moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should adopt a national housing strategy and housing supply program, in co-operation with the provinces, that recognizes housing as a human right and meets the goal of providing an additional one percent of federal budgetary spending to meet basic housing needs in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, a few days ago a homeless man died. He died alone underneath a park bench huddling to protect himself from the blistering cold winds of winter. He died a few hundred yards from where we stand today. He died behind the Chateau Laurier in the shadow of Parliament Hill.
Unfortunately, this story is not unusual. Homeless men and women are dying in cities and towns right across Canada: Robert Cote; Eugene Upper; Irwin Anderson; Gino Laplante; Mirsalah-Aldin Kompani; Lynn Maureen Bluecloud; Al; Vernon Crow; Jens Drape. These are just a few of the names of those we have lost to the homelessness crisis.
I read their names into the record of this House because it is this House and the Liberal majority in it that failed them.
It is this government that must bear the responsibility for this terrible loss. It is their retreat from social housing construction and their steadfast refusal to initiate a national housing strategy and supply program that has contributed to a housing crisis that has ballooned out of control.
Canada is the only developed country in the world without a national housing strategy. What a disgrace. As parliamentarians we come to Ottawa to enact laws and to push forward policy that will better the lives of all the people of Canada, the rich and the poor. But I say today, the rich can care for themselves. It is on behalf of the poor that we must work the hardest, because in a country as wealthy as ours nobody should be forced to live out of doors, to beg for food, or to die on the streets.
That is why I introduced this motion, which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should adopt a national housing strategy and housing supply program, in co-operation with the provinces, that recognizes housing as a human right and meets the goal of providing an additional one percent of federal budgetary spending to meet basic housing needs in Canada.
The root cause of homelessness is lack of housing. It is as simple as that. Housing activists have said it, reports have confirmed it, homeless families know it and yet the government refuses to act on it.
Canadians know what needs to be done. We need the government to commit to a national housing strategy, a strategy that calls for the following: a federal investment of an additional 1% of overall spending on housing, or $2 billion annually; a national approach that is national in scope and in vision. That means no more patchwork solutions.
We need a return to the supply of social, not for profit and co-op housing. The federal government has not built any new or co-op housing units since 1993.
Ottawa must heed the call of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and take the lead by funding a new housing program that would create 70,000 units each year for 10 years.
I know the Liberal members will stand up in the House today and point to the announcement made by the minister responsible for homelessness in December and argue that it is sufficient to deal with this crisis. I am sad to report that this is absolutely untrue.
On December 17 the minister responsible for homelessness went to Toronto to announce a three year $753 million homelessness strategy. The problem was that she left out the homes. It is like agreeing to build the house but cutting off the money before the roof is on.
After months of travelling and consulting and with a projected $100 billion budgetary surplus at their disposal, the Liberals only announced one new program: the supporting communities partnership initiative. It is a $305 million investment but it is over three years. Beyond that, the details remain very hazy. Most people have interpreted it to be a source of matching federal funds for a patchwork of one time local projects. The rest of this so-called new money targeted to existing emergency and RRAP programs will go toward shelters and temporary beds.
Will the Liberal plan announced so far solved the homelessness and housing crisis in Canada? It will not. The reason it will not is because it fails to reverse the government's fateful 1993 decision to withdraw from social housing construction.
The Liberal solution it appears is to institutionalize shelters, and that is no solution at all. By offering their support to this motion, members of the House of Commons can rectify that mistake. We can send a message to the finance minister that we want to see a real commitment to end the housing crisis on February 28 when the minister rises to outline his government's budget priorities.
Instead of handing out tax breaks for their wealthy friends, the Liberals should direct some of the projected $100 billion surplus to social housing construction. If they forgo on just one of their proposed tax breaks, the elimination of the 5% surtax on people who earn over $65,000 a year, the diverted dollars could build 10,000 desperately needed social and co-op housing units.
Furthermore, based on research by the House of Commons research branch, if the government met the goal of the 1% solution advocated by this motion and by others the initiative would employ 44,550 Canadians each year for 10 years.
The upcoming federal budget is an opportunity for the finance minister to recall his own words of 1990, a decade ago. Then in official opposition and as chair of the Liberal Party's task force on housing, he condemned the government of the day, the Mulroney government, for doing nothing while the housing crisis continued to grow out of control. This is what he said:
...the government sits there and does nothing; it refuses to apply the urgent measures that are required to reverse this deteriorating situation. The lack of affordable housing contributes to and accelerates the cycle of poverty, which is reprehensible in a society as rich as ours.
