Hansard
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 61 - 75 of 346
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
2021-06-08 12:19 [p.8085]
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his comments. What FRAPRU is asking the federal government for is more funding.
Even with the funds announced in recent years, federal investments in housing have fallen as a percentage of GDP. Then there are the interminable delays. It is terrible that social housing and homelessness initiatives are being subjected to longer and longer delays. Parliament voted for funding, but no money has been spent. In the meantime, families are ending up homeless or without social housing. The federal government needs to do more and do it faster. It needs to transfer the money.
More decision-making centres, especially in areas that are not under federal jurisdiction, means more bias, more bureaucracy, and fewer public services. We need to act now and provide better funding.
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Joliette, who always has something interesting to say. There is a shortage of social housing, yet social housing is the best tool for putting a decent roof over people's heads and reducing poverty.
Does my colleague not also think that social housing can benefit people who want to buy a home, because it helps cool the overheated housing market?
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
2021-06-08 12:20 [p.8085]
Mr. Speaker, I salute and thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his tireless advocacy on behalf of ordinary people, particularly on the housing issue.
When there is a good social housing system in place, it reduces the pressure to raise the rent across the housing market. That is the system we want, because housing is a necessity. Our society must ensure that there is enough housing to accommodate everyone. There is a clear link between the two.
Ottawa must do a better job of funding social housing by restoring funding to the levels that were in place before the cutbacks of the 1990s.
View Denis Trudel Profile
BQ (QC)
View Denis Trudel Profile
2021-06-08 12:21 [p.8086]
Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by echoing the comments made by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the Bloc Québécois and the leader of the NDP earlier regarding the tragic events that occurred in London yesterday.
Like all Canadians, I was shocked by what I heard about this tragic event. We obviously still have not found the right words in this country to ensure that events like this do not happen again. On behalf of all Quebeckers and all Canadians, my thoughts go out to little Fayez Salman, who is about to go through a truly difficult time. We need to do more, and we need to do better. I think this is the responsibility of all Canadians, including all parliamentarians. That is what I wanted to say about what happened in London.
Now, as for the motion before us, I am quite happy to be talking about it, to say the least. At the same time, a question comes to mind. This is a Conservative motion. Today in the House, we are going to talk about housing, at the behest of the Conservatives.
I have been an MP for a year and a half. I was elected a year and a half ago, and I am the Bloc Québécois housing and homelessness critic. I do not recall seeing the Conservatives rise once on the issue of housing. I do not remember seeing that at all.
Are they doing this because there is an election on the horizon? They might be thinking that it is time to talk about housing, which seems to be an issue since there is a housing crisis. No, I did not forget. I have just never heard them say a word about it. I am not always here, but it is an important issue. There is a housing crisis going on in Quebec and Canada. In fact, it is more complicated than that. There was a housing crisis before. Now there is a pandemic housing crisis, and there will be a housing crisis later.
I recently spoke with members of the Réseau SOLIDARITÉ itinérance du Québec. According to them, we are going through a health crisis, but we are facing a social crisis that could last five to 10 years. They think that the adverse effects of the current pandemic will linger for years.
The government we have right now is not doing anything, or at least not enough. There are problems with housing, and the government needs to step up. I want to give some context about how this crisis is playing out in Quebec. What is the issue?
Right now, there are 450,000 households in Quebec in serious need of housing. That is equivalent to about five or six federal ridings' worth of people who are spending 30% of their income on housing or living in substandard or inadequate housing. Some people may be paying a reasonable amount, but to share a one-bedroom apartment with seven other people. That does not work.
Some 200,000 households are spending more than 50% of their income on housing. These figures are from before the pandemic. Last, but not least, is a shocking figure that I have been repeating in the House for the past year and a half. I do not even understand how we can allow this to happen. Before the crisis, 82,000 households in Quebec were spending more than 80% of their income on housing.
To give members an idea of what that means, 80% of an income of $20,000 means that $16,000 is spent on housing, with nothing or practically nothing left over. If we divide the remaining $4,000 by 12 months, members can just imagine what kind of life that is. My mother called it living in squalor. We are letting that happen.
