Hansard
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 1 - 15 of 112
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
View Arnold Viersen Profile
2021-06-22 10:36 [p.8940]
Madam Speaker, the next petition I have to present is from Canadians across the country who are concerned about the impacts of violent and degrading sexually explicit material online and the impacts on public health, especially on the well-being of women and girls. They recognize that we cannot say we believe in preventing in sexual violence toward women while allowing pornography companies to freely expose children to violent, sexually explicit imagery every day. As such, they are calling on the Government of Canada to adopt meaningful age verification on all adult websites.
View Dane Lloyd Profile
CPC (AB)
View Dane Lloyd Profile
2021-06-21 17:59 [p.8881]
Madam Speaker, today we are debating a very unfortunately worded piece of legislation, Bill C-6, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding conversion therapy. I say it is unfortunate because this legislation fails to accurately define what conversion therapy is. It fails to provide clarity for Canadians, and I believe that it puts LGBTQ+ Canadians, children, parents, religious leaders and medical professionals at risk.
From the outset, I have been clear that I do not support conversion therapy, which involves coercive, involuntary and abusive practices that seek to change someone's sexual orientation. The evidence we have heard is clear: These practices have been harmful to those who have participated and they should not be allowed to continue.
The problem I have as a legislator is that the government has adopted a definition of conversion therapy that goes far beyond the scope of this harmful practice, and risks creating significant harms for families as a result. Going by the very definition the government has included in the legislation, we are asked to accept that even discouraging someone from “non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression” is a criminal act of conversion therapy.
The Minister of Justice has tried to assure members of the House that honest discussions about sexuality will not be criminalized under this act, but it is very apparent that the wording has been left so vague as to open up the very real possibility that the courts could interpret honest discussions about sexuality as potentially criminal. Without further clarification, we are introducing confusion into the Criminal Code, which could potentially lead to many honest Canadians being subject to a criminal investigation for honest discussions about sexuality.
The legislation is also potentially very harmful to children under the age of 16, who I believe are unable to truly consent to life-altering surgeries and drug regimens to achieve gender transition. This legislation could lead to the criminalization of important information streams that are essential for people to make informed decisions regarding gender transitions. In the recent United Kingdom High Court decision of Bell v. Tavistock, the court ruled that it is highly unlikely that children under 13 could truly consent to the use of puberty blockers. The court also analyzed the considerable effects of these treatments and concluded that it was even doubtful that children under the age of 16 could understand the long-term risks and consequences of these treatments.
This legislation potentially undermines the ability of medical professionals to share critical medical information that may lead to discouraging a child from undergoing a gender transition. The consequences for these children, as we have seen in the Tavistock case, are permanent and tragic. This puts LGBTQ+ youth at significant risk, as they may not be given access to the necessary medical information and frank advice needed for them to make informed decisions.
I am also very concerned over the effect this legislation could have on families, the foundational building blocks of a free society. The inclusion of gender expression and penalties for the repression of non-cisgender behaviour creates risks for families that could result in bad outcomes for children.
It is not hard to imagine a young boy who wants to go to school dressed in female clothes. Many parents would force their child to wear what they believe are gender-appropriate clothes, and I believe in the majority of those cases the parents are doing it out of a genuine care and concern for the well-being of their child. When that child goes to school, perhaps he will tell the teacher that he believes he is of another gender and that his parents refuse to let him wear female clothing. If the practice of conversion therapy, as poorly defined by the government, is made a criminal offence, teachers would probably have little choice but to report the parents to children's services for allegations of emotional abuse. The ramifications of this outcome would be highly damaging to the welfare of children, families and society. The definition of conversion therapy must be clarified, and the rights of well-meaning parents who are caring for their children must be protected.
One result of this legislation is that it could lead to an infringement on the rights of LGBTQ+ Canadians to seek out services they may genuinely wish to access. In my exploration of this topic, I spoke with members of the LGBTQ+ community who, for religious or personal reasons, felt they did not want to engage in certain activities.
In some cases, members of these communities may have been struggling with issues of sex addiction or sexual practices that could lead to serious physical, emotional or spiritual consequences. Under this legislation, it would not necessarily be illegal to offer services that would be covered under the definition of “conversion therapy” to consenting adults. However, it would be very difficult for LGBTQ+ adults to find or access these services considering the effect of this legislation, which is essentially to make these services impossible to advertise and, by extension, to access in Canada.
This could even lead to cases of discrimination, whereby a heterosexual who is seeking counsel and support for dealing with sex addiction or harmful sexual behaviours will receive treatment, but an LGBTQ+ person would be turned away. I do not think the government intended to discriminate against LGBTQ Canadians, but I believe that it is a very real possibility under this legislation as it has been drafted. Again, this demonstrates why the flawed definition of “conversion therapy” is leading to confusion and significant potential adverse outcomes for LGBTQ Canadians.
