The federal election is now down to the wire. It is time for those of us who have not yet made up our minds on who to vote for to focus on the issues that are the most important to us. We need to take a look at where the parties stand on these issues.
For me, with my long-time focus on municipal politics, housing is a key issue.
For decades, no matter how poorly the economy was doing and no matter what the unemployment rate was, we did not have a crisis in homelessness. Yes, poverty existed at unacceptable levels and people were under-housed or housed in sub-standard housing, but they were not forced to live on the streets. Today we have a crisis.
I recently searched for the housing policies of the four federal parties. Only Elizabeth May’s Green Party of Canada offers a national housing strategy.
To start, the Green Party is committed to funding the cooperative housing sector. This is a critical point. Up until the time the Liberals terminated CMHC’s funding of housing co-ops, this housing alternative successfully created thousands of housing units, all with the rent geared to income.
The Green Party also commits to providing the funding necessary to retrofit all Canadian homes within the next 15 years in order to increase energy efficiency and reduce heating and electricity bills. The retrofits will also reduce the building’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent and generate the spin-off effect of creating thousands of new jobs and stimulating the economy.
As Elizabeth May notes, Canada is the only OECD country without a national housing strategy.
If housing is as important to you as it is to me, Elizabeth May’s Green Party is your option.
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The NDP also is committed to funding Housing Co-ops.
see here: http://www.ndp.ca/news/tom-mulcair-supports-housing-cooperatives
and also the various links at https://www.google.ca/search?q=ndp+national+housing+strategy
Alan, great to hear from you and you are absolutely correct. The NDP has a very well thought out position on Housing Co-ops. My concern, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is that the NDP does not have a National Housing Strategy. Such a strategy would include a position on housing co-ops but would go much further e.g. social housing, home renovations, energy retrofits, etc.
How about an NDP minority with the Greens holding the balance of power and supporting the NDP? Yes, I am dreaming, but it is nice to do that once in a while 🙂
Well, there is this: http://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-will-bring-federal-leadership-back-to-affordable-housing
and of course back in 2012-13 there was their proposal of Bill C-400 which explicitly used the phrase “National Housing Strategy”
But if you’ll ask people to vote NDP everywhere except where the Greens have a serious chance of winning, then I think we might even get to that ideal situation where they only need the Green vote to reach a majority.
The federal NDP tabled a bill to create a National Housing Strategy in 2012:
http://www.ndp.ca/news/new-democrats-introduce-national-housing-bill-over-conservative-inaction
I can only do one copy link at a time. This is a Press Release from Sept 15 and as such does not have a lot of detail. However, it mentions National Housing strategy or programs at the beginning and the end with some other issues such as Child Care and Minimum Wage in the middle.
http://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-will-bring-federal-leadership-back-to-affordable-housing
And there is a reference to a national or federal housing strategy in their response to a questionnaire from CACHA (Q3):
http://www.cachc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/NDP-Response-CACHC-2015-Federal-Election-Questionnaire.pdf
I’m not really posting all these comments because I like doing arithmetic. I need to correct an acronym in the previous post. That should be CACHC not CACHA.
There is an article about Affordable Housing in the Saturday Oct 10 edition of the Vancouver Sun in which Jenny Kwan of the NDP is also quoted about the NDP advocating for a National Housing Strategy “since it was abolished [by the Liberals] in 1993”. In the print edition, there are summaries of the positions of the various parties and the NDP’s cites both a National Housing Act which includes a right to housing, and long-term investment in various housing initiatives including co-ops. Unfortunately the summary boxes don’t appear on the website version, but it does include Jenny Kwan’s quote:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/election+2015+affordable+housing+voters/11428732/story.html?__lsa=5019-7706
There is an article about Affordable Housing in the Saturday Oct 10 edition of the Vancouver Sun in which Jenny Kwan of the NDP is also quoted about the NDP advocating for a National Housing Strategy “since it was abolished [by the Liberals] in 1993”. In the print edition, there are summaries of the positions of the various parties and the NDP’s cites both a National Housing Act which includes a right to housing, and long-term investment in various housing initiatives including co-ops. Unfortunately the summary boxes don’t appear on the website version, but it does include Jenny Kwan’s quote:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/election+2015+affordable+housing+voters/11428732/story.html?__lsa=5019-7706