Building in St. Lawrence neighbourhood with banner reading "Housing for All."
Banner on a building in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood. Credit: Cathy Crowe Credit: Cathy Crowe

August 8, 2023

Dear Justin,

We don’t know each other, so excuse me for addressing you as Justin – but that is how many people refer to you. Please call me Cathy.

Let me introduce myself to you.

I am a long-time street nurse, a nursing job title that was first affectionately coined by a homeless man in the 1980s in downtown Toronto. He was describing a group of us who ran nursing clinics in nearby drop-ins.

It’s a title I have worn with mixed emotions. With pride, that unhoused people respected and appreciated our nursing work in shelters and on the street – and also with shame, that homelessness has gotten so bad in Canada that this nursing specialty is necessary.

My career has covered a lot of ground, focusing on homelessness and the housing crisis from St. John’s to Victoria. It includes what has been called pioneering clinical care through nursing outreach, public policy advocacy, filmmaking, and writing. In 2018, your government recognized my work and invested me in the Order of Canada, to my great honour. Thank you.

Justin, I want you to know that the action I am most proud of in my career was in 1998 – that was when the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee declared homelessness a national disaster, requiring a national housing program investment of an additional 1 per cent of the federal budget as the solution. I should add that this declaration was in response to catastrophic conditions a mere five years after the federal government cancelled its national housing program in 1993.

At the state of emergency declaration media conference, the eminent Professor Ursula Franklin stated that homelessness was a “man-made disaster”.

She meant that literally.

Canada’s national housing program was cancelled in the early 1990s by then-Liberal Minister of Finance Paul Martin and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Various housing ministers, both Conservative and Liberal, have only continued to insufficiently invest in social housing.

They include Alfonso Gagliano, David Collenette, Steve Mahoney, John McCallum, and Joe Fontana, to name only a few. They also include, more recently, your ministers Jean-Yves Duclos and Ahmed Hussen.

Needless to say, cancelling a federal housing program in 1993 that supported the construction of 20,000 new units per year has been catastrophic.

It means that, today, we have a shortfall of 600,000 units that would have otherwise been built. And that does not include the massive loss of affordable housing to the financialization of the market, which allows developers to ‘mine the sky’ and eat up rooming houses.

I acknowledge that you created a National Housing Strategy in 2017. I celebrated it at the time. However, it is now widely considered tragically inadequate, as the National Housing Council report noted this year.

People in cities, towns and rural communities are experiencing a crisis of affordability. Wait lists for rent-geared-to-income housing can be up to ten years long. Shelters are overflowing. Encampments are erupting across the country, including what can only be called a literal refugee camp this summer on Toronto’s streets.

I am sorry to say that governments’ inadequate response to the refugee housing crisis has necessitated a faith-based shelter response.

It’s not unlike Toronto’s 33-year long, precedent-setting Out of the Cold program, run by volunteers who provided life-saving shelter – in the winter. But the program also let governments off the hook to properly fund decent shelter and social housing.

The pandemic put a stop to this congregate form of shelter. It most certainly should not continue.

Is this what we should expect for years to come? Refugees and unhoused people sheltered in unhealthy church basements, reliant on volunteers, food, and clothing donations?

For years, we have witnessed the federal government and the provinces playing ping pong with the responsibility for housing. Sometimes, we hear the constitutional argument that Ottawa is not responsible. Federal “affordable” housing announcements are re-announced so many times it’s a joke. Sometimes we hear that the American-based Housing First ideology will solve homelessness. When did we ever learn anything from American social policy?

Then last week, you appeared at an “affordable” housing announcement in Hamilton – which many argue will not be actually affordable for those in need. You ironically pronounced at that event:

“I’ll be blunt … housing is not a primary federal responsibility, it’s not something that we have direct carriage of…”

Justin, you absolutely do.

Housing is the most fundamental building block of health, of a successful future for a household, the community, and the nation. You could never get away with saying that Medicare or pensions or unemployment insurance are not your responsibility.

Are the following not federal responsibilities related to housing: the Bank of Canada’s interest rates, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) mortgage insurance fund, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ (OSFI) mortgage lending regulations, and national economic policy via the Finance Department and your annual budgets?

Canadians are tired of the finger-pointing by all levels of government, especially yours.

But your government announced that Canada will be locking us further into carbon-intensive militarism. You are providing Airbus Defence $3.6 billion for a new fleet of 9 fossil fuel-powered aerial tankers to supply fuel for the new $19 billion fossil fuel-powered F-35 fighter jets.

We know the impact of the climate crisis – including wildfire smoke, extreme heat and catastrophic flooding – is felt most among poorly housed people and the homeless. It is further dehousing people through flood damage.

Your government also recently announced a $13 billion subsidy to a private corporation for an electric vehicle battery plant. Meanwhile, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer predicts the real costs will be $16.3 billion.

These announcements are more than any funding announcement for the climate crisis, poverty reduction, foreign aid, or social housing.

We Canadians clearly have the money. You have the authority to allocate it in a fair manner for a more just society.

We want to see leadership. That falls on you, your cabinet and particularly your new housing minister Sean Fraser. Please for once let this cabinet shuffle be meaningful.

Deal with the human social welfare crisis of housing and make it about housing for all, not just housing to ghettoize unhoused people in one location.

Create a war-time effort and funding stream for public housing, non-profit housing, and co-op housing.

Come for a tour with me to see the success of my community. The St. Lawrence Neighbourhood in Toronto was built when we had a housing program that prioritized social housing, which allowed the city to develop a successful socially mixed new neighbourhood.

Adequate housing for all is an essential form of the economic, physical, and social infrastructure for a productive, just, and successful nation.

I think you will recognize these words from your father: “Canada must be progressive, and Canada must be a just society.”

Sincerely,

Cathy

Cathy Crowe

Cathy Crowe

Cathy Crowe is a street nurse (non-practising), author and filmmaker who works nationally and locally on health and social justice issues. Her work has included taking the pulse of health issues affecting...