Furthermore, the legislation's poor definition of “conversion therapy” could potentially lead to outcomes whereby well-meaning people with bonafide constitutionally protected beliefs will be made into criminals. When people are driven by a sincere desire to help those who come to them struggling with issues, they should not be treated as criminals for sharing their perspective. In the case of religious leaders who are approached by members of their congregation looking for guidance, I believe that under this legislation, the very act of even sharing passages of the Bible could be considered a criminal act of conversion therapy.
These provisions create the very real possibility of criminal sanctions against those who hold unpopular opinions in whole or in part because of those opinions. Punishing people for having unpopular opinions or beliefs is not a Canadian value. Given the religious views of conservative Muslims and Christians, among others, it is probable that those impacted by this legislation will be people who come from various faith backgrounds. This is potentially a case of enforcing religious discrimination.
Jail time is not an appropriate punishment for those who hold differing viewpoints, particularly religious views. The criminal penalties in this legislation, which include a maximum of between two and five years in prison, are on par with assault, abandonment of a child and infanticide. To treat people who hold constitutionally protected beliefs on par with those who kill children is completely disproportionate. I propose to the government that the provisions of this act are already addressed by human rights legislation and human rights tribunals. Given that we are debating competing rights, such as the equality rights of LGBTQ Canadians and the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of religion, it would be far better to delegate the adjudication of these difficult decisions to a body that is equipped to deal with them.
In cases where there is evidence of harm related to conversion therapy, such as forcible confinement, assault or kidnapping, the Criminal Code already has significant mechanisms to deal with these matters. In cases where there is a dispute between people over what is and what is not legitimate to say to somebody regarding their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, it would be far better for the human rights tribunals to be investigating and making decisions on these matters rather than the criminal courts.
In closing, I have illustrated a number of reasons, including the poor definition, the potential for discrimination and the possibility that human rights tribunals could do a far better job of adjudicating these difficult decisions on competing rights, that I cannot support this legislation at this time. I believe that Bill C-6 would harm some LGBTQ Canadians, some families and society in general, which outweighs the potential benefits outlined in it. If the government is truly interested in working in good faith with concerned Canadians, it will commit to amending the definition in this legislation to provide clarity and protections for families, counsellors and medical professionals.
View Derek Sloan Profile
Ind. (ON)
Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to rise on this issue. I understand that the opinions to counter this bill are not as numerous as the opinions in favour of it, but they are nonetheless no less important.
When I was watching the debate ensue at committee, I was not a part of the committee, but as an interested parliamentarian, I watched all of it. The debate with respect to witnesses and so forth was rather even-handed. I did not count the number of witnesses who raised concerns, versus those who were in favour of it, but there were plenty of professionals and other individual people who brought up real situations which would be technically against the letter of the law according to this, but I think we would all agree are legitimate concerns. I just want to, as best as I can, address those today. Ten minutes is not sufficient for that, but I will do my very best. Of course, time is lacking to do much of what we need to do in this House.
I am in support of a ban on harmful counselling. There are many other jurisdictions, governments and cities around the world that have banned conversion therapy, but in a different way. They have different definitions that are far less broad. Of course, many of them, if not all, outside of a few, are not criminal in nature. I think it is problematic when we have a very broad definition that is also criminal because we want to ban harmful courses of practice, but we do not want to put people in jail who, frankly, do not deserve to be there.
As others have raised before, we want to be entirely certain that what we are targeting is, in fact, the evil that we are looking to target and not be overbroad in that ban. I am a little bit concerned that the assumptions that underpin this bill are faulty. When not all, but some of the assumptions are faulty we can be led astray. I just want to take issue with some of them.
The first is the myth that Bill C-6's definition of conversion therapy accurately identifies treatments that will be harmful and does so in a way that is not overbroad. I think, of course, that there are abusive practices out there and I think that we should aim to ban them, but what Bill C-6 has done here is to basically, in my view, when looking at the definition, outlaw any validated form of talk therapy for Canadians wishing to deal with various issues related to sexual attraction and gender identity. For those who would like to look into the proceedings of the committee, there are many examples of very credible witnesses who have gone through circumstances where they needed counselling to address certain things and their stories are credible. I do not have time to go through them all, but members can look at them.
I also want to say that with respect to transgender identification, particularly in children, there is a conversation going on globally right now that we are missing in this debate on Bill C-6.
In the U.K., the Government Equalities Office for example, is looking into whether the influence of social media and the discussion of gender identity with young people have contributed to the striking increase in referrals. When I get into some of the data here on the striking increase, I think we could all agree that there is something here that needs to be looked at. In the last 10 years, in the United Kingdom, which mirrors data from other countries, we have seen referrals to these gender clinics skyrocket. We have seen them increase by about 1,000% for boys and 4,400% for biological females.
