Bill No. 329 - HRM Charter and Housing in HRM Act - 3rd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Speaker, I am going to rise and say just a few words about this bill. I share many of the concerns that have been raised. I think at the heart of the challenge of this bill is, again, a pattern where, since this government has come into office, it has essentially eliminated arms-length decision-making. We don't have independent Crown corporations, we don't have a board of the Nova Scotia Health Authority, and we don't have places where the expertise of the public service can be put to the work for which it is intended.

We have ministers with an increasing amount of power. We saw a template for this bill in the Patient Access to Care Act, which has expedited a lot for regulated health professionals but also gave the Minister of Health and Wellness exclusive power to determine whether a health professional is able to practice in Nova Scotia - which is astonishing.

Every single health regulator spoke out against that bill, and we are replicating that here in the arena of planning. Now we have a Minister of Health and Wellness who happens to be a nurse and have a lot of experience in health care, but she is not a regulator. We have a Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, whom I am sure has immersed himself in the work of the department, but he is certainly not a planner.

We are, as I think has been said, laying the ground for corruption. When we see a situation where the public service can be overridden, where other orders of government and their input can be dismissed, and where decisions can be made behind closed doors, alarm bells should go off. That is not a democratic way of doing things.

I will say for the tenth time in this Chamber that this is a government that campaigned on transparency, good government, doing things right, and showing those Liberals how they were really going to do it right. We've seen literally the exact opposite. At every turn, we have seen a move toward consolidation of power and toward decisions being made and bills voted on in the dark. I think it should really give people pause.

As has been said, this bill is supposed to create housing, yet we have no guarantee this bill will create a single unit of housing. It might, but what it will do is create the possibility for a lot of corruption. I'm going to call it like it is. We have no evidence that's happening. I am not saying it is, but this is why we have good governance and why we have a public service. This is why we have planners. This is why we have arms-length decision-making, so we don't create the possibility of this kind of possibility. That's what we're seeing.

We've seen this in Ontario, where governments suddenly have a thirst for building in the wilderness - Sandy Lake. We've seen where governments want to consolidate power over planning, which at the provincial level, they have very little expertise. Then we've seen deeply unfortunate consequences, both for those governments and for the people they serve. We should all be concerned about that as we look at this legislation.

This bill isn't about building housing; this bill is about a government being able to do whatever it wants. If this government wanted to build housing, they could just build housing. The Premier's words: The solution to the housing crisis is to build housing.

We're not building housing. We're consolidating power. That's not the same thing - not by a long shot.

Dartmouth Cove - we talked about this this week in the Legislature. In my constituency, we have a piece of former industrial land. Does it need cleanup? Yes. Does it need as much investment as many other sites that the government has put projects on? No. Is the private sector building all around it? Yes. Does the King's Wharf development stand just adjacent to the site? Yes.

It could support 1,000 units, Dartmouth Cove. Not only is the Province not building housing there and not only did they not accept it as a special planning area, now they just don't think that they're going to. I thought that this government was about building housing. They're not building housing, Speaker. They're consolidating power. That's what we're seeing here.

Just to bring us around to the pattern, there are two main bills coming out of the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing this sitting - the bill that we just debated and this bill. These are two bills that, if you had to boil it down, one gives CBRM a crappy deal and one gives HRM a crappy deal. Two bills, two biggest municipalities in the province, bad deal.

I understand that this government wants to choose where the announcements are. They want to choose where the investment is - ideally, where they can cut a ribbon with a minister. At some point, people will notice. If we want to grow this province to two million people, guess what? Most of them are going to live in the big cities.

Yes, we need to grow our municipalities all across this province. Yes, we will continue to grow them. We now have over half a million people in HRM, yet do we know where the four schools announced are going to be? No. The government won't tell us.

Do we know how this bill that usurps all of the authority from HRM is going to help build housing in HRM? No. Because even the special planning areas and the joint task force that we talked about in the last sitting have yet to open a single door and offer a single bed to a person who needs housing.

