Libby Davies

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, there were a lot of questions posed in the member's comments. If what the member says is correct, that there are youth programs, programs for aboriginal people and employment programs, I would not agree because I think those programs are very inadequate. However, let us assume that they are there and that they are adequate. That does not escape the reality that even with those programs we need to have a basic necessity in place, which is housing.

I spoke to young people in emergency shelters in Halifax. They were involved in youth programs and counselling. However, when they go through those programs, if they do not have an adequate, safe, secure and affordable place to live, then all of those programs become meaningless. I have seen that time and time again.

I do not necessarily disagree with what the member is saying. Those other programs are also critical. However, if we are dealing someone who is facing drug addiction or someone who is dealing with issues around mental illness, yes they need social support and the programs, but if they do not have a decent place to live it is very difficult to go to school. It is impossible to go to work. It is really hard to raise kids in an environment without housing. I hope the member understands that.

In terms of his involvement with the Peel Regional Housing Authority and the fact that there are a lot of single parent families in housing, we could have another debate about what causes family breakup. The fact is that families are living in poverty and high unemployment places a lot of stress on families. We must ensure that there is adequate housing and that people do not spend more than 30% of their income on housing. That is very important. Unfortunately, this bill does not address that in any shape or form.

This bill is taking us down the road of privatization. It is taking us down the road of abandoning people's needs. I think the member would agree. I ask the member to defend how this bill is improving the housing needs of Canadians. Having looked at it, I cannot see one sentence that will do that.

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to the second reading stage of Bill C-66, an act to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act. Although our party is opposed to the amendments to these two acts, I am pleased to have this opportunity because the issue of housing and social housing is a very important fundamental issue in Canada that affects millions of Canadians and regrettably it rarely gets debated in the House of Commons.

Contrary to what the government member said a few moments ago, the amendments will not in any way improve or increase the supply of affordable, not for profit social housing in Canada. This bill will pave the way for the further privatization of social housing in Canada.

From that point of view this is a very sad day for Canada because historically Canada has played a very positive and innovative role in the provision of social housing right across the country. We have tremendous expertise and skill at a community level in the not for profit housing sector in developing resources and in the construction and development of social housing.

However, all of that has pretty well come to a standstill because of policies implemented by the Liberal government since 1993 to basically trash social housing in Canada. Regrettably the debate today is simply nothing more than one more nail in the coffin of social housing and affordable housing in Canada.

Today in question period I asked the Prime Minister why in a meeting with the mayor of Toronto yesterday about what is a disaster in that city and across the country on homelessness, the Prime Minister had nothing more to offer the mayor of Toronto than a cold beer. There was no offer of funding for social housing. There was no offer of a national action plan for social housing. There was no offer of new social housing units or help for people who are living on the street, and yes, dying on the street as well.

What we heard today from the government was that it is thinking about it, it is studying it and in fact it has already done a lot. The reality is that we have a crisis in this country, not only in the city of Toronto, but in just about every major urban community and in smaller communities as well because the federal government abandoned the provision and the construction of social housing in 1993.

Let us make no mistake about that. There is a direct relationship between increasing homelessness, what we now see, even here in the city of Ottawa, what I see in my own riding of Vancouver East, what I saw in the city of Halifax and in other communities across Canada, and the policy decisions that were made by the finance minister in 1993 to axe social housing.

I want to say that I think it is an absolute disgrace. I think that Canadians understand intuitively that housing is a basic human need. It is a human right that is laid out in the universal declaration of human rights, and yet here in Canada we have no provision to ensure that this basic human need is being met.

I might add that the Toronto disaster relief committee has repeatedly called on the Prime Minister to visit this disaster area to see for himself what is taking place on the streets of Toronto. When I visited the city of Toronto, I visited the emergency shelters and saw the appalling conditions that people are living in. When I talked to people on the street it was really very shocking to learn what people are facing in this country.

The people who form what is called the Toronto disaster relief committee have put together a very urgent call that has actually been endorsed by the 10 big city mayors across Canada, including the mayor of my own city, the city of Vancouver, and the city council. What the Toronto disaster relief committee is calling for is simply this, that there needs to be a 1% commitment to the provision of social housing in Canada by all levels of government.

One would hope and one would have expected that there would be a response from the federal government, that there would be some kind of indication that there is an acknowledgement and a recognition of the disaster that is before us.

One would hope that there would be an acknowledgement of the work that was done on the Golden report in the city of Toronto, which was actually funded by the federal government, and that indeed there would even be some kind of response to that report. There was even a Liberal member on the task force. However, there has been deafening silence on this issue.

We have not seen one cent come forward for the provision of social housing. We had one small announcement saying that there would be additional funds for residential rehabilitation. However, I have to say that the Minister of Public Works, in making that announcement, really was just making a drop in the bucket in terms of the very critical situation that is facing us.

