Quebec mayors seek details of housing deal with Ottawa

A long-awaited deal between Ottawa and Quebec announced late Thursday to finance low-cost housing is “a victory,” the mayors of Montreal, Quebec City and Gatineau said on Friday.

But Valérie Plante of Montreal, Régis Labeaume of Quebec City and Maxime Pedneaud-jobin of Gatineau told reporters the next step was to determine just what that deal contains.

Plante said Quebec, the last province to reach an agreement with Ottawa, should receive more than $1.4 billion in federal funding over the next 10 years. But she added that the devil is in the details that have yet to be announced.

Nationally, the agreement will see $55 billion invested in low-cost housing during the next decade to construct 125,000 new homes, fund the housing needs of 530,000 families and repair or upgrade 300,000 dwellings.

The details “ideally” will be announced next week, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc said Friday from Ottawa.

“There will be a lot of autonomy as it should be for the Quebec government and its partners,” Leblanc said, without giving details. “The money was waiting for a deal. Once the deal is finalized … the money will be available.”

When Ottawa announced a national housing strategy in 2017, Quebec applauded the program while insisting that it retain its jurisdiction in the area of housing policy.

Negotiations between the federal government and Quebec have since turned on how the strategy would apply to the province, Quebec calling for the funding to have no strings attached.

For months, Quebec municipalities have called for a deal to be finalized in order to help mayors deal with the ongoing low-cost housing crisis.

Plante noted that the number of homeless people in the city has doubled since the beginning of the pandemic to hit 6,000.

“We're approaching a point of no return where there will not be any more construction of projects,” she said. “I'm speaking for Montreal, we were reaching the end of the roll, we have nothing left.”

She said it takes five years after a project is announced for it to be completed. Currently, Montreal has announced 60 per cent of the 12,000 social housing units planned in its strategy, but only 15 per cent of the projects have broken ground.