Mr. Speaker, my remarks today will be a bit of an homage to one of my favourite comedians and talk show hosts, David Letterman. I want to be clear that there is nothing funny about homelessness. However, there are so many reasons Canada must enshrine in law the right to housing, and, I only have a certain amount of time to speak today, so the format worked for me, sort of.
What I would like to share with everyone today is my top 11 reasons why Canada must enshrine the right to housing into Canadian law. Unlike David Letterman's top 10 list, my top 11 list is in no particular order. They are all equally important.
The number one reason housing should be a right in Canada is because housing first works. The idea of housing first as a therapeutic intervention into people's lives was the result of the work by a Canadian clinical psychologist from Montreal, Dr. Sam Tsemberis.
Dr. Tsemberis noticed, while practising in New York City, that the same people who were homeless were coming back over and over again to hospital for mental health services. Therefore, he did a radical thing. He reached out to those who, more often than not, were not consulted on homeless policies, people who were homeless, the individuals he was trying to help. Dr. Tsemberis then worked with other mental health professionals on a radical idea of helping people get off the street permanently by providing a place to live. The idea was simple. Once people had a permanent home, they could focus on their mental health, addictions, and physical health.
The model has been implemented all over the world, including in Canada, to great success, from the state of Utah, which saw a reduction in homelessness by 92%, to Medicine Hat, Alberta, the first city in Canada to end homelessness.
Housing first is more of a model than a program per se. In Canada, the Mental Health Commission of Canada's groundbreaking program At Home/Chez Soi project was built on the housing first philosophy and the success of the work of Dr. Tsemberis.
As the name suggests, I believe housing first uses a human rights lens to help people get and maintain a safe and affordable place to call home. This fundamental shift in thinking about how we intervene and help people is a proven, effective social policy. If improving and saving lives were not enough, housing first saves money, too.
In my community of Saskatoon, housing first, implemented by the United Way of Saskatoon and Area, in partnership with the Saskatoon Crisis Intervention Service, is saving lives and demonstrating cost savings by dramatically reducing the costs of emergency services.
Journey home is based on the housing first philosophy. As the name suggests, the program helps people who have been chronically homeless to find and secure a home. The stability and safety of a home then allows people to focus on their healing journey. The results have been amazing. In the first year alone, people helped by journey home saw an 82% drop in the use of high-cost emergency services like police, ambulance services, and emergency room visits. The social return on investment was calculated to be $2.23 saved for every $1 invested in the program. One participant said of her involvement with journey home, “Housing First saved my life”.
Reason number one is also reason number two, which is the rising cost of health care. What we see in the absence of affordable, safe, and supportive housing is emergency rooms and hospital beds being the de facto front line service provider. We cannot afford this and it does not work.
Reason number three is because Diefenbaker would approve. In Prime Minister Diefenbaker's own words:
However, the Bill of Rights has been drafted by men and will be applied and interpreted by men who, notwithstanding their high offices in the executive and judicial branches of government, are human beings and therefore subject to error when judged by fundamental standards. In particular
a. The Bill may, in the light of subsequent world developments, appear to have overlooked fundamental considerations;
b. The Bill, as ultimately interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada, may appear, in one or more respects, not to have been so worded as to achieve the desired results.
I will add the word “women” to that quote.
Diefenbaker understood that the Canadian Bill of Rights as originally drafted may have missed something and would evolve over time. I often wonder if Diefenbaker would have imagined that during an economic boom in Saskatchewan, someone working full time in Saskatoon had to live at the Salvation Army men's shelter because he could not afford cost of market rent.
Reason number four is that communities need the consistency of long-term government policy. Enshrining the right to housing in law would allow communities the assurance of a consistent government policy framework in their efforts to end and prevent homelessness.
All across Canada, community leaders, front-line service providers, and municipal governments have stepped up to address homelessness with resounding success. However, they cannot do it on their own. They need long-term commitments from government to continue their great work. Many a great community effort that improves the quality of life ends up wasted because a government changes and all that great work is no longer a priority for the new government, resources are wasted, lives are disrupted, and communities find often themselves going back to square one.
Reason number five is because sometimes government policy, or the lack thereof, actually creates homelessness. Good government policy in ending homelessness and preventing it needs to be incorporated across government departments. Otherwise, great policy develops in isolation and can have unintended consequences.
I will share one personal example. When I was involved in the Saskatoon Point-in-Time Count in Saskatoon, I received a call from a social worker at a local hospital. She wanted me to know that if we included the elderly people who were currently in the hospital as homeless, our numbers of homeless people would have been much higher. She went on to explain that a high number of beds in the hospital were currently being occupied by elderly patients who, if they had a suitable home to go to, would not be in the hospital. Those patients and people did not want to be in the hospital. A hospital bed is not a home. Government policies and government systems need to work together better.
Number six of my top 11 reasons for making housing a right in Canada is because we owe it to the next generation. There are more children in foster care in Canada now than there were children in the Indian residential school system. A colleague of mine called the foster care system the super highway to homelessness for youth. Young people are homeless for very different reasons than adults. More often than not, young people are living on the street because of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at home. We can all agree that every young person in Canada deserves a safe, supportive home.
Reason number seven is that we are in a housing crisis and we need to do things differently. The rise in the cost of housing is outpacing the rise in incomes in Canada. We often hear that Canadians are holding more personal debt than ever and that many Canadians are one paycheque away from not being able to meet their monthly expenses. We must address this issue. We must do something radically different. The solutions of the past are not going to work in this new reality.
In an article in The Hill Times, on September 18, Tim Richter, the CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, and Jacline Nyman, CEO of the United Way Centraide Canada, put it this way, “changing times require policy innovation that moves beyond replicating past initiatives.” Enshrining the right to housing in law could be the innovation that is needed in these changing times.
Reason number eight is that I believe Canada's signature on a piece of paper is worth something. In 1976, Canada signed on to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. So many legal experts would say that we have committed to enshrining in domestic law the right to housing. We have seen Canada's international rights regularly referred to in decisions made by our domestic courts.
Let me close with my last three reasons that housing has a right to be enshrined in law. Those last three reasons are Hashle Belanger, David Fineday, and Alvin Cote. Hashle, David, and Alvin all experienced homelessness in my city of Saskatoon. Hashle and David shared their expertise and their lived experience with me and others when I was the CEO of the United Way. Their generosity and intelligence and their willingness to share what they knew were the reasons why Saskatoon began to work as a community on homelessness, invest in housing first and saving lives.
The Saskatoon Plan to End Homlessness, designed to provide safe homes and a new future for Saskatoon's most vulnerable residents, is dedicated to the memory of Alvin Cote. A proud member of the Cote First Nation, Alvin Cote spent his life on the streets of Saskatoon. After facing unimaginable hardships as a child, a conventional life was too much to manage and he lost himself in alcohol. This placed him outside of the reach of most supports. The Plan to End Homelessness aims to provide options for others like him, so everyone can make the journey home. .
