NDP statement on National Housing Day 2024

NDP critic for Housing Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont-LaPetite-Patrie) and NDP deputy critic for Housing Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach) issued the following statement:

“Housing is a human right. But for decades, Liberals and Conservatives have failed to ensure every Canadian and Quebecker has a suitable, safe and affordable place to call home.

More homeless encampments appeared across the country including in Halifax, Montreal, Gatineau, Toronto and Edmonton. People are being renovicted from their homes by corporate landlords, forced to sleep in their cars, on park benches and on the streets. Families are facing rent increases, falling further behind while corporate landlords make millions in profits. The Liberals have let people down, and Conservatives will make matters worse when they cut funding to build more homes.

For years, the housing market has fallen into the hands of wealthy investors who only care about making profits on the backs of Canadian workers.

Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre have let these big greedy corporations buy up homes that were affordable and accessible to Canadians and Quebeckers to turn them into unaffordable luxury cash cows. The NDP has committed to ban this practice so that homes remain within families’ reach.

The NDP believes in more homes, not fewer. Lower rents, not higher. This weekend, FRAPRU—an organization fighting for accessible housing for people in Quebec—will be mobilizing actions across the province to demand that all homes built on federal lands be exclusively homes people can afford. The NDP has been calling for this for years.

That's not all. Due to Conservative and Liberal underfunding, 300,000 Indigenous people are forced to live in overcrowded and often mouldy homes. This must change.

New Democrats will continue to work towards a co-developed for-Indigenous, by-Indigenous housing strategy to fix the decades of Liberal and Conservative underfunding in infrastructure for First Nations, Métis and Inuit.

New Democrats will continue to fight for homes people can afford.”