These exponential rises, as I have said, are increasing in other western nations as well. We heard one of the members earlier speak about the United Kingdom High Court ruling with respect to Keira Bell. Keira Bell is one of the young women who was referred to the Tavistock institute, which is the clinic there that deals with gender referrals for gender identity. She was told that, if she went through the process, she would feel better about herself, so she went on to hormone blockers. She had a double mastectomy. She spent several years living, outwardly looking like a man, and she came to regret it. She was in her early twenties. She took the Tavistock institute to court saying she was not in a position where she could consent to this treatment, but was basically told that this would be the answer she needed to her life. It did not make anything better and, in fact, it made a lot of things worse.
The court ruled that people under 16 could likely not consent to puberty-blocking treatments. This bill does the opposite. This bill says that if someone wants to put their child on hormone blockers or if they want to basically put them on the road to surgery, that is totally fine, but to give them the wrong type of counselling could get them in trouble.
Some people would say that there is a clause in the bill that allows people to explore. However, the fact is we heard from very competent professionals in committee that this clause would not be enough, when there is potentially a five-year jail term hanging over people's head.
We heard from Ken Zucker, an internationally renowned expert in gender identity. He was basically working with our clinic here, CAMH, for decades. He is internationally renowned in this field. He has literally written the book on how to treat gender identity in children. He was accused of conversion therapy a few years ago. He was fired from his position, summarily. He had the wherewithal and the resources to take his employer to court. He won a substantial settlement. He cleared his name.
This is the type of thing that we are seeing, before Bill C-6. If this is the sort of witch hunt environment we are seeing before Bill C-6, it is going to increase significantly with Bill C-6.
Other than the U.K., we are seeing other countries in Europe, Sweden and Finland, have gone even a step further. They are moving away from what is called affirmation-only models of care, which I suggest is what Bill C-6 is, this is what other professionals in committee said about this bill. In Sweden and Finland, they are saying there must be a sober second look when a child identifies as transgender. A sober second look is the very thing that I believe Bill would criminalize.
Bill C-6 would criminalize parents who want to discourage their young child from transitioning, who would not be making life-altering decisions. I do not believe it is hateful for a parent to make a decision based on accurate medical facts.
When it comes to transgender identification in children, reliable data indicates the vast majority of kids who identify as another gender would grow out of it, meaning by the time they become an adult, many of up them, up to 80% according to some studies, will identify or accept the body they were born with. I think that given data like that, we really need to give a lot of room here for kids to explore but not to push them on this one-track mode of puberty blockers and eventually surgery. This is what is being criticized by people like Keira Bell.
I read an article in the National Post a year or so ago by Barbara Kay that highlighted the story of a young girl, JB is the acronym used, a child who is currently involved in an application in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. This involves a teacher in an Ottawa area school who told this six year-old that girls do not exist. This six-year-old was a happy, loving young girl. I have a seven-year-old, a six-year-old and a five-year-old. The seven- and five-year-olds are girls.
This six-year-old became distraught, withdrawn and depressed. She did not understand what it meant. The parents asked the teacher if she could just cool it on some of these ethereal gender theory comments. The teacher and administration refused to do this, and the parents had to take that girl out of that school. They moved her to a different school, and have taken this particular school board to court.
The girl is once again a happy, well-adjusted young girl. It just goes to show that we have to be careful what we are putting into the minds of our young children. What the U.K. high court case found is that once these kids were put onto these drugs, the hormone blockers, it pretty much puts them on the road to surgery. It is kind of like a one-track street.
We need to be very careful. We need to have a sober second look in this country.
There are in fact many people, even in LGB communities, who are against this bill. I will read an email I received. It said:
Dear Mr. Derek Sloan,
As a Lesbian, I am asking you to investigate the use of gender identity in bill C-6. Approximately 75% of trans identifying youth will grow up to be gay or lesbian, if not affirmed and medically transitioned. This bill, as written, ensures that these gay and lesbian youth will be medically transitioned into straight adults.
She goes on to say:
Please protect vulnerable Gay and Lesbian youth from being told that they are“born in the wrong body” and told they should transition to feel “right” and to “fit in”. Sincerely...
View Colin Carrie Profile
CPC (ON)
View Colin Carrie Profile
2021-06-18 16:25 [p.8815]
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Carleton for all his optimism and his five points.
I come from Oshawa, which has a big manufacturing background, and I have been hearing about the Liberals shutting down our manufacturing sector, our softwood lumber sector, our mining sector, and the member knows, of course, that Mr. Carney wants to promote Russian pipelines and block Canadian pipelines.
Could the member please explain to Canadian youth who are looking for a good future how modern monetary theory is going to help them get those jobs of the future and how, by 2030, when they own nothing, they will be really happy?
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-18 16:25 [p.8815]
Madam Speaker, this is a great question.
First of all, MMT, as they call modern monetary theory, can also stand for “more money today” or “magic money tree”. It is this new theory where governments will simply print cash. The central bank creates the cash, sends it over in a Brink's truck every day to the Prime Minister's Office, and he just starts throwing the money around.
