OTTAWA – Seniors across the country have been shocked to learn that the benefits they rely on have been cut, either partially or entirely, after receiving pandemic supports such as CERB. New Democrats are demanding that the Liberal government address this devastating policy now so that vulnerable seniors aren’t forced into a desperate situation. Just as panic is rising and many more seniors are now contacting their Members of Parliament in desperation, the Liberals are planning a selfish election.
IN THE NEWS: CBC - ‘I have to hold on and be strong:’ Mom who fled Gaza with son for Canada waits to reunite with family
He and Behrens pointed out MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), is calling for a six-month limit on permanent residency applications involving children.
Green said the long line of people seeking refuge to Canada is a sign the country needs to improve its foreign policy to better support the de-escalation of war and violence abroad.
Liberal government's promises keep leaving Canadians out in the cold
As more Canadians struggle to pay rent or even dream of buying a house, a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer released yesterday concluded that the housing need and affordability gap is expected to grow under the Liberal government's plan.
Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau keeps announcing money for housing that just never gets built. And then they pretend things are better than they really are.
How bad is it? Well…
- The Liberals claim they are spending $42.9 billion on new housing across all programs, while the PBO indicates the actual spending is only a fraction of that –10.5 billion.
- The Liberals say they have spent $26 Billion under the Rental Construction Financing Initiative (RCFI) on the housing strategy but the actual budgetary cost was $1.6 billion.
- The Liberals report the construction of 37,300 new units under the RCFI and the National Housing Co-Investment Fund when, in reality, they’ve just approved funding for 17,004 units.
- When Liberals claim they helped over 1 million Canadians find affordable housing but most of it is from programs that predate the National Housing Strategy. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government took credit for over 183,000 social housing funding arrangements that were created before 1993 and have been allowed to expire.
- They also have no idea what “affordable” means. In most Canadian cities, what the government considers “affordable” is actually between 32 per cent to 121 per cent higher than average market rent. Even though that’s definitely not affordable for most Canadians, the Liberals count these people paying sky high prices in the number of Canadians they claim to have helped find “affordable” housing.
Sadly, Canadians can’t live in Liberal announcements – they need the government to actually build the houses they promise. The Liberals keep proving that they’re all talk with no intention of taking action to make things better for everyday people. Canadians deserve better.
You can view the complete report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer at this link .
IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail - Canada’s housing strategy having ‘limited’ impact on housing need, PBO says
The NDP called the Liberal housing strategy “smoke and mirrors.”
“More and more Canadians find themselves unable to afford a home and the pandemic has made things even worse. Today’s report confirms that the Liberals are failing Canadians on housing while patting themselves on the back for a job well done,” New Democrat housing critic Jenny Kwan said in a release.
Kwan has criticized the National Housing Co-Investment Fund for failing to help provinces outside of Ontario.
Data she obtained last fall showed nearly 74 per cent of the financing for loans and grants has gone to Ontario projects from its inception in May 2018 to June 2020.
IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail: CMHC funding model questioned after halt of non-profit Vancouver housing project
In Mr. Pomeroy’s analysis, rents for projects supported by CMHC in the Vancouver area could have gone as high as $2,150, in 2017 dollars, even though average local rents at that time were only $1,650.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who represents the East Vancouver riding in which the Anhart project is located, has been raising concerns about the Rental Construction Financing Initiative for months. This latest development, she said, has confirmed her worst fears.
“This was a non-profit trying to deliver affordable units. But non-profits are not really able to get access to this money for the community,” she said. She added that Anhart is in an unusual position because it received conditional approval for a loan and then had it rescinded. She has heard from other housing groups that simply haven’t applied, or were rejected because they didn’t meet the program requirements.
IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail - CMHC funding model questioned after half of non-profit Vancouver housing project
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who represents the East Vancouver riding in which the Anhart project is located, has been raising concerns about the Rental Construction Financing Initiative for months. This latest development, she said, has confirmed her worst fears.
“This was a non-profit trying to deliver affordable units. But non-profits are not really able to get access to this money for the community,” she said. She added that Anhart is in an unusual position because it received conditional approval for a loan and then had it rescinded. She has heard from other housing groups that simply haven’t applied, or were rejected because they didn’t meet the program requirements.
IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail - First flight of Afghans to Canada a ‘relief’ but advocates say more needs to be done faster
Former Afghan interpreters now living in Canada held a rally on Parliament Hill on Tuesday to demand that the government bring their families to safety.
Jenny Kwan, the NDP Critic for Immigration, and Randall Garrison, the NDP Critic for Defence, said in a statement that Afghan interpreters, other Afghans who worked for Canada and their extended families are in a “highly precarious situation.”
“Although many collaborators are finally being helped to come to Canada, the Liberals’ new process is not good enough,” the statement said. The NDP is asking the government to broaden the program to allow for extended family, and for the application deadline to be extended.
IN THE NEWS: The Record - When COVID goes, so goes our hybrid Parliament
In the hybrid system, a corporal’s guard of MPs from each party, masked and socially distanced, physically attended each day’s sitting while most members tuned in remotely from their homes, offices or wherever they happened to be. They were able to ask questions, to join debates and, once the bugs were out of the technology, to vote.
By the time MPs went home for the summer (and an anticipated election), they had become familiar, if not comfortable, with the changes born of necessity. Most seemed to feel the system had worked as well as could reasonably have been expected in such unprecedented circumstances. But there was no clamour to make the digital experience permanent.
Jenny Kwan, the NDP member for Vancouver East, said the hybrid system was “the best that we could do. There were times you would spend so much time getting everything functioning technically, and by the time you do, you have no time to do the actual work.”
IN THE NEWS: Toronto Star - Canada faces a staggering immigration backlog
The pandemic has exposed many shortcomings of the immigration process, said MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s immigration critic, and officials must cut unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy in these unprecedented times.
One of the things they could do, she said, is to automatically renew immigration applicants’ expired documents.
Requiring people to scramble to update outdated documents during a pandemic may buy Ottawa time, she noted, but it won’t solve the crisis and is going to further agonize immigration applicants.
“To this day, it is a mystery to me why the government has insisted on contacting each individual with an expired or expiring permanent resident visa to see if they still wanted to come to Canada, instead of just automatically renewing it,” Kwan said.
“Why did they do that? Why did they spend all those resources doing that instead of putting it into processing applications? They need to adopt an approach that’s not so rigid.”
IN THE NEWS: Toronto Star - Advocacy group hints at unexplained immigration policy shift
Activists from the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) say a “secretive policy shift” may be brewing at Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) which may explain the unprecedented rate of rejections of permanent residence applications on Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds.
Richard Goldman, a lawyer at Montreal City Mission, believes that some policy change may have occurred, but whether this involves the personnel assessing the applications, the training of these personnel or an internal directive is unknown.
“The Humanitarian and Compassionate application system is broken,” says Syed Hussan, who works with the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) secretariat, which organized marches in Montreal and Ottawa this past weekend to demand the government extend residency status to all migrants in order to ensure their equal access to rights. “And as the data we released is showing, it can arbitrarily be changed without oversight or accountability.”