The federal government keeps on telling us that it is no longer in this business. In fact the bill that is before us today to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act is really going further down this path of the federal government offloading and abandoning its responsibility to Canadians in this area. In fact what we have seen is the federal government trying to download and devolve its housing responsibility to the provinces.

I am glad to say that in the province that I come from, British Columbia, we have been resisting this devolution and we have been saying consistently that the federal government has to have a national responsibility for the provision of housing. Yes, there needs to be a partnership with the provinces. Yes, we need to have the involvement of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In fact the federation is begging the federal government to come back to the table and to get involved.

In my province alone, because of the loss of federal dollars, because of the abandonment of social housing by this Liberal government, we have lost something like 10,000 units that would otherwise have been built if the program, as it existed in 1993, was still in place.

When we add the numbers and multiply them across Canada, on a very conservative estimate we have lost 75,000 social housing units in Canada that would have been built if those programs were still in place.

Today is a very bad day. Instead of facing that reality, instead of taking on the responsibility and saying that we will meet this human need, we will make sure there is adequate, safe, secure, affordable housing for Canadians, what is the federal government doing? It brings in this bill. It claims that this will improve housing for Canadians.

I read the press release from the Minister of Public Works who said that these amendments will better respond to the housing needs of Canadians. Where is the evidence? There is not a shred of evidence to show that will take place if this piece of legislation and these amendments pass.

This legislation is about privatizing the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, privatizing certain provisions of its policies and practices and further commercializing the way CMHC operates.

We had the situation where CMHC insurance and mortgages were guaranteed by the federal government. As a result of very large corporations in the U.S. challenging us under the NAFTA and other international trade provisions, the Liberal government is now capitulating and saying that those types of assurances will no longer be provided. Therefore, people who unfortunately are considered to be high risk by the marketplace and our financial institutions will now be in greater difficulty, even through CMHC, because they will not have the same access they had before.

This is an important debate. We are talking about a very basic issue that does not often arise for debate in this House. I am glad we are debating it. However, I also want to say that we in the New Democratic Party are appalled and outraged that the Liberal government has gone so far from its own platform and commitments.

I can hear the words in my head of a Liberal member of parliament, now the finance minister, who in 1990, as the chair of a Liberal task force on housing, said that it was reprehensible in a society as rich as Canada that we would have an erosion of social housing and a growing gap between the rich and the poor. That is what the finance minister, then an opposition member of parliament, said in 1990.

I say to government members that this bill is not what we need. This piece of legislation is not what Canadians need. We need to be responding to the very dire circumstances of the people who are living and dying on the streets today in Toronto, in my community of Vancouver east and in the downtown east side where 6,000 people are still living in deplorable conditions. These people are living in substandard housing, in rooms that are ten feet by ten feet, with no washroom facilities. They have no cooking facilities and they have to share a broken washroom down the hall with 25 other people. That is what people are facing in this country. It is something that none of us should be tolerating.

We want a response from this government that will improve and make clear that there is a commitment for social housing in this country, that will use the expertise that has been developed at the grassroots level and in the not for profit housing sector and that will encourage the development of co-operative housing in Canada that has been so incredibly successful. Since 1993 no new co-operative housing units have been built. That is absolutely shameful.

We are opposed to these amendments today because they are taking us in the direction of the further privatization of social housing in Canada. The amendments basically undermine the programs we have had in the past and further abandon the federal government's response and responsibility to providing housing for Canadians.

I urge members of this House, particularly Liberal members, to rethink the provisions of the amendments that are before us today. If we are genuine about our care and support for homeless people, for poor people, for people who live in substandard housing and for people who are paying more than 50% of their income for rent, then we should be defeating these amendments. We should be trying to get back to a national housing strategy. We should support the call from the Toronto disaster relief committee for a 1% commitment for social housing in this country.

[Housing, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it was very disheartening to read that when the Prime Minister met with the mayor of Toronto to discuss the disaster of homelessness in that city and across the country all he had to offer was a cold beer.

There was no offer of funding. There was no national action plan on housing, no new social housing and no social support for people who are living and dying on the streets. It is absolutely shameful.

Homeless people want to know when the Prime Minister will act on this crisis or will he continue to ignore homeless people?

[Bankruptcy, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today a young woman and recent university graduate named Annick Chenier decided to fight back against this government's relentless attack on students. Annick, with the help of the CFS, has launched a court challenge aimed at striking down discriminatory and unjustified changes to the Bankruptcy Act pushed through by the Liberals in last year's budget.

These changes force students unable to cope with debtload to wait 10 years after leaving school to file for bankruptcy. Annick, who graduated with a debtload of $63,000, has been forced to seek justice from the courts because the government refuses to do it.

