Madam Speaker, I will start by saying that I want to recognize, as my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands did on the point of relevance, that I will be focusing my speech on the fall economic statement. This is as opposed to what we really should be doing if we were to follow the orders of the day exactly, which is focusing on the amendment. I recognize that it has been about three months of talking about this particular motion. In fact, I have shared a few times about how we have had a number of speakers on this. The number of Conservative speakers alone is 223 or so. I have spoken quite a bit to this motion already. To make it clear, Green supported the precedent to the motion back in June. That continues to be the case.
My second apology is that things have been so last minute and disjointed today. I would usually even send notes for such a speech to translators. My apologies to them; I have not actually done that tonight either. However, it is important to take every opportunity I can to speak out for the concerns and the priorities of folks in my community. This is an important moment to do so because, of course, as many in this place and across the country are, I am troubled by the events of today. More so, I am troubled by the statement we were provided just this afternoon: the fall economic statement.
The reality is that folks in my community are in a time of crisis. Forty per cent of those living in poverty are folks with disabilities. This should not be the case in a country as wealthy as ours. I have spoken quite a bit about the number of people in my community who have been living unsheltered in recent years, at a time when rents have doubled. The number of people living unsheltered tripled from 2018 to 2021, from just over 300 to over 1,000. In the most recent point-and-count study, it nearly tripled again, to over 2,300.
Meanwhile, we continue to be the only country in the G7 with emissions that have risen since 1990. We are in a closing window of opportunity to act on the climate crisis. It is because of the significant crises that folks in my community and across the country are facing that Greens proposed a number of constructive solutions, which could have been in the fall economic statement. I will go over a few of those now with the time I have.
First, we could start with fixing the Canada disability benefit and following through on the promise the government made to lift hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities out of poverty. This was another moment missed for the government to follow through on doing so. This is also a moment at which it could have addressed the housing crisis we are in. Greens have been calling for the government to get towards a plan to double social housing across the country. If it did so, we would go from the bottom to just the middle of the pack in the G7.
One way we have proposed to do this is in a new motion I have put forward to require the CMHC to have two income-based definitions of affordable housing. This would ensure that, when it talks about such funds as the affordable housing fund, the money is actually going to build affordable housing. This housing would support people who are in core housing need. The proposal relies on research by housing experts, such as Dr. Carolyn Whitzman and others across the country. We have been calling on it to address the loopholes for large corporate landlords that are buying up housing in my community, raising rents and profiteering off the homes.
With those funds, we could turn and address a gap in HST that was exempted for for-profit developers of rental housing to ensure that non-profit builders of affordable home ownership, such as Habitat for Humanity, are HST exempt. We can pay for it, as I mentioned, by taxing real estate investment trusts as we do other corporations, for example. These are the kinds of housing solutions we would put forward to be in the fall economic statement.
We have also been calling for the government to get serious about funds to support harm reduction and other programs to support people who are using drugs, who are dying from poisoned drugs. I have not looked at numbers today in my community, but when I last checked, at least 72 people had died in Waterloo region from poisoned drugs. There is a federal funding mechanism called the substance use and addictions program. Greens had been calling for that program to be better funded so that communities such as Waterloo region would get their fair share of funding.
To date, we have received zero dollars in Waterloo region from this critical program to support organizations such as Sanguen and Community Healthcaring to provide supports that keep people alive because, while treatment is important, a person who is dead cannot get treatment. We need to provide a suite of supports that includes mental health, housing, treatment and harm reduction, along with safe supply. That is part of what Greens had been calling for.
Greens had also been talking about revenue tools to fund solutions. One of those revenue tools is a windfall profit tax. While there is a lot of talk in this place about the carbon tax going up two cents a litre in 2022 and in the years since 2022, the profits of the oil and gas industry went from some 26¢ a litre to around 44¢ or so, which is an increase of 18¢ a litre, all of which went to their profits. It ended up being around $66 billion or so for the top five oil and gas companies operating in Canada.
It is clear those companies are gouging Canadians while their emissions go up. They are responsible for the largest share of emissions while we are in a climate crisis. The government put in place a windfall profit tax and called it the Canada recovery dividend. It was applied on banks and life insurance companies in the midst of the pandemic.
As Greens, we have been saying, now do oil and gas. I put forward a motion to propose doing so. The PBO has costed it. With a windfall profit tax on profits above a billion, even just a 15% tax on profits above a billion, the government could generate $4.2 billion a year.
Those are the funds that could be used to invest in public transit, for example. Rather than seeing local councils, such as that of the Region of Waterloo, talking about cutting public transit routes or increasing fares, the federal government could be showing up with the dollars to help them make sure that high school students, for example, could get lower or no fares. We could also see the federal government step up for the permanent public transit fund to be put in place sooner than 2026, after the next election, to provide not only infrastructure, but also maintenance, for example, money for mechanics.
This is what we had called for. That windfall profit tax could be used for that, along with retrofit funding to help Canadians who want to look at installing retrofits in their homes. It would reduce their emissions and save them money. That program expired in February of this year. We had put forward for them to renew that program in a significant way, to look at $50,000 for Canadians who want to look at retrofitting their homes.
We had been calling for the government to invest in closing the infrastructure gap. At Six Nations of the Grand River, for example, it continues to be the case that 70% of those living on reserve do not have access to clean drinking water, and their infrastructure gap is around $1.6 billion. This was an opportunity to close that infrastructure gap.
We have also been calling for more equity in federal arts funding because, in communities like mine and many others across the country, while the Canada Council for the Arts has lost about $140 million in funding since the pandemic, communities like mine have continued to be historically underfunded. We get about three dollars per person, whereas places like Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg average around $18 dollars or so a person. The Greens had been calling for this fall economic statement to provide a new mechanism to ensure funding is more equitable across the country and for those funds to be restored to previous levels.
What do we get instead, after all these calls had been made? Well, when it comes to home retrofits, rather than actually delivering funds, the government talks about interest-free loans. Apparently, all the money was gone, the tens of billions they are sending to carbon capture. It is so much that I cannot even keep track. Environmental Defence has been doing their best to do so. They know it is about $18 billion or so in fossil fuel subsidies. It is certainly not always the case that they get loans, but when it comes to Canadians who want to retrofit their homes, I guess loans are going to have to continue to do.
On housing, the government is talking about accelerating more funds into the apartment construction loan program. This is a program for which only 3% of the funds are actually going to those in core housing need. Again, if the government does not actually address the underlying definitions of these funds, accelerating more dollars to them is not going to help address the housing crisis in a substantial way.
When it comes to the Canada disability benefit, rather than actually addressing the core issue, the government is talking about ensuring that it is tax-free. For many, the assumption was that would always be the case.
What we need is to see the government recognize that, for so many across the country, like folks in my community, the promise of what Canada could be is being lost. The Liberals need to step up to restore hope so that we can get back to that sense of what is possible for young Canadians and others across the country.