Meanwhile, the Rapid Housing Initiative that has been undertaken with the two other orders of government that seem to actually be able to talk to each other has built and delivered housing - hundreds of units of housing. Hundreds of units of truly affordable housing - shocking.

It's not nearly enough. We need so much more.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. I thought this would be the best time to say that "crappy deal" is unparliamentary. It's on my list here. I would ask that you retract that.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Yes. I will retract "crappy deal" and replace it with "bad deal." I will stay away from the colloquialisms.

I do want to reiterate that when the Council of Premiers met last weekend, I had the chance to sit down with the Premier of British Columbia and had previously met with his Housing Minister. I think that British Columbia is instructive.

They are upzoning. They are changing zoning. They're doing it in collaboration with their municipalities. They're not usurping power. They're changing rules in a way that benefits communities. Not every community is happy about it, but they're engaging with their municipalities.

Mayor Mike Savage called this bill an "autocratic intrusion." The mayor of HRM is the only directly elected municipal official - not the only one, I suppose other mayors are - who has a constituency of half a million people - half the population of our province. He said that this bill is an "autocratic intrusion." This government dismissed that criticism. That is a massive, massive accusation and it's true.

Then the question is why. I want to get back to the special planning areas and the joint task force. We had this exact same conversation in the last sitting, more or less, when the task force was established. That was the first intrusion into the planning of HRM. They said that you could go through all of the normal municipal channels, or you could come and knock on our door. Maybe we'll expedite things.

We had lots of criticism about that, but HRM was at the table. There was planning expertise at the table. Now we've just cut out smart. We've cut out the expertise.

We have only - to the members who criticized the political nature of this conversation: Oh please, first of all. And secondly, that's exactly what this is. It is only political decision-making, by definition. If the minister can, by himself, decide what planning happens right across our biggest municipality, that means it's a political decision. He's not relying on his staff. He's not relying on planning. He might be, but he doesn't have to. That is troubling. That should be troubling to all of us.

I could go on and on, but I will just come back to say there are so many things this government could do to build housing. Number 1, build housing. But Number 2, there are programs - we've talked about this, you know, there are programs - but those are really a drop in the bucket.

There's been an announcement of public housing, 220 units. Someday, some of them might get built. Apparently a bunch of them can't, because the lots where they've been announced aren't actually serviced. We don't even know where some of the areas are. That is a little drop in the bucket.

Of at least 70,000 units by 2030 - many of them here in the HRM - 33,000 of those, at least, need to be deeply affordable. This government has - not even a drop in the bucket of the announcements has been deeply affordable housing. And that is what the thousand-plus people living outside, many of whom still have no idea how they will make it through the Winter, need.

We didn't hear anything about that in this Chamber. We didn't hear about the regulatory and legal changes that are being made to ensure that people stay alive through the Winter. We didn't hear about the regulatory and legal changes being made so that we could build complete communities for the two million people whom the Premier says are going to come.

We get some weird argument about, Oh, well we need them to come so we can build the housing we need. But what are they going to do in the meantime, live in a tent? We see that. If you go to the Shubenacadie Canal in Dartmouth, you see the little huts that the Irish workers lived in while they built the canal. We're sort of past that now. What? They were Irish. Yes, Irishtown Road. It's right in the middle of my district. That's an interesting story in itself, but we won't talk about that right now. But we're beyond that. That's not how we do things now.

We are a wealthy province. We are a wealthy province. The world is on fire right now. There are so many people struggling, and we are so lucky, and we can't find a way to make sure that everyone has a roof over their head? And we can't find a way to pass a bill that actually provides housing for people in this province?

Shame. Honestly. Because this is a bill that paves the path for corruption, that continues to consolidate power, that at least has deeply upset the biggest municipality and economic engine of this province and might even have created some kind of communication breakdown, which will not bode well for any of us, or our constituents.

This bill does a lot of things, none of them good, and none of the bills that have come forward meet the challenges that we actually have in housing.