Your Honour, I want to begin by humbly expressing my support for the Indigenous families who had their own children cruelly taken from them.

Honourable senators, exactly one month from today will be moving day in Quebec.

As it happens every year, some families will end up in the street or in temporary housing because they are unable to find a decent place to live. That is not to mention the poorly housed families, who have resigned themselves to living in unsafe or poorly heated homes.

With the shortage of rental housing, the skyrocketing cost of rent, the poor quality of available housing, fraudulent evictions and discrimination, the situation has become untenable for low-income renters. This phenomenon, which used to occur mainly in urban areas, is now affecting every community. According to the Comité Logement Rimouski-Neigette, the vacancy rate for three-bedroom units in Rimouski is 0.2%. The vacancy rate in a balanced market is about 3%.

The housing crisis is so serious that Canada’s mayors made housing their main request for the last federal budget. However, the budget was very disappointing for those who hoped the government would take real action to meet the ambitious objectives set out in the National Housing Strategy. The newly announced amounts will mainly be used for programs to fight homelessness or will go to private housing developers and encourage the creation of housing with rents that are often too high for low-income renters.

While the federal government is attempting to grow the post-COVID economy, it seems to me it is missing a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Reinvesting in the construction of social housing would stimulate job creation and facilitate access to housing. The government could also make sure that revenues from the new 1% tax on non-resident-owned residential properties are allocated to housing instead of being added to the public purse.

Currently, measures aimed at increasing the disposable income of families, such as raising benefits for our seniors, increasing the Canada Child Benefit and improving housing benefits, are being eroded by the rapidly rising cost of rent.

To alleviate poverty in the long term, there is no way around it: We must increase the stock of social housing units to stabilize prices. Thank you, esteemed colleagues, for your attention.