Right now, in Quebec, 40,000 households are on the waiting list for low-rental housing in Longueuil, Saint-Hyacinthe, Rimouski, Brossard and Montreal. There are 23,000 households on the waiting list in Montreal alone.
We are talking about numbers. With regard to homelessness, Mayor Valérie Plante said that it appears the homeless population doubled during the pandemic. It went from 3,000 to 6,000 because people were made vulnerable by the crisis. We saw it last year in the streets. People set up camp along Notre-Dame Street. This year, they have been moved, but it does not seem as though the situation has been resolved.
We know that house prices have increased by about 20%. That also contributes to making people vulnerable. Obviously, the federal government has a role to play in this. Obviously, this is an area of provincial jurisdiction. In 2017, the federal government launched a major, multi-billion dollar strategy, saying that it would house everybody, that nothing like this had been done in 30 years, and that everyone would see that the government was going to take care of people, people who were vulnerable and at risk.
I do not remember how many billions were promised as part of that strategy. For three years, the federal government spent money everywhere in Canada except Quebec. The crisis raged on, but no money was spent, not a penny. It took three years to sort the situation out, and the Canada-Quebec agreement was signed in October of last year. However, I have heard that sectoral agreements are still being signed and that things are still being worked out.
Earlier, while I was asking a question that my colleague, as usual, did not answer, I provided a striking example relating to renovations. The agreement includes nearly $1.2 billion to renovate decrepit low-rental housing. That is a good thing, and we are happy about it because our cities are full of boarded-up low-rental housing that we need to invest in.
In early May, as part of the agreement that was signed three years after the national housing strategy was launched in 2017, it was announced that 500 new units would be renovated in Montreal. However, no one could move into these units for three years.
If the agreement had been signed three years ago, we could have housed a single mother in my riding who was the victim of domestic violence. She made the headlines in the Journal de Montréal about a month ago. This poor woman does not have a home and is in a vulnerable position. She was trapped in a toxic relationship, but the government is doing nothing to help. In Longueuil, a single mother in her situation needs a two- or three-bedroom apartment, which costs between $1,500 and $1,700 a month. There are none to be had. If the federal government had acted quickly, instead of trying to get its flag on the cheques to show that it was the one providing housing for people, this woman would already have a place to live.
The government has finally reacted. Let us put the agreement aside and talk about the rapid housing initiative, or RHI, that was launched by the government last fall. I must admit that it is not a bad program, but it is grossly underfunded.
The first part of the program was for the big cities and had a budget of $500 million, which is scandalous in and of itself. Of that $500 million, Toronto received $200 million, Montreal $57 million and Quebec City $7 million or $8 million. Why is that? In Quebec, we have 23% of the population, but we received only 11% of the money. Is that because our needs are not as great? I never got a decent answer to that question.
The second part of the RHI was for everyone: non-profit organizations, other organizations and towns, among others. An application portal was opened and that is when we really saw the crisis come to the surface, when the program received applications for projects worth a total of as much as $4.2 billion. However, the envelope for that second part of the program was only $500 million.
The applications were for projects for people with real needs, desperate needs: victims of spousal abuse, addicts, people suffering with mental illness. We know what mental illness is. We have talked about it quite a bit throughout the crisis. We could have taken care of those people.
The organizations that submitted project applications were not just a bunch of guys who had nothing better to do between periods in a hockey game and so decided to submit a project to address domestic violence before the start of the third period. The application process is complicated, and these are serious individuals who know and care about the needs of their communities. The projects were valued at over $4 billion, but there was only $500 million in the envelope. When we talk about underfunding and say that people's needs are not being met, that is what we are talking about.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which represents municipalities across Canada, whether it be Calgary, Toronto, Victoriaville or Rimouski, applied for $7 billion under this same program. It saw an opportunity and thought that it was a good program and that the government was reinvesting.
In closing, while I have probably made my point to the members of the House, I would still like to reiterate that the government is not doing enough and not moving fast enough. We are not taking care of people and ensuring they are properly housed. We need massive reinvestment in social housing and we need it now.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his dynamic intervention.
