Mike Morrice

[Housing, December 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am back again tonight to continue to call for action on the housing crisis we are in, in particular, to call for one very tangible action the government could take in the lead-up to the fall economic statement we now know is set to be announced a week from today.

I have been pressing for six specific items to be included in the fall economic statement, including this one on the housing crisis. I want to start, though, by sharing the extent of the crisis we are in and what it looks like in my community. First of all, when it comes to those who are living unsheltered, between 2018 and 2021, the number of folks living unsheltered tripled from just over 300 to just over 1,000. In the most recent three years, as we just had the point-in-time count study in my community completed a few weeks ago, it almost tripled again. The number of folks living unsheltered is now up to over 2,300, and that is likely an underestimation.

Meanwhile, house prices are eight times the median income today. Back in 2005, they were around three times the median annual income. This is because house prices have gone up almost 300%. Rents have doubled. Wages, meanwhile, have not caught up in any way; they have only gone up 42%. Meanwhile, in my community, research shows we are leading the country in the number of affordable housing units we are losing. We lose 39 units of previously affordable housing for every one new unit built.

When it comes to government investments in housing, it has gotten to the point where, in Ontario, 93% of affordable homes were built prior to 1995, back when both federal and provincial governments in Ontario and the federal government of various stripes invested in affordable housing at the scale required. It is part of why I have been pushing for a number of items, including doubling the social housing stock with ambitious federal investments, similar to what we used to see in the 1970s and even into the 1980s.

I have been calling to have the government fix the definition of housing that CMHC is using so that affordable housing dollars go towards building truly affordable housing, and for an end to the tax exemptions for large corporate landlords like real estate investment trusts.

Tonight, I want to speak specifically about this, because I know in the House there has been a lot of talk about Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity has one specific call. It wants to see parliamentarian support ending HST so it can build more affordable homes. Last fall, the government gave an HST exemption to for-profit developers of rental units, a helpful measure to address the housing crisis, but left out were non-profit, affordable, home ownership builders like Habitat.

In my community on Kehl Street, a Habitat home build site built 45 homes. It would have had an extra million had this measure been in place to build more affordable units. In fact, Habitat estimates that, for every 100 homes built, it could build an additional five to 20 homes if it was exempt from this.

It is why I sent a letter about this, back on October 25, to the ministers of finance and housing. I asked about it in question period on November 1, but I did not get an answer then. I got a reply to my letter on November 12, directing me to ask the question of the Minister of Finance. I did that earlier today at the industry committee and did not receive an answer there either.

What I have put forward as well is that we could actually pay for this measure if only we got rid of that tax exemption for the REITs. If we had the REITs pay their fair share, this is what we could use to pay for removing the HST for Habitat.

Will the parliamentary secretary at least share where the government stands on this important measure?

[Canadian Heritage, December 9th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Canada Council for the Arts has not only had its funding cut in recent years, but significant inequities remain, leaving communities like mine dramatically underfunded.

Today, MPs from four parties in the House have co-signed a letter again bringing this to the attention of the minister and calling for action.

Will the Minister of Canadian Heritage commit to working with all interested MPs to restore federal arts funding and ensure all communities get their fair share?

[Business of Supply, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I spend a lot of my time in this place advocating for the government to do things it has promised to do and, most of the time, has not yet done. This may be the $4.5-billion Canada mental health transfer, ending subsidies to the oil and gas industry or a fully funded Canada disability benefit that would lift people with disabilities out of poverty.

One way for me to look at this confidence vote, if I am to trust the polls, is to ask this: Is it better for my community if I focus my efforts on pushing the government to do the things it said it was going to do? Otherwise, is it better if I do so with a potential future Conservative government that not only has not promised these things at all but is also more than likely to backslide on them. An example of this is climate. What are the comments from the member for Kings—Hants on this?

[Housing, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, affordable housing dollars should go toward building truly affordable homes, yet that is not the case most of the time. It is all because CMHC does not use any affordability criteria for the majority of units it funds. Even when it does, it rarely use its own definition of affordable housing.

It is why I have introduced a motion that follows the calls of housing experts like Dr. Carolyn Whitzman to require income-based definitions across all affordable housing programs.

Will the minister listen to these experts and take up this important call?

[Gender-Based Violence, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow will mark 35 years since the murder of 14 women in an engineering class at Polytechnique Montréal simply because they were women. I wish I could say this misogynistic violence was an outlier, yet this year alone, 168 women and girls across the country have already been killed in femicides.

In the face of this gender-based violence epidemic, the frontline work being done by organizations, including those in my community like Women’s Crisis Services, the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region, the Coalition of Muslim Women and YW Kitchener-Waterloo, is all the more important. I offer my sincere thanks to them.