What we have now is a little bit different. To start with, we do not have a direct sale of debt to the bank. It first gets funnelled through the financial sector in Canada so that it can take a cut and get even richer before that newly printed cash trickles down to the people at the bottom. However, the bottom line is that what we have today is very similar to MMT. It is printing mass sums of cash, which inflates the assets of the rich and raises the consumer prices of the poor. It is a massive new inflation tax that will only help big government, big business and the super-rich at the expense of the working class. That is why we are speaking out against it.
As for Mr. Carney, the member is right. He is part of the World Economic Forum, which the finance minister joins, which says that in 2030, only nine years from now, we will own nothing and we will love it. That is the agenda of these people. Maybe that is why, over the last year, they have done everything in their power to make housing completely unaffordable so that nobody can afford it except them, a small group of landed aristocrats, while the common people are out in the field doing the work. We on this side want to democratize property ownership and make it available to everybody.
View Mario Beaulieu Profile
BQ (QC)
View Mario Beaulieu Profile
2021-06-14 14:02 [p.8328]
Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to recognize the 30th anniversary of Antre-Jeunes, an essential organization that has been a pillar of Montreal's Mercier-Est community since 1991. Its two drop-in centres are open to young people aged 12 to 17 every day after school and offer activities throughout the year.
Antre-Jeunes is a welcoming community place where young people can do all kinds of activities under the supervision of leaders and facilitators. It helps the youth of Mercier-Est expand their horizons by providing them with opportunities for success, learning and personal development.
Antre-Jeunes also offers a street outreach program to meet the needs of young people who do not go to traditional youth centres and use their services.
I would like to thank the director, Joelle McNeil Paquet, and the entire team at Antre-Jeunes for the extremely important work they do. This is a caring, engaged, dedicated, dynamic team that is always there for the young people of Mercier-Est.
Happy 30th anniversary to Antre-Jeunes.
View René Arseneault Profile
Lib. (NB)
Madam Speaker, today, I would like to recognize another young entrepreneur from my region, Sophie Nadeau Becker, who is 11 years old.
This young lady from Saint-Jacques is already business savvy. She recently launched her family micro-business, which makes and sells homemade treats and bandanas for dogs. Her business is called Ohlala... de Sophie.
Once a week, with her brother Félix's help, Sophie makes dog biscuits and sells them to local stores.
The business has expanded such that it has now more than 200 clients. The young entrepreneur is even looking for students to join her team this summer.
We admire our amazing young entrepreneurs, who continue to astound us and show us that the future of our economy is in good hands.
Let us encourage our youth to believe in their dreams; they may well come true.
In the meantime, I encourage the people of Madawaska—Restigouche to treat their furry four-legged friends to Ohlala... de Sophie products.
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-08 11:35 [p.8078]
Madam Speaker, I just spoke with a London city councillor about the impact the tragedy of the last few days has had on her community and on the city of London. I am also thinking of members of my own riding, their walks to mosque and what that is like these days. I too would like to add my voice to a chorus of voices that are calling for us all as Canadians to be better in fighting racism and Islamophobia. That is where my heart is, even if the words that I am now going to share are focused on housing.
I have often risen in this House and said anytime the House of Commons talks about housing, it is a good day. No one will ever find an MP who fights harder for more affordable housing, whether the choice is to own or rent. It is a fundamental human right and I am very proud to be part of a government that has legislated the right to housing into a national housing strategy, that has brought forth federal leadership, which started to disappear in the late 1980s and was devastated by the cuts that were made in the early 1990s. I am very proud to be part of a government that has changed course. I am very proud that my party has embraced housing as a federal responsibility and has invested now close to $72 billion and beyond, if we include some of the indigenous investments as well, to change the conversation on housing in this country.
The Conservatives will talk about market solutions and New Democrats will talk about social housing, but my party will talk about both. While the Bloc may think it is just a federal responsibility, the reality is that housing Canadians and meeting the fundamental rights of Canadians is all governments' responsibility. Whether it is an indigenous government, a municipal government, a provincial government or a federal government, we all must tackle this housing crisis together, we all must end homelessness together and we all must make sure that Canadians have a housing system that meets their needs and supports their choices, whether it is to rent or own.
Our government has made historic investments. If we take the rapid housing initiative alone, with $1 billion over the last six months, it created 4,777 units of housing for homeless individuals. That $1 billion did more in six months than the Harper Conservatives did in eight years. We have added $1.5 billion to that program and hope to get even more remarkable results.
What is also amazing about that particular investment is that as we move toward an urban, rural and northern indigenous-led housing strategy and deliver on that program, while working very hard with indigenous housing providers to realize the funding and that program, almost a third of the housing that was delivered to the rapid housing initiative was delivered to indigenous housing providers in urban, rural and northern spaces. The largest investment in the history of the Northwest Territories was part of that announcement and for the programs and projects that we could not pick up through rapid housing, we applied the co-investment fund.
Let me help the House understand exactly how the national housing strategy is working and how much more work it needs to do. As I said, I will always support a call for more action, more investment and more thought on this issue. The national housing strategy approaches every single component of the spectrum of housing, from homelessness to people with high-income needs that require deep subsidies to secure their housing. We have to also make sure that people who are in rental housing are protected in that space, can afford their rental housing and save to buy a house, if that is the choice they want to make. We also have to make sure there are pathways and bridges to home ownership for new buyers so that people can secure their place in the housing market and the housing system in this country.