When the parliamentary secretary spoke earlier today, he mentioned that the Liberal plan addresses every single component of the housing continuum and in that is saying the government is addressing supply. We have to assume if it is already addressing supply, then it had a role in leading to the affordability crisis we are facing today. What would the member from the Bloc Québécois say to that?
View Denis Trudel Profile
BQ (QC)
View Denis Trudel Profile
2021-06-08 12:33 [p.8087]
Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that I understood the question, but there is something very interesting about which little has been said and that I have not spoken about in connection with housing.
The government is saying that rent is not that high. The average rent in Montreal is $895. The problem is that the average rent of available housing is 30% higher. Currently, the average cost of available housing in Montreal is $1,300 a month. We need to consider that. We must do something to help.
A little earlier, I spoke about the woman from Longueuil. There are many people like her, people made vulnerable by the pandemic and who are waiting for social housing. We must do something for these people.
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-08 12:33 [p.8087]
Mr. Speaker, I support the member's call for more. Members will never hear me say that we have done enough. We are doing more than the previous government and we have more work to do.
I would like the member to respond to several positions advanced by Conservative MPs in this conversation about cutting red tape at the municipal level, taking away zoning regulations that the cities of Montreal and Sherbrooke have put in place, and overriding the provinces' planning criteria and jurisdiction in the supply chain as they manage, as many have said, the exclusive responsibility around planning, zoning and construction standards in provinces.
Does the member from the Bloc support the Conservative position that we should be overriding and changing the local jurisdiction's rules and regulations around the construction and siting of housing, and what sort of housing gets built in local municipalities and ignore provincial jurisdiction over planning acts at the provincial level? Should the federal government be intervening in that way?
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The parliamentary secretary is misrepresenting the position of the Conservative Party.
View Denis Trudel Profile
BQ (QC)
View Denis Trudel Profile
2021-06-08 12:35 [p.8088]
Mr. Speaker, I do not know what else to say. The same thing happens with health care. Housing is a provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government needs to send money to the provinces. Historically, the federal government has established its authority over spending. It is responsible for the crisis we are in now because it does not spend enough.
I cannot get over this. Over the past 15 months, the government has spent $400 billion on all kinds of things, which were good things, but why can it not seem to find $3 billion or $4 billion to house the most vulnerable?
I do not get it.
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
View Charlie Angus Profile
2021-06-08 12:35 [p.8088]
Mr. Speaker, if we are talking about a housing crisis, I invite my colleagues to come to Kashechewan, where 1,900 people are sharing 364 houses. That is roughly 16 people per house, and COVID has hit. We have 60 active cases and potentially 70 cases at high risk. That means out of the 30 Canadian Rangers who were sent in only five are working, because the rest are isolated with COVID. Nine health workers have been sent home. We have 10 to 15 people to a house and COVID is spreading. We are talking about a potential humanitarian disaster, with over 172 cases right now on the Mushkegowuk part of the James Bay coast.
I am asking my colleagues to get serious about the underfunding in the first nations communities. We need to look at bringing in the army to help. They do not have the housing, the infrastructure and the medical teams necessary to keep people safe when they are living so many in a home with the COVID variants that are hitting them very hard.
View Denis Trudel Profile
BQ (QC)
View Denis Trudel Profile
2021-06-08 12:36 [p.8088]
Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with my hon. colleague.
I could not believe it when I saw the news about the 215 children who were found in Kamloops last week. The government's only response was to dust off Bill C-8 and say that it is taking action for indigenous peoples by adding four words to the Canadian oath of citizenship. Meanwhile, there are still indigenous reserves in northern Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba that do not yet have drinking water and where there are 25 people living in substandard and unheated one-bedroom homes.
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the fantastic member for Vancouver East.
Like the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, I was shocked to see that the Conservative motion is about housing. It is rare that we hear them talk about this subject. So much the better if their motion talks about housing because it is a real subject, a real issue and a real problem.
Does the motion present real solutions? That is another matter, and we can talk about it later.