Today I rise to do two things, first to applaud Annick's courage and second to call on the Minister of Human Resources Development to save Annick the pain of a lengthy court battle by doing the right thing, repealing this discriminatory change to the Bankruptcy Act. If the minister will not do it, then I urge all members of this House to support my private member's Bill C-439 which would do the job for him.

[Supply, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. If we look at all these other issues, whether it is the scandal around APEC or the role of the Prime Minister's office, we have to look to the government's actions to know that members of the opposition from all four parties have had to raise these issues because Canadians are demanding answers. Whether it is the scandal to do with APEC and the role of the Prime Minister's office, or discrimination in our tax system, or discrimination against poor people, these are issues that demand to be raised in this House. It is unfortunate the government member says that we can do either/or. These are all things that are before the Canadian people.

Today we are debating this motion. Today we are focusing on this issue and calling on the government to right a wrong. We are calling on the government to recognize an injustice that exists. We in the NDP are saying that this has to go much further. We need to have a comprehensive strategy that says we believe we need to have child centred policies to promote the well-being of children in Canada.

[Supply, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his comments. I do not know how often the member has been in the House to listen to debate. I can say, having been here during the budget and prior to the budget through all of last year, that time and time again these issues of discrimination not just within the tax system but within public policy, policy that has been developed by the government, have come up in this House for debate on a continual basis. If the member is asking whether the NDP is going to continue to raise these issues, whether we are going to continue to advocate fair and progressive taxation and an end to discrimination, the answer is absolutely yes.

My question would be when is the government going to listen to those issues? When is the government going to respond to those issues by supporting this motion? Will it begin with this one basic issue that has been identified within the tax system and then in a progressive comprehensive way say that it believes there should be child centred policies that support the family and end discrimination, for example the child tax benefit I mentioned?

The question really goes back to the other side of the house. Is the government prepared to listen and take action in defence of Canadian families?

[Supply, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion today and to offer my party's support for it.

We in the NDP are committed to tax reform that is both fair and progressive. It certainly goes to the root of our party's philosophy and vision.

We have been long time advocates of tax policies designed to ease the stress on families and children just as we have been vocal opponents of policies which discriminate against middle and low income Canadians and which benefit corporate interests and the wealthy.

New Democrats have also been aggressive in our support of children, whether as leaders in the movement to end child poverty or fighting for a child tax benefit that does not discriminate against the poorest of the poor or erodes over time because of deindexation.

We also fully support, for example, the ideas that families where one parent chooses to work to raise their children should not be penalized financially for that choice.

That is why we advocate extending the child care expense tax deduction to all parents, not just those who work away from the home.

We support that measure because it acknowledges that family friendly policies, progressive and fair policies, are policies that focus on children and not necessarily on the working status of their parents. That is also why we support progress indicators that are not only focused on the fiscal bottom line.

Current measures of well-being focused solely on GDP ratios do not recognize the important value of unpaid work to society as a whole.

By measuring the value of unpaid household work, genuine progress indicators like the GPI index championed in Nova Scotia remedy this flaw. Measures like this one allow us more accurate estimates of our actual growth as a society and should have a direct impact on social policy and on assessments of our quality of life and our overall progress as a society.

While the Liberal and Reform parties debate in the House who has it better, parents who work in the home or parents who work outside the home, the truth of it is that we are really missing the point. The truth gets lost in the platitudes. Even this motion, which has good points, misses the bigger picture. The truth is that all Canadian families and kids are under stress. This government often with the support of the Reform Party has done more to increase the load than to ease the burden.

There are many reasons for this. For example, incomes are dropping while time spent on the job is increasing. According to the recent growing gap report the annual income of the least well off 90% of families fell in real terms between 1992 and 1997, most dramatically for the bottom 30% who depend heavily on social programs and suffer most because of unemployment, while only the top 10% of families saw a significant increase in income, up $5,000 to $138,000.

Billions of dollars have been cut from social spending since the Liberals came to power and increased targeting of programs has meant that some children are deemed more worthy than others. We only have to look at affordable day care and decent day care options to know that this is more and more difficult to find. Affordable quality child care would ensure that children of parents who work outside the home are given the necessary early education and care despite their parents' incomes. High quality care and early childhood education are critical components of an integrated strategy to meet the needs of families but unfortunately the government has chosen to renege on its promises and it is the children who feel the impact.

We also know that the tax burden for low and middle income families has also been on the rise. Instead of increasing tax credits in the last budget for lower and middle income Canadians who have been badly hit by cuts to social assistance and UI and the growth of insecure jobs, the finance minister chose to deliver significant tax relief to high income earners.

Most important, families are under stress and Canadian kids are suffering because too many government policies and policies the Reform Party advocate are too narrowly targeted to favour some families over others. Even Tom Kent, a former Lester Pearson adviser and one of the architects of Canada's social infrastructure, blasted the finance minister last week for failing to better the situation for all Canadian families.