However, we also have to make sure that the market is stable. While I have no interest in protecting the speculative equity that is created in the housing sector, that is not my focus, we have to make sure that when people purchase homes, the market does not collapse around them and erode the principal they put down to acquire their housing. We have to protect the housing market as we also deliver social housing solutions, as we make sure we end chronic homelessness in this country and deal with the different regional, urban, rural and northern dynamics that challenge so many people in this country to find safe, secure and affordable housing.
Our national housing strategy, the $72-billion program, addresses all of these issues, from supply to maintenance to subsidy to purpose-built supportive housing. It is a comprehensive strategy that I am very proud of, but it is built on almost 50 years of housing policy in this country. In fact, if we go back far enough, to the 1800s, we will see that the west was settled with offers of free homes. It has always been a federal policy to secure the growth of this country with strong investments in housing.
What has the national housing strategy accomplished? Let us review some of the accomplishments and take a look at the plan that was introduced in 2017. It was a $40-billion plan, but in every single budget, we have added additional dollars to get more supply, more options and more choice in front of Canadians.
As we look at some of the extraordinary records, one of them is the move to get purpose-built rental housing being built again in this country. We have invested, as the member who introduced the motion identified, close to $25 billion in supports to deliver new purpose-built rental housing.
When I was a city councillor in Toronto, we were building fewer than 60 purpose-built rental housing units every decade. There are now 2,400 units being built in my riding alone. That is across the street in the new Toronto Centre riding, where there is purpose-built rental housing in partnership with the private sector. These new, permanent affordable housing units are just the start, because we have added additional dollars. There is a major program coming out with an indigenous group in Vancouver, the Musgamagw, that is also now getting support from our government. Why? Because we have a program that focuses on purpose-built rental housing.
That is one part of it, but there is also the co-investment fund. The co-investment fund was ridiculed by the House leader for the NDP. He said we should not be focusing on repairing housing units. I was at a housing announcement in Burnaby where we stepped up and repaired a co-op housing program. If we had not stepped up, it would have lost the units of housing. We would lose affordable housing just where we need to build it.
The co-investment fund provides funding to get projects started. It provides funding to repair social housing and government housing. There is a $1.3-billion transfer to the City of Toronto to deal with TCHC's repair backlog. That funding protocol has now been replicated in Hamilton where it is tackling its funding backlog. It has also been attached to the city of Victoria. The city of Victoria was very close to being at functional zero on homelessness before COVID happened and ran into some headwinds, but the co-investment fund has partnered to deliver hundreds and hundreds of units. I have been there with Mayor Helps to open the units, to look at the units to see their very imaginative approach to building housing.
The targets and the dollars that are arriving are substantial. There is also the rapid housing initiative, but partnered with that is the reaching home program. The reaching home program, which started out as the homelessness partnership strategy, introduced by a Liberal government in the late nineties, untouched by the Conservatives for their eight years in rule, has not only been doubled in size, which is what we did in our first budget in 2015, the funding is now a half a billion dollars a year.
To put that in contrast to where the NDP members want to take it, if we go back to their 2015 election campaign, they promised a one-time infusion of $60 million into the homelessness partnership strategy and that was it. We not only doubled that investment immediately, but at the start of COVID we doubled it again and now we have made that doubling of the reaching home program close to $400 million to $500 million a year over the next three years. We wired that into the system to help us realize the goal of ending chronic homelessness.
The other thing that our national housing strategy has done, which is quite remarkable, is that it has restored the funding agreements and the subsidies to co-op housing right across the country. These were set to expire. If we had done nothing, if we had not taken office in 2015, the federal government would be spending less than $1 billion a year on housing right now. That was the Conservative trajectory for social housing.
Not only have we invested $72 billion in construction and repair, but the subsidies we put in place are making housing even more affordable for people. For example, the co-ops that saw their agreements expire have now been picked up and reinvested in. Subsidies to the rent geared to income have been restored, not just to the co-ops that were still on the books, but also the ones that lapsed while the Conservatives were in power. We brought them back on. This year's budget finishes that job and brings the entire co-op sector into one unified program for the very first time in the history of the country. Instead of having these agreements expire overnight, they are now on a timetable under the national housing strategy legislation. That agreement must be renewed before it expires in 2027. We have the co-op housing sector back whole and we are starting to build. In fact, I just had a text message from the Co-op Housing Federation of Toronto that seed money for a new co-op has just been advanced by CMHC and I had thanks from the federation.
We are now in the position of building and adding to the co-op sector because is exactly what the national housing strategy envisioned. We have put federal lands into the mix and we are adding federal lands where we can to the housing programs. In Ottawa, for example, there is a new housing project that is being built on federal lands with federal support to realize the housing aspirations of the city of Ottawa and the Region of Ottawa-Carleton.