Housing is a critical issue that affects thousands of people in Montreal, Quebec and across Canada. Obviously, my speech is going to focus on Montreal because that is where my riding is located. There is a real housing crisis in my riding. It is not the only place in Quebec that has been affected by the crisis, but it is one of the places that has been hardest hit by it.
The vacancy rate is approximately 1%, which is extremely low. That means that people do not have a lot of choices. Sometimes they are even forced to stay where they are because there are no other options available. Some housing units are dangerous and can jeopardize the health of their occupants. I will come back to that later.
As I was saying, the vacancy rate is really low. The delay regarding the Canada-Quebec agreement exacerbated the crisis. The federal government waited three years before releasing the funds and getting out the shovels and bricks to start real housing projects. Unfortunately, Quebec has been the last in line when it comes to housing.
The vacancy rate puts intense pressure on both the rental market and on home ownership. People are paying ridiculously high prices for housing. In Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, 74% of residents are renters. I recently saw a two-bedroom apartment going for $1,750 a month. A two-bedroom apartment cannot house a big family. Furthermore, I wonder what kind of job someone needs to have to be able to pay $1,750 a month. The average income is around $40,000 or $45,000 a year. Rent is, on average, $1,200 or $1,300. This puts a lot of pressure on workers, on the middle class and, obviously, the less fortunate.
Why is housing so important? It is because there are a few things we can do to help improve people's lives.
People need better working conditions. If someone earns more and inflation is not too high, they can increase their purchasing power. Higher wages are therefore a good thing.
The government can also use fiscal tools, such as taxes, to redistribute wealth and achieve greater equality within our society. One of the best ways to fight poverty and reduce inequality is to tackle the biggest expense for individuals, families and households. That biggest expense is rent.
Let us tackle that problem so we can really help people and lift them out of poverty. Maybe that just means giving them a little bit of a leg up to help improve their quality of life so they can take a vacation or go to a restaurant or the movies. When those activities are allowed, of course, but we all agree that it is coming.
Everyone knows that if a person spends more than 30% of their income on rent, they will end up poor and vulnerable. Right now, 20% of people spend more than 50% of their income on rent. In other words, one in five people spends more than half their paycheque on rent. That is outrageous. About 3,000 households or 6,000 to 7,000 people in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie are in that situation. That is a lot of people.
As I said off the top, I was happy to read the Conservatives' motion. Then I started combing through it for a couple of words that turned out not to be there: “affordable” and “social”. The motion says nothing about affordable or social housing even though social housing in particular is the best way to help people get decent housing that is within their means. It is possible to create housing that costs people no more than 25% of their income, of their pay.
That makes a huge difference. It helps people in a tangible way. However, the Conservatives have disregarded this and have not included it among the options on the table, even if it is the best tool we have to help people and give them decent housing.
The Liberals occasionally talk about social housing, but they do not invest enough in it.
The Liberal plan, of which they are so proud, is to create 160,000 affordable or social housing units. I will get to what affordability means. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness says that there is an urgent need to build 300,000 housing units in Canada. The plan in question, of which the Liberals are so proud, barely manages to offer half of what is needed to meet the needs of the population. Personally, I would not pat myself on the back as much as they do.
The NDP wants to go farther, faster. We want to make the kind of effort that has not been seen since the Second World War and build 500,000 new affordable social housing units in the next 10 years.
When we use the word “affordable”, we must consider certain criteria and be mindful of the definition. I will get right to the issue of affordability. As a matter of fact, depending on the definition, it can refer to some completely absurd situations. If our only criteria is that these units are rented 5% cheaper than the market average, which is exploding and reaching outrageous and ridiculous prices, we end up with housing that is considered “affordable”, but for which people need to have an outrageously high salary and an outrageously low standard of living.
According to the Liberal definition, in Ottawa, a unit that rents for $2,750 a month is considered affordable. The Liberal government thinks this is affordable for the poor and the middle class. I cannot wait to go door to door on this issue.