For those in Waterloo region looking to come together on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women to remember the victims of the Polytechnique massacre and all those we have lost since, CFUW Kitchener-Waterloo will be hosting a vigil at 5:30 tomorrow night at St. Columba Anglican Church. I hope to see them there.

[Petitions, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is on behalf of Canadians who recognize that we remain in a climate crisis, one that requires urgent action in this closing window of opportunity. They note that the impacts of the climate crisis are being felt across the country, from droughts to wildfires and, at the same time, that the federal government today spends at least $4.8 billion a year, though other research shows it is actually higher, on subsidies to the oil and gas industry in the midst of this crisis and at a time when the oil and gas industry's profits are reaching record levels.

The petitioners call for an end to all subsidies to the oil and gas industry and, rather, call for the imposition of a windfall profit tax on the excess profits of this industry. The petitioners call for those dollars to be used for a just transition into good green jobs, including a youth climate corps.

[Petitions, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present two petitions. The first recognizes the critical importance of the arts to the vibrancy of communities across the country. The petition was signed by almost 2,000 people.

The petitioners note the economic impact of the arts as well as the impact on activism, mental health and our well-being. The economic impact is $54.8 billion to our GDP every year. They note that public data shows there are significant regional inequities to arts funding across the country. I would point out that this includes in my community as well. The petitioners note there are better options available. For example, the regional development agency model that sets up organizations like FedDev can ensure that funds are more equitably distributed across the country.

The petition includes several calls to action. First is restoring the funding of the Canada Council for the Arts back to the $500 million it had during the pandemic. Second is applying the regional development agency model to ensure that organizations and artists in communities across the country, including in mine, more equitably receive these really critical funds for artists, creatives and art organizations across the country.

[Committees of the House, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by thanking the member for Edmonton Strathcona, and the member for Victoria as well, for bringing forward this really important conversation in the House on reproductive rights. She is right that abortion care is health care.

I just wonder if there is more she would like to say about any of the 14 recommendations that she might not have had time for in her speech but wants to share with the rest of the House.

[Foreign Affairs, December 3rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the parliamentary secretary spoke of the importance of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. She also spoke of condemning the murder of civilians in Gaza. In light of that, what I have been calling for is what we have heard from activists across the country: Canada should resume its work as a peacemaker in the world.

If we are going to stand up in the face of this genocide in Gaza, we should start by calling for a true, two-way arms embargo and following through on that. The parliamentary secretary and I have spoken about that in this place before, along with recognizing the state of Palestine, as I shared earlier. In light of her comments tonight, will she advocate within the government to ensure that we have a true, two-way arms embargo in place?

[Foreign Affairs, December 3rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am back tonight to continue to call for action from the federal government in the face of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, one that has been documented and affirmed by experts, including the University Network for Human Rights, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and the UN special committee.

A few weeks ago, in question period, I spoke of an IDF missile strike that had burned Palestinians alive at a hospital tent camp. In the time since, Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. More aid workers have been killed, and as a result, aid organizations like World Central Kitchen have had to pause their operations in Gaza altogether, while 1.1 million in Gaza face catastrophic hunger. UN officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. Nearly 70% of the over 44,000 killed are women and children.

In the face of all of this, the world must not sit idly by. Canada must not sit idly by. Yet today, we remain complicit, and the calls to act continue to echo across the country. Just this morning, a hundred Jewish Canadians occupied the Confederation Building on Parliament Hill, demanding the Government of Canada end its complicity in this genocide.

Here are the words of one of the organizers, Niall Ricardo: “Our politicians cannot be complacent in these marble hallways while Israel continues to burn Palestinians alive in their tents”. Niall is right.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mohammed Awad, coordinator of the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations, recently said at committee, “The Palestinian people have been failed several times, more and more by the international community and, unfortunately, by Canada as well.”

There is much the Government of Canada could do today if it were serious about ending its complicity in this genocide. At the bare minimum, it could start by enacting a true two-way arms embargo on Israel and cancelling all active military export permits to the country. Second, Canada could, today, recognize the state of Palestine, which should be self-evident if Canada believes in, and it says it does by its foreign policy, a two-state solution. How can we possibly believe in a two-state solution if Canada does not affirm that one of the two states even exists? This, at a time when experts have shared at committee in recent months that it is an obviously critical step for peace and preservation in the region.

Canada can and should call for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The government could fix the temporary resident visa program for Palestinian Canadian family members looking to get out of Gaza, following the recent Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East report showing this program was intended to fail. We could follow through on our Geneva Convention obligations, including preventing genocide. We could sanction extremist cabinet ministers who have said, for example, that starving civilians in Gaza might be justified, or that perpetrators of settler violence are heroes.

Years from now, no doubt, politicians will come together to memorialize the genocide in Gaza, but more important than those words of memoriam in future years is action right now.

Tonight I ask the parliamentary secretary, again, when will the government's actions align with its words when it says, “Never again”?