Everywhere we go across the country, we are seeing change happen. Is it enough? Of course it is not enough. As long as we have people sleeping in tents, in ravines and by rivers, as long as we have homeless shelters still populated by people without housing, there will be work to do.
This government has set about changing what I think was the biggest mistake a Liberal government ever made, which was the cancellation of the national housing programs in the early nineties. It has reinvested now and brought back a strong, cohesive and comprehensive policy that is moving the dial in the right direction on every single housing front.
However, the issue being spoken to in this motion is not the social housing investments we have made. It is about how we are helping first-time buyers achieve their dream of home ownership. We put in a tax on offshore speculators, we brought in new rules around beneficial ownership to disclose who is behind some of these very questionable real estate deals and we put in a shared equity agreement for first-time homebuyers. For the first time ever, CMHC is starting to model its programs around regional housing markets and not just here in Canada as one large housing market. Hopefully this spurs even more people on to home ownership.
We are also bringing in new block funding for things like Habitat for Humanity, which is now working with equity-deserving groups, equity-seeking groups, to meet the housing needs of very particular communities that have very low rates of home ownership to help secure their movement into the middle class and to secure their place in Canadian society and the Canadian economy.
That $58-million block grant to Habitat for Humanity is also starting to build homes in indigenous communities as well. I was up in Tobermory with the Chippewas of Nawash to watch them as they broke ground and started the construction of 19 new homes, which was funded with Habitat for Humanity program dollars but supported with national housing strategy funding as well.
Everywhere one goes from coast to coast to coast, whether it is Nanaimo, Kelowna, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto or St. John's, one can find national housing strategy money at work. Is it enough? No. As long as we have a housing crisis, we have work to do and more to invest.
What I can say is that going back to the days of the Conservatives, where we had a prime minister who did not want to touch housing policy, where we have a party that thinks it is only a question of supply but only supply into the private sector and only supply as it relates to first-time homebuyers, is not going to work. If we allow the continual creep of financialization and we do not support our partner governments in delivering housing, we are simply not going to solve this crisis.
The $72-billion program is moving every one of those parts of the housing continuum forward, and we are finding new ways to do it in ways that are innovative, from modular housing to barging houses up to Iqaluit and realizing the renewal of housing with loans for the greening of our housing stock and the upgrading of the energy performance and making it more livable. We are also doing things like requiring to overachieve on energy efficiency in new builds when it comes to social housing.
We are also, for the first time ever, requiring that universal design be a characteristic of all new builds at 20%. We are also providing funds to retrofit old buildings to make them more accessible for people with disabilities. We are also making sure when we partner up that we lock in provincial spending levels so as federal dollars arrive at the front door, provincial governments are not allowed to take it out the back door and simply tread water.
We are also working with our infrastructure dollars to make sure transit investments have a positive impact on social housing construction, and we are tying social housing goals to our infrastructure investments to make sure as we invest and create strong communities, we build communities for all. Again, it is not part of the national housing strategy but it is part of this government's approach to housing and making sure all Canadians have the housing opportunities they need and have their choices realized.
I respect the fact it has been a very difficult year in the housing market for Canadians and respect the fact some of the ideas the Conservatives are talking about require more action on the part of this government. I understand it, but to say we have done nothing is wrong. To say we have not focused on every part of the housing continuum is wrong as well. To say it is only a question of social housing, market housing or supply is equally oversimplifying a very complex issue.
I am proud to be part of a government that has restored leadership in federal housing. I am proud to be part of a government that is building more co-ops, more rentals and more homes for more people than at any other time in the last 30 years in this country. I agree, there is more to do, and we will continue to add dollars to the national housing strategy, new chapters.
The next one coming is the urban, rural and northern indigenous housing program for indigenous by indigenous. We are building on the report from the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, we are building with the housing advisory council and we are building with indigenous housing providers to deliver on that commitment, and we will.
Until we have every Canadian housed, we are open to criticism. All governments will be open to criticism. Until we solve this housing crisis, there will be work to be done. I hope that all parliamentarians will join me in supporting the initiatives we presented in budget 2021.
I hope the Conservatives can reverse course and start voting for things like a tax on vacant and foreign-owned homes. I hope they can support our measures around benefits for home ownership. I hope they can support the rapid housing investment of $1.5 billion, the rapid housing 2.0 that I spoke of, to deliver even more housing to the most vulnerable Canadians.
I hope they can find it in their hearts to start supporting the investments we are making on reserves and with the distinctions-based programs with the Métis council, the ITK, AFN and partner indigenous governments.
I hope they can support the movements we have made around investing in repairs, boosting the Canada housing benefit and targeting in particular women escaping domestic violence, because we know how hard women in that sector have it when they look for housing with their kids, coming out of a very dangerous and precarious place.
I hope they can support more than doubling the investments we are making in Reaching Home, and now the half-billion-dollar annual investments.