We need to be able to build housing outside the logic of the market. That is why the NDP puts so much emphasis on building social housing and co-operative housing, which is another way to deal with the housing problem. This goes beyond the single perspective of real estate developers, profits and business objectives. There is obviously room for a lucrative private real estate market. There is also nothing wrong with helping people get a better deal in the market and helping young families get into home ownership.
However, we must be able to keep a part of our real estate market outside the regular market. This would reflect the principles of public service, co-operation and mutual aid, and it would include housing co-operatives, for example, which are common in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. These are great places to live, where people learn about co-operation, living together, sharing and local democracy. We have to continue to push in that direction.
We need to recognize that housing is a fundamental right and part of human dignity. For years now, the NDP has been introducing bills and fighting to have housing recognized as a right. That would make all the difference.
Speaking of making a difference, the federal government could still make a difference with investments and funding. I talked about 500,000 affordable social housing units, but there are also a lot of other things, such as working with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the CMHC, to make it easier for young families to access home ownership and to encourage the creation and maintenance of the co-op housing I was talking about.
We must also use federal land. There is federal land that is not being used and could be sold to private developers to build various projects. Why not set aside and use these federal lands to ensure that social housing is built, for example in the riding of Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, in Montreal, where there are some very interesting sites? They should be set aside for social housing.
Locally, in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, there is the issue of “renovictions”, when people are forced to leave their dwelling because of renovations. This does not fall under federal jurisdiction, but we must work with the provinces to come up with solutions.
As for housing safety and environmental health, I joined a protest near my office started by people who were unable to move out of their dwelling even though it contained mould and was dangerous for the occupants.
The La Petite Patrie housing committee is working extremely hard with regard to the construction of social housing close to the Bellechasse sector. The Rosemont housing committee is also working to have other properties designated entirely as community housing when new projects are built, which is interesting.
With regard to the former Centre de services scolaire de Montréal or CSDM building on Sherbrooke Street, the Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain, or FRAPRU, is asking that it be reserved for social housing.
I think that is an excellent idea and something we should consider.
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, the member keeps referring to social housing. I have a concern with social housing, at least as I understand the member to represent it. Social housing, to me, means building as many units as possible in one tight area to house as many people as possible. Although that might be beneficial in terms of having the best bang for our buck, it certainly has been proven, time and again, that it does not help with the mental health of individuals living there and it does not help with the social stigmatization that comes from ghettoized social housing. It is very well regarded that, in order to bring people through the affordable housing process, they should be well integrated. Indeed, the co-op model does that, because the co-op model requires people who pay market rent as well as people who pay non-market rent for it to be viable.
Can the member comment? When he talks about social housing, does he not mean something that is more along the lines of integrated housing? There, people who are living with rent geared to income are living with people who are paying market rent, so that there is an integration of demographics in a particular complex.
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, which deals with a major concern.
I would like him to come visit my riding of Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie one day. He would see that the idea of a socially mixed environment and diversity is extremely important in the projects that we put forward, when we are able to get funding. The Liberal government has been dragging its feet for three years.
The idea is not to create chicken coops or ant hills where we try to shove as many people as possible into the smallest space possible and leave them there. On the contrary, we want to be able to create projects in which social housing and real affordable housing are a significant component. We want a mix of renters and prices that are in line with the true market value.
This type of project is worthwhile because everyone lives in the same living environment. That is one of the things we are trying to do with the development of the Bellechasse sector, which I talked about earlier.
Diversity and a socially mixed environment are extremely important to us.
View Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Profile
BQ (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to everyone's remarks by saying that I completely agree with my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, among others.
Before becoming an MP, I worked in community action in Laurentides—Labelle. People have been talking about affordable and social housing for ages. We all knew there was a huge crisis, and I know first-hand there is still a crisis, because people come see me at my office. They recognize me and ask me for help because they have no place to live, and by July 1 it will be too late. It is never too late though.
Under previous governments, once consultations were done in the ridings, it was easy to see where things were going even though nobody saw the pandemic coming. Where were they?
Here is my question for my colleague. How is it that this is being brought up now, and by a Conservative government to boot, just before the end of the parliamentary session and at the end of the pandemic?
Results: 61 - 75 of 346 | Page: 5 of 24

|<
<
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data