What has been the result of all this targeting and discrimination that has been designed by public policy into the system? What has been the result of reducing everything to the fiscal bottom line? The investment that parents make when they raise their kids seems to be treated like any other expense and kids become treated like any other commodity, like a company car or a business lunch. That was not always the case.

As a society we did not always favour one child over another because of how parents spend their days. We did not always say that kids on social assistance did not deserve the same consideration as kids whose parents were among the growing ranks of the working poor. We used to have a system tied to universality where there was a basic understanding within governments, within public policy, that the responsibility for raising children was seen as a collective and a community responsibility as well as a responsibility for parents.

We recognized that the well-being of children has a direct impact on the well-being of all of us. We used to have a family allowance for example that was universally accessible and was tied to support for children, not the working status of parents. Instead what we are left with in the nineties is a child tax benefit system that actually discriminates against the poorest in society because it was designed, not by accident, not to apply to families on welfare.

People on welfare do not qualify for the child tax benefit. While the funds will initially be distributed to every child below a specified income level, provincial governments will deduct that amount from current welfare payments. That means that most welfare poor children have gained absolutely nothing from this plan. It is a system like so many others that is structured more to reduce welfare rolls and subsidize low wage jobs than to combat poverty and help children.

Rather than alleviating the poverty of the working poor and the non-working poor, the benefit is designed to push poor women to leave welfare and it does not recognize the value of the work parents do in the home. Most jurisdictions now have rules forcing single parents on welfare to look for work once their youngest child has reached a certain age. Those ages can range anywhere from 6 months to 12 years. This age is actually going down as some provinces become harsher with people on welfare.

As a result, single parents on welfare are forced to take low paying jobs even when it is not in their best family interest and not in the interest of their children. The result is the percentage of children in low income families has increased from 15.3% in 1989, one in seven children, to a staggering 21% in 1995, one in five children. Since 1989 the number of low income children has increased by close to half a million or by 45%.

Like the policies this motion refers to, the child tax benefit is discriminatory. It discriminates against the poor and it discriminates against an increasing number of children who live in poverty in this country.

Women who have children are also subject to further discrimination with maternity benefits. They receive only a percentage of their salary for the time they take off with their children, making the economic liability of child rearing that much heavier to handle. Like any worker, if they do not meet the stringent demands for hours worked they get nothing.

My colleague for Acadie—Bathurst has advocated eliminating the new entrant requirement for workers who have left the labour force to care for children or family members as a first step in providing fairer coverage for women. Once again it is a policy that discriminates against some families while favouring others but in the process does a disservice to all children.

What we need is a much broader approach than the one advocated by this motion. We need to make children the centre of family friendly policies that benefit all families in all their derivatives, be they dual income, single income, lone parent or extended low income or middle class. We need a plan that recognizes the importance of all parents, all families, all children, not just some.

We support this motion because it does deal with one aspect of discrimination but we must go further. We in the NDP will continue to advocate for a broader approach hinged on equity and fairness in our tax structure. We will continue to fight for plans that do not discriminate some families over others because they are poor or on social assistance. We will continue to advocate an approach that recognizes that it is children who are important, not just the working status of their parents. We will continue to champion the fact that child rearing is a responsibility all society must share in.

[Families, March 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is the child tax benefit does not even begin to do the job.

Last month Tom Kent, one of the architects of Canadian social programs, issued a study on how we can support children and families. He called on the government to introduce a universally accessible early childhood education program.

Will the minister listen to the architect of Canadian social programs instead of destroying the social programs that we have had and support Canadian children and their families?

[Families, March 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the finance minister. While the Liberal and Reform parties argue about who gets the benefits, parents who work outside the home or parents who work inside the home, the real story is the kids get the short end of the stick.

Parents who stay home with their children get no help from this government and parents who work outside the home are being forced to work longer and longer hours to make ends meet and have less time to spend with their kids.

What will this government do to relieve the stress on Canadian parents and support children?

[Downtown East Side Community Revitalization, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, $5 million over five years for the downtown east side community revitalization program was recently announced by the federal government. It is critical that the downtown east side benefit from this announcement as there is a crisis in the lack of adequate housing, treatment facilities, income support and employment.

If the federal government is surprised by the skepticism from the local community, it is because we have witnessed the dire consequences of federal cuts, the elimination of federal funding for non-profit affordable housing and EI cutbacks.

We are told these funds will open an office and study ways to bring people together and solve safety concerns. Instead of jobs for social facilitators, we need to ensure that these funds are used for addiction treatment programs, improving social conditions and improved housing.

Will the government make a commitment to these basic needs? Will the federal government make it clear that the focus will be on programs and services that will directly benefit those in need who live in the downtown east side?