I hope they can reverse the policy they used to have, which forbade federal funds to support young teenagers who are homeless. They actually had a policy, which was one of the most mind-blowing policies any government has ever produced around housing. The Conservative government under Stephen Harper had a policy that if a young person was homeless on the street, they had to stay homeless for six months before federal dollars could support them getting into permanent housing.
Imagine taking the most vulnerable kids in this country and punishing them for six months for running away from home. At the time, the minister said they did not want to incent young people to run away from home. People run away from home to live on the street because they are escaping an even more precarious and dangerous situation. Instead of finding a way to house young people, the Conservative government actually, by policy, left those kids on the street for six months before it would allow Reaching Home dollars to support them with rent supplements.
Policy after policy after policy in the Conservative playbook did nothing for the hardest to house in this country. As I said, when I covered my last story as a reporter, I was so infuriated by the Conservatives' approach to housing that I left journalism and entered politics at the local level. When I saw no progress being made in Ottawa at all, I left city council and ran federally to re-establish leadership on this file. I am very proud of the response that the Prime Minister and cabinet have had. I am very proud of the work our caucus has done. I am very proud of the work of a lot of opposition members who have housing projects in their community.
To pretend that we have done nothing is just political spin. To demand we do more is the demand we hear every day from our constituents and the people we represent. We are with them on that path to do more and do better, because more is possible; better is always possible. There is more to do. There is more to come, and we will not rest until the right to housing is realized by all Canadians, regardless of which choice they want to make, to rent or to own. Whichever part of the country they choose to live in, we have a responsibility as the federal government to create a housing system that meets their needs.
Our national housing strategy, now at $72 billion, does exactly that. We will work with our partner orders of government, indigenous, municipal, provincial and territorial, to deliver on these commitments. We are not done yet, but it is getting better. As it gets better, I hope the opposition parties can join us in pushing even more housing through the budget process, even more housing through the approval process, and get Canadians the housing they rightfully deserve.
View Monique Pauzé Profile
BQ (QC)
View Monique Pauzé Profile
2021-06-08 16:38 [p.8126]
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Carleton for his speech.
He gave a lot of statistics and showed that it is easier for people who have a lot of money to buy homes. Towards the end, he started proposing solutions.
According to item (b) from the motion, the first-time home buyer incentive was a failure. I would like to know whether my colleague has any solutions to propose to the young people who are having a hard time buying a home. In my day, it was relatively easy to buy a home. Today, my own children are unable to do so. The ability to buy a home is a problem for young people.
Does my colleague from Carleton have any solutions to propose to young people?
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-06-08 16:38 [p.8126]
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her very good question.
Young people are the primary victims of this system because they do not own property, so the increase in value does not benefit them. It is now harder than ever for them to buy a house, and their salary has less real value for buying a home.
Here is the solution. First, we must encourage the municipalities and the provinces to build more quickly at lower cost and with less red tape in order to increase the housing supply. Second, the Bank of Canada must stop printing money and start stabilizing our currency instead of devaluing it because it is issuing too much.
Protecting our money and allowing homes to be built quickly are two suggestions that would best resolve the problem.
View Brad Vis Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the upcoming 80th birthday of James Ross Hurley, the founding director of the Parliamentary Internship Programme.
In 1969, Mr. Hurley, a young academic at the University of Ottawa, worked with the Canadian Political Science Association and the late Alfred Hales, MP for Wellington, to develop a new program that would allow recent university graduates to serve as assistants to MPs and to study Parliament during a 10-month internship.
Thanks to Mr. Hurley's dedication, more than 500 Canadians have benefited from this unique non-partisan program, which continues to this day. The current interns will finish their placement this month. I, myself, am proud to have been an intern in 2010-11.
Mr. Hurley eventually moved on to a distinguished career with the Privy Council Office, but remains a dedicated supporter of the internship, most recently helping to establish the Hales and Hurley Parliamentary Foundation to raise funds on its behalf.
We congratulate him on this milestone and thank him for his contributions to Canada and our Parliament.
View Alistair MacGregor Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Speaker, as we slowly and cautiously emerge from the pandemic, I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and recognize a remarkable young woman from my riding: Spencer Middle School student Kylee Booth.
The last 15 months have been incredibly difficult for our youth. At a time in their lives that is supposed to be about learning and experiencing new things, they have had to completely readjust their time at school. They have been cut off or distanced from their social circles and many have struggled, but some have stepped up to community service.
With help from her mom Collette, Kylee started learning to use the family sewing machine and took it upon herself to start designing and creating masks for the community, which she gave out for free. In her words, “The community has done a lot for me and I thought it would be a good time to give back”.
I thank Kylee for this dedication to making her community safer, and I congratulate her.
View Marci Ien Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Marci Ien Profile
2021-06-03 16:53 [p.7924]
Mr. Speaker, in the meetings that my hon. colleague has had with the community since this happened, what is he hearing from young people in particular, who no doubt see themselves in this tragedy? What are their needs? At a time when we have been going through and continue to go through COVID, the mental health of young people is at stake. With the number of admissions to hospitals and so forth being so high right now, what is he hearing from young people in the communities about what they need?
