| Historical Information |
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| This post is about a previous Session of Parliament. Any legislation here that did not receive Royal Assent has been terminated. |
C-423 – the Protection of the Right to Adequate Housing Act – changes the National Housing Strategy Act in an attempt to protect affordable housing, especially rentals. Bonita puts an emphasis on the financialization of housing in these changes.
National Housing Strategy Act
The first change Bonita makes is adding to the preamble of the National Housing Strategy Act to clarify the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ declaration that people have a right to adequate housing. She adds that the Committee emphasized that that declaration shouldn’t be interpreted narrowly, and that it should be interpreted as being able to live somewhere “in security, peace and dignity”. She also adds a statement that the right to housing should include protection from forced evictions.
Next is the part of the Strategy that recognizes adequate housing as a right. Bonita would add two clauses to how this needs to be interpreted. First, that housing isn’t “adequate” if it isn’t affordable, or if the cost would compromise your enjoyment of your other rights. (Hard to enjoy the right to life if rent is so high you can’t afford food.) Second is that adequate housing as a fundamental right needs to take priority over housing as a commodity or investment.
During consultations on how to maintain the Strategy Bonita wants the Minister to consult the usual groups (provincial representatives, Indigenous communities, etc) in addition to groups that provide housing services. She wants these consultations to have a focus on tenant rights, residential rights, and the protection of our supply of affordable rental housing. She also adds some new requirements to the Strategy, expecting it to provide for measures that can be used to prioritize tenant needs, especially those of vulnerable groups, over investors. This should include reducing financial incentives for those investors. The Strategy would also now include guidelines to protect tenant rights, including:
- Increasing and strengthening rent control measures.
- Addressing bad-faith evictions, especially those that result in low-income households becoming homeless.
- Detering unfair business practices of rental companies. Sharing information around pricing and vacancy rates to determine their own pricing (price fixing) is specifically called out here.
- Detering property owners from discriminating against potential tenants for anything protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
- Meeting the challenges in enforcing penalties on landlords that violate residential tenancy legislation.
Progress of C-423
With the ending of Session 44-1 C-423 was terminated.
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