An NDP MP says she is fully aware of the events transpiring not only around BC but across Canada when it comes to housing, healthcare, and mental health but says before the federal government can resolve the growing crisis more action needs to be done.
According to the province of BC, there are currently 382,000 people living in poverty making less than $21,000 a year, and must make decisions regularly about whether to have a roof over their heads or feed their families.
Ladysmith-Nanaimo MP Lisa Marie Barron said at a media event this afternoon in Nanaimo that investments have not been made by the federal government when it comes to providing Canadians with their basic needs and it can’t continue.
“We have not seen investments needed to start addressing this crisis,” Barron says. “We have seen promises from the government around mental health and housing, but we have yet to see a dime of anything put forward.”
According to the government of BC’s website, renters should not be paying more than 30 percent of their wages per month before tax, yet most people are spending upwards of 50 percent just to make sure they have a place to live.
Barron says housing needs to be a necessity, but with the red tape in place to build affordable housing it is being used as a commodity.
“Housing is a continuing issue around the country and is not being prioritized as it should,” she says. “This is a basic human right, but it is currently being used as a commodity by corporate companies.
“Policies are not being made on how to make homes affordable for those who need it, and this needs to stop.”
The panel of MPs says they acknowledge the cost of living around housing and food prices are driving people to live in poverty and resort to food banks, but Alistair McGregor of Cowichan-Malahat-Langford says it is due to corporate greed.
“The elephant in the room for the general rate of inflation is corporate profits,” MacGregor says. “The Bank of Canada is starting to see the result of run-away corporate inflation is having on the economy and in Ottawa we are not talking about this greed or doing anything about it.
“For example, since 2019 the oil and gas sector has seen an overall increase of 1000 percent in their net profits, if we are not going to talk about the increase in corporate privateering then a real dis-service is being done.”
McGregor says this all plays into what is sparking the housing crisis and how Canadians are struggling to meet their basic needs.
“If this is left unchecked, we are going to see more families struggling with housing costs and basic needs,” he says.
According to Food Banks Canada roughly 1.5 million Canadians access food banks across the country in 2022 with 45 percent of them being single adult households representing 29 percent of the population while almost a quarter of a million are homeless.
