Motions
The first Motion we have this week doesn’t seem to have a name attached to it (I’m assuming this is a Government Motion? I’ll be looking into why this happens) and is about Reconciliation.
Given that:
- On October 27, 2022, the House unanimously recognized that what happened in residential schools was genocide
- Decades of insufficient action from all levels of government have failed to address the effects of this genocide, including the crisis of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people with the urgency it deserves
- Families in Winnipeg and throughout the country continue to experience the tragic loss of a loved one to this crisis
The House call on the government to:
- Declare the continued loss of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people a Canada-wide emergency
- Provide immediate and substantial investment, including in a red dress alert system, to help alert the public when an Indigenous women, girl, or two-spirit person goes missing
This Motion passed with unanimous consent.
We have another Opposition Motion from Pierre Poilievre (Conservative Leader, Ontario, Carleton):
Given that, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister’s inflationary policies:
- Inflation has reached a 40-year high and is forcing Canadians to cut back on the basic necessities of eating, and heating their homes
- Monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled since 2015 and now cost Canadians an average of $3,000 per month
- Statistics Canada reports that “mortgage interest cost rose at a faster rate in March (+26.4%) […] this was the largest yearly increase on record as Canadians continued to renew and initiate mortgages at higher interest rates”
- Government fees, taxes and delays now add on average $200,000 to the cost of every new home in Canada
- Average rent for a two-bedroom apartment across Canada’s 10 biggest cities has almost doubled to over $2,200 per month from $1,171 per month in 2015
- Nine out of 10 young people who do not own a home believe they never will
- Recent reports state that a couple is paying $2,450 to rent a single room in a Toronto townhouse, that they have two other roommates, and they consider this an “excellent deal”
The House call on the government to make renting affordable and home ownership a reality for more Canadians by enacting policies that will remove big city gatekeepers, NIMBY local politicians who block construction of new housing, and unnecessary red tape by:
- Tying federal infrastructure dollars for municipalities to the number of new homes built, and imposing clawbacks on municipalities who delay new home construction
- Tying federal funding for major transit projects to cities that pre-emptively “up-zone” lands around transit infrastructure for high-density housing so that young and middleclass people don’t need to use cars
- Making available 15% of under-utilized federal properties across Canada for new housing while guaranteeing an appropriate ratio of affordable units in the developments
Not much to say on this one. Talking about a single couple paying an absurd amount for a single room is definitely just to get sound clips, that isn’t really a sign of everyone’s problems, and I can’t seem to find the article on that to see what the details were. I’m also not entirely sure how many restrictions the feds are allowed to place on infrastructure spending, though tying it to home building will definitely hurt smaller towns that just aren’t seeing a lot of growth. I’d be interested to see what his outline of how those restrictions work would look like, as well as the expected construction to get the full funding.
The Motion was defeated 116 in favour and 211 against.
Closing Fun
And that’s all for the week! With the coronation happening the House didn’t sit on Friday, so it was a short week, and most of the week was dominated by debate on the budget. I’m working through a summary of the budget so hopefully I’ll have that up for you all soon.
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