Mr. Speaker, over eight months ago, I rose in the House to talk about the Conservatives' 2013-14 budget. I shared my concerns about the issues close to my heart, such as housing and homelessness, not only in my capacity as official opposition housing critic, but also as a champion of social justice.
Today I want to talk about those who have been forgotten by this government and I also want to point out some of the injustices created by Bill C-4, the budget implementation bill.
It is no secret that housing and homelessness in Canada are not—and unfortunately probably never will be—priorities for this government. However, at some point the Conservatives will have to open their eyes.
The $1.7-billion budget for social housing administered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is dwindling every year, as long-term operating agreements with social housing providers come to an end. Unfortunately, the government is presenting this as savings, but at the expense of whom?
I have criticized this situation many times in this House. After the throne speech, I rose three times to ask a question of a member opposite who had just read out the government's talking points. You could have heard a pin drop in the House. He had no idea how to answer.
I understand that he cannot know every single detail about everything the government does. However, we are talking about $1.7 billion and thousands of people who could end up on the street once these agreements expire. I think that is enough to sound the alarm on the other side and for them to care a little about what is going on.
If we listened to the ministers and backbenchers—and even the ministers opposite sometimes—without really thinking about it we could perhaps believe that this “government has invested more than any government in Canadian history” in any area. I will repeat this, because it needs to sink in on other side of the House: the last time a government invested new money in social housing, it was Jack Layton who worked hard to get it out of Paul Martin's Liberals, and the Conservatives voted against that money.
Members of the House will have an opportunity to ponder the housing situation in Canada when they debate my motion M-450, which I tabled in the House last June. It asks the government, in accordance with Canada’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to work with the provinces, territories, municipalities and community partners to maintain and expand the federal investment in social housing, which would include renewal of the federal long-term social housing operating agreements in order to continue rent subsidies and provide the necessary funding for residential building renovation.
I would like to reassure my colleagues opposite. They will certainly have all the information needed to understand how important this matter is. In the meantime, they can always go to my website, where they will find all the information they need in order finally to grasp the subject, and where they can also sign my petition. There is social housing across the country, from coast to coast, including their own constituencies.
Whatever form the renewal of these agreements takes, whether by maintaining at least the status quo or by negotiating a transfer to the provinces and territories, what is certain is that this amount of $1.7 billion must be preserved for social housing, period, paragraph.
What is most distressing in the current situation, however, are those cases in which people living in social housing where the agreement has run out or is about to expire are no longer able to pay their rent, because under the agreement, their social housing provider was able to pay them a rent subsidy. They will have difficulty in finding such a subsidy elsewhere, because the total envelope administered by CMHC for social housing is constantly shrinking. To put it plainly, people and families are literally being put out on the street.
How does this government respond? It cuts $15.8 million from the annual budget to deal with homelessness. They put people on the street, and they reduce the funding to deal with homelessness.
In the same breath, they are changing the structure of the Homelessness Partnering Strategy in such a way that a large portion of the budget will be allocated to projects that take a Housing First approach. I suppose everyone understands that I am not against housing.
The Housing First approach does have some advantages. One of the problems, however, is that since the last budget, practitioners involved in dealing with homelessness, those who work on a day-to-day basis with the people affected, are no longer allowed to decide what the priorities are in this area. Homelessness is not just a housing problem.
Another problem is that the reduction in the total budget, combined with the new Housing First approach, will have the effect of reducing considerably the services currently available to the homeless.
Only today, on Parliament Hill, the largest gathering of Quebec groups working to combat homelessness, the Réseau SOLIDARITÉ itinérance du Québec (RSIQ), appeared before Parliament. It came to denounce the government’s new approach to the homeless, particularly with respect to the services currently available to them, which could soon disappear, if the government does not allow those best placed—those working in the field—to decide their own priorities in dealing with homelessness.
That is how things have been done for years, yet someone, somewhere in Employment and Social Development Canada had a brainwave when they read the report on the At Home/Chez soi project, which incidentally produced good results. This person said that they were now going to change everything.
Money was already tight in the budget to deal with homelessness. If they wanted to do some good, they should have preserved at least the current HPS budget by indexing it, of course, as well as approving permanent funding for the Housing First approach.
The omnibus bill is not merely silent on housing and homelessness. As has now become customary, the Conservatives will also be using this legislative tool to amend or repeal more than 70 laws that are not necessarily budget-related.
Among other things, if this bill is passed, it will also withdraw powers from occupational health and safety officers and place them almost exclusively in the hands of the Minister, and directly challenge the rights of workers to refuse to work in unsafe conditions.
In both situations, I believe we have a major problem. The only question that comes to my mind is the following: why do we really want to compel people to work in unsafe conditions?
By adding the adjective “imminent” to the word “danger”, that is exactly what we are doing. It will henceforth be more difficult for a worker under federal jurisdiction to refuse to work in dangerous conditions. The danger will now have to be imminent. It will no longer be sufficient, therefore, to work in an environment where a large rock is suspended overhead; it will really have to be on the point of falling on you before you can claim dangerous working conditions and refuse to work.
They are playing with people’s lives. The current provisions are already sufficiently restrictive to prevent abuse. On top of all that, all the powers of occupational health and safety officers are to be concentrated in the hands of the minister, and the process is going to be politicized.
What message is being sent to employers? That occupational health and safety are no longer important? Will the minister herself be asked to inspect workplaces to ensure that conditions are not likely to impair workers’ health or safety?
What they are trying to do by means of this bill is a serious backward step with respect to the protections that have been put in place to safeguard the lives and health of people who spend a large part of their time in the workplace.
People go to work to make a life for themselves, not to lose it.
