Sherbrooke Tenants Association protest social housing spending
As part of a series of regional actions by the Popular Action Front in Urban Development (FRAPRU), of which the Association des locataires de Sherbrooke is a member, a series of actions and demonstrations began with an opening march on Monday afternoon from the ALS offices at 421 Wellington South to the site of the former Maysen Pub where a Press Conference revealed its demands and its activities.
According to the ALS, the coming months will be crucial. The Quebec government has announced plans to review its housing approaches, particularly in the area of social housing, and the Trudeau government has promised a Canadian housing strategy for the fall.
The ALS agrees that the budgets tabled in March 2017 in both Ottawa and Quebec contain new investments, notably through mobilization, but that they also demonstrate a lack of political will to implement the Right to Decent and Accessible Housing, as described in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which both governments ratified in 1976. At best, these investments will result in the development of 100 new housing units, which is insufficient for the 6,105 local renters who currently pay more than half of their income for housing, an increase of 8.7 per cent between 2006 and 2011 according to the 2011 Statistics Canada Census.
In its latest budget, Quebec will finance 3,000 units of new social housing. The Couillard government was limited to financing a meager 1,500 units due to
due to budget cuts in the last two years, despite having a staggering surplus of $3.7 billion before payment to the Generations Fund. The government has and is still depriving itself of important revenues by closing both eyes to the tax shelters enjoyed by the wealthiest taxpayers and large corporations and by refusing to fight their tax evasion and avoidance strategies.
As for Ottawa, the $255 million allocated to the provinces from 2019-2020 for a variety of housing initiatives is barely higher than that under the Conservative regime’s last budget, which had announced a new National Housing Fund of $5 billion over 11 years, but without specifying how the money was to be invested. The amounts projected for the implementation of the Canadian Housing Strategy are not up to current needs and are being planned over a much longer time horizon.
It is for these reasons that housing groups in the various regions, including Sherbrooke, are organizing actions and occupations since ill-housed people cannot wait for years.
Local activities can be followed on the ALS Facebook page, Association des locataires groupe.