listened to the parliamentary secretary, someone who I respect very much. However it drives me crazy when I hear people ascribe homelessness to mental health, alcoholism and somehow being all about individual problems. Never once do we talk about the fact that homelessness is as a result of not building housing. The reality is homelessness exists in the country because the government abandoned its housing policies in 1993. It makes me feel pretty damn mad when we get into the whole policy speak of blaming individual people.
I have a very good friend in Vancouver, Jean Swanson, a leading anti-poverty activist in this country. She just wrote a book called “Poor-Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion”. She details very clearly how government policy, not just from this government but over the years, has really been a policy of bashing poor people by excluding them and deliberately designing policies that keep people where they are in terms of economic disparity and economic inequality.
I could tell the member for Edmonton Centre-East very quickly what definitions are used by groups, and indeed the government every single day. Basically, CMHC says that people who are paying more than 30% of their income for housing are living in housing that is not affordable. That is the rule that CMHC lives by. It used to be 25% in the 1970s.
For the definition of homelessness, just to talk to the United Nations or to any group in Canada that deals on the frontline in trying to cope with an increasing number of people who are facing homelessness. They will tell us that the UN definition of homelessness is anyone whose housing is insecure, threatened, unsafe or unstable. In fact all the things the member listed. There does not have to be just five words about it. It really describes the situation.
People who live in slum housing, or housing that is substandard, or where they are paying exorbitant rents of 50% or more of their income are homeless because they are threatened. People who live in housing where they face conversion or demolition are homeless.
It is very important that we understand that there are people who are literally on the streets and have no a place to go. There are people who rely on shelters. It is awful to see how that has risen and has now become a crisis. Millions of Canadians are one step away from that. They are so insecure in terms of their income or housing support that they are also characterized as being homeless.
When it comes to the issue of poverty, if we talk to any organization in Canada, whether it is the National Anti-Poverty Organization, NAPO, whether it is FRAPRU in Quebec or whether it is the Canadian Council on Social Development, they will tell us that the standard definition used for poverty is the low income cutoffs established by Statistics Canada.
What is really worrying is the Liberals are likely poised to change that definition to a so-called basket approach. By the very fact of doing that, they will with the stroke of a pen say that poverty in Canada is not as bad as they thought, that they just changed it and that now a couple of hundred thousand or maybe half a million people no longer living below the poverty line.
I come back to the point that the issue here today is not so much the definition. The issue is that there are glaring examples of income inequality. Report after report shows us that income inequality in this country is growing. A recent report from Statistics Canada, the so-called wealth study, measured income inequality. We know it exists. The evidence is there. The issue is what will we do about it?
I agree with my hon. colleague from the Bloc that one of the greatest failings of the government is its lack of responsibility to provide the necessary funds and support to the provincial governments to create a housing strategy to ensure that social housing is built. It is a crime that the program was ended.
Canada used to have really excellent housing programs. The co-operative housing movement began in Canada. It was a huge success story. That has been abandoned at the federal level. Only two provinces still maintain their commitment provincially to social housing, Quebec and British Columbia. Although who knows what will happen in British Columbia with the new government. Again, the finger comes back and points to the federal government that basically abandoned that responsibility in 1993.
The New Democrats welcome the opportunity to talk about definitions but we must get down to the important matter here, which is to determine the priorities. What are the priorities for members as legislators? What is the priority of government in terms of dealing with an $18 billion surplus and where it will go?
If we truly want to eliminate poverty and homelessness in the country, it could easily be done because we have the resources to do it. It comes down to a matter of political will, leadership and what the priorities are. That is what the debate should be about.