View Andrew Scheer Profile
CPC (SK)
Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday in Regina, hundreds of young boys and girls did something that many of us took for granted when we were children. They grabbed a bat and glove, and headed out to the ball diamond. Government lockdowns cancelled sports last summer, but with Saskatchewan's restrictions finally being lifted, baseball season was back on.
Today, I pay tribute to the dozens of volunteers at the North Regina Little League. With very short notice and lots of uncertainty, they were able to pull it all together. It took a lot of effort to organize teams, book facilities and plan a season in such a tight time frame. I also want to thank all the parents who helped coach and those who helped get the fields ready to play. This will give us all a season to remember. Thanks to their hard work, kids were able to close their laptops and swap their COVID masks for batting gloves.
There is a magical baseball phrase that goes, “If you build it, they will come.” This year, we can add, “If you let them, they will play”. On behalf of everyone in Regina—Qu'Appelle, and especially starting pitcher Henry Scheer, we thank North Regina Little League.
View Yvonne Jones Profile
Lib. (NL)
View Yvonne Jones Profile
2021-06-01 22:26 [p.7812]
Mr. Speaker, I thank all my colleagues in the House of Commons this evening for the opportunity to speak to this motion.
As a proud Inuk woman of Labrador, the daughter of a mother of residential school, when we hear these stories through generations, we are always reminded, each and every day, of the trauma that they have endured and of the legacy that it has left behind.
What we are dealing with today is a horrible reality. It is a horrible reality of our past that has been uncovered. It has been revealed and unearthed that in Kamloops, 215 innocent children lie in a mass grave. This is not only devastating; it is heartbreaking. It is an act against humanity. On that, I think we all agree. It is an act against children who had no voice. They were alone. They were scared. They were silenced. They were isolated. They were robbed of life, and they were buried with the same horror that they endured in society.
Yesterday, I stood in my riding next to two very strong moms, Jodie Ashini and Thea Penashue of the Sheshatshiu Innu First Nation, along with Chief Eugene Hart, surrounded by so many children, so many moms and so many dads. I stood surrounded by survivors and victims of residential schools, surrounded by love and affection for each other, and surrounded by tears, so many tears.
On behalf of all of them, on behalf of all the people of Labrador, I want to extend our love and support to those many families who are suffering this evening in this country, those many indigenous families who are feeling the loss, the void and the heartache of what has happened.
I think we can all agree on several things, and that is there is much work to do in advancing not just the rights of indigenous people in this country, but also upholding the rights of innocent indigenous children as well. We have talked so much about the harm that has been caused by the legacies of residential schools and the trauma that comes with it. However, we also know that, as we sit here this evening and we speak, indigenous people still face racism. We still face unacceptable injustices, which are happening in many of our communities across the country.
I know that, one by one, we have pledged our support to make a difference. We have pledged to ensure that we can restore the language and culture, that we can restore, once again, the proud legacy of indigenous people. It is a long road, and one that has to be shaped and led by indigenous people themselves.
Like every ill act, there has to be accountability. I am sure that many share my belief that more accountability needs to come to bear. I really believe that the Catholic Church has yet to redeem itself, in any way, in recognizing what has happened at the hands of their institutions. That is unacceptable.
While we pledge our support that, as the Government of Canada, we will continue to move forward to bridge that gap for indigenous people in this country, we need to do it with the support of all parliamentarians of all provinces and all territories. That means that when we have legislation such as UNDRIP, we have to be able to stand up and support it. That is part of reconciliation in this country. That is part of bridging that gap with indigenous people.
Every day I wake up not knowing what I am going to hear next. I woke up today in a very small populated riding to find out two very young beautiful people died by suicide last night, in my riding. One was first nations and one was Inuit. This has to stop. The healing is not happening in the way it should be. It is happening, but it is slow. How do we get it to move faster? How do we bridge that gap more?
How do we ensure that every child has the opportunity to wake up in a warm home with a full belly? That is where we need to focus. It is as basic as those things in many cases.
Reconciliation with indigenous people and recognizing that every child does matter is not difficult. It really is not, but we need to do it faster. We need to move at a more rapid rate than we have.
That includes us as a government, but it includes indigenous leadership as well. It includes all of us working together to make sure these things happen. These are times of critical advancement for indigenous people. Let us not lose this. Let us not bury this so we have to wait 10 more years for this to become a priority in the country.
I am so proud of what our government has done to help indigenous people. I have seen more indigenous children get support in my riding in the last five years than I have seen in the 15 years before. I have seen more houses built in communities across my riding for indigenous families than I have seen in 15 years before.
I have seen more investments into food banks, into social support. We have revamped the social welfare system and the child welfare system in this country to support indigenous communities and indigenous people, but there is still a lot more to do—
Results: 1 - 15 of 112 | Page: 1 of 8

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

For more data options, please see Open Data