Mr. Speaker, on September 30, 2016, several mayors and leaders in the housing sector, led by the mayor of Toronto, rallied together to sound the alarm on the social housing crisis facing our country. Despite the announcements the government made in the last budget, the fact is that much more is needed to preserve the existing social housing stock, which is aging and requires extensive renovations.

In Toronto alone, it is estimated that over $2.6 billion would be needed to fix the existing housing. Meanwhile, across the country, over 170,000 families are waiting for social housing. Canadian municipalities do not have sufficient financial resources to meet the demand and they are waiting for the federal government to make a much larger commitment. The equation is simple, however: the longer we wait, the more the situation deteriorates, which means more existing social housing units will have to be condemned and abandoned, while the wait lists will only get longer.

In addition, municipalities are concerned about what will become of federal funding associated with long-term operating agreements that are about to expire. It is important to note that, since 2006, 46,000 social housing units in Canada have been affected by the expiry of long-term agreements that allowed social housing operators to subsidize their low-income renters. By the end of 2017, nearly 100,000 more households will face uncertainty about their rent subsidy.

In his mandate letter to the minister, the Prime Minister clearly directed him to develop a strategy to re-establish the federal government's role in supporting affordable housing that includes providing support to municipalities to maintain rent-geared-to-income subsidies in co-ops. The Prime Minister probably forgot to mention that not-for-profit housing organizations and low-income housing organizations also offer similar rent subsidies. Let us assume that the minister was given a mandate to address this worrisome situation comprehensively.

The problem is that every time they answer our questions, they talk about agreements set to expire in the future, and they put off any final decision about it. In the meantime, agreements are still expiring, and there is no way to know what will happen to those that have already expired. All they tell us is that there is a budget to maintain rent subsidies for housing units administered by the CMHC.

This federal assistance is only temporary as it is being provided for two years. In addition, the budget does not cover housing administered by the provinces or, in certain cases, by municipalities, as is the case for low-income housing across the country. Therefore, this does not address the problem that mayors of major Canadian cities have raised.

“What We Heard”, the report on the consultations held to help shape a Canadian housing strategy, stated the following:

Canadians told us that social housing was an essential component to include in the NHS. Over 90% of respondents to the NHS online survey ranked social housing renewal and subsidized housing as “important” or “very important”...Social housing also featured strongly in Canadians’ written submissions, appearing in 37% of uploaded documents, and was also often mentioned in the focus group and roundtable discussions.

This means that social housing is vitally important for the majority of people concerned by the housing issue. This is also true for the NDP, as was noted in the brief it submitted during the consultation process. I even once again moved Motion M-53, to renew funding for social housing in Canada.

I am therefore asking the minister or the parliamentary secretary yet again: what does the minister plan to do to meet these demands and resolve the issue of funding for social housing in Canada once and for all?

Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet

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Adjournment Proceedings

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