That is what the now finance minister had to say a decade ago.
Three years later, the now finance minister steamrolled his own report and in its place introduced a budget that slashed all federal funding for the creation of new social housing units. This single act meant that 75,000 new social housing units that had been targeted for construction were never built, a decision that has denied tens of thousands of families the right to decent and affordable housing. What an absolute shameful act.
It is time to right that wrong. It is time to admit that this decision was not only short-sighted, it was shameful. If the government refuses to admit that, if it continues to keep its head in the sand, believing that band-aid solutions are the only solutions worth funding, then the sad reality is that more people will die.
I call on all members of the House to support this motion as a way of sending a message. In doing so, they will be joining a massive wave of support which has come in from across the country. In truth, I have been overwhelmed by the public outpouring of support for this motion and the 1% for housing campaign.
Thousands of people lent their names to our petition and postcard campaign in support of Motion No. 123. These are piled up on my desk just as a sample of what has come in from across the country. The petitions continue to flood into my office, and that is not all. I have received hundreds of phone calls in my Ottawa and Vancouver offices. Many people have called in simply to express relief that housing is finally on the agenda. Hundreds of other Canadians have contacted me by e-mail to lend support or, in some cases, to share a story of how the housing crisis has impacted on their life or on the life of a friend or loved one.
I know too that hundreds of letters and e-mails have gone to the minister responsible for homelessness because people sent me the copies of the letters they sent to her: people like Randall Ducharme, who works in a shelter in Vancouver and met with the minister responsible for homelessness when she travelled to Vancouver in the summer.
Randall wrote this message to the minister the day after he had received news of yet another death, this time a teenager, “a bright light” he says, who “succumbed to the perils of an increasingly selfish Canada”. He letter reads:
Claudette, when you visited me at Dusk to Dawn—a Vancouver shelter—in the summer of 99—you promised me something would be done. Thus far your government has only applied more band-aid solutions. Libby Davies has a motion that will enable the government to set into motion a long-term solution that is in line with the spirit of a Canada I can be proud of. I urge you to support M 123.
Al Mitchell, who runs a shelter in Vancouver, says:
Has it occurred to anyone that that if existing programs were adequate, we wouldn't be trying to get your attention to a crisis!
I also received hundreds of letters, many from individuals and many others from organizations, shelters, frontline housing advocates, politicians and unions. The list is too long to go through, but I would like to give an indication of some of the kinds of support that came in.
The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, which was the initial champion of the 1% solution, has done an absolutely amazing job in bringing the national disaster of homelessness to the forefront of the public agenda.
We have support from the New National Housing Network and the Tenants Rights Action Coalition in Vancouver.
I would particularly like to thank the Canadian Auto Workers Union for its leadership. It launched its own national campaign and actually put up $1 million to support housing. It showed that it was very committed.
We also have the support of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, the city of Nepean, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Working Group on Poverty in Vancouver, the Street Nurses Network in Toronto, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Calgary and District Labour Council, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, the Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa, the B.C. Government Employees Union, the Brunswick Street United Church in Halifax, Hope Cottage in Halifax, the United Steelworkers of America, the Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice, the city of St. John's in Newfoundland, Lu'ma Native Housing Society, the United Native Nations, the Kettle Friendship Society, the Hospital Employees Union, the John Howard Society, the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto, the Carleton Graduate Students Association, the Franciscan Sisters of Atonement in Vancouver, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour and the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg.
We have support from End Legislated Poverty, an organization made up of groups in my home province of British Columbia working to end poverty. They have sent a statement that I think is representative of the overwhelming call to action expressed by most of these groups. They said:
Emergency shelters provide immediate crisis services, but the existing shelters are severely overburdened. Shelters are not enough: we need real, long-term housing solutions.
Those are just a sampling and a fraction of the organizations that have supported this motion.
The time has come to turn the disgrace of being the only industrialized country without a housing strategy into a rallying point for those of us who care about social justice and want to live in a country governed by compassion, not contempt for those struggling to make ends meet.
It is time to stop the desolation. It is time to curtail the housing crisis in this country.
I call on all members of the House to support the community's call for help. Homelessness is an unnatural disaster. It can be solved if the political will exists.
I will end by asking if I have the consent of the House to make this a votable motion.
