Sherbrooke Tenants' Association marches in Ottawa for the Right to Housing

ARecord Staff

few weeks before the introduction of the new Canadian Housing Strategy, the Sherbrooke Tenants' Association (ALS) is taking part in a demonstration for housing rights today in Ottawa. A few hundred people from several regions of Quebec, including thirty from Sherbrooke, as well as Ontario are expected. The event, under the theme "Canada's Housing Strategy must not be a smoke screen! , Is organized by the Popular Action Movement in Urban Development (FRAPRU), of which ALS is a member, and is supported by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

In order to remind the government of the urgency of taking action to improve housing conditions in Quebec and Canada, giant portraits of improperlyhoused people will be set up in front of the offices of the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister.

ALS spokesperson Normand Couture recalls that several violations of the right to housing, as defined by the United Nations, including security of tenure, capacity to pay, accessibility, habitability, and access without discrimination, have been reported in recent years and says it is nothing short of scandalous that the Canadian government seems unaware of the daily tragedies affecting all these people.

According to the Sherbrooke Tenants' Association, the federal withdrawal from the social housing sector is one of the main causes of the current affordable housing crisis across the country. Together with FRAPRU, the association demands that the Trudeau government formally recognize the right to housing, that it spends at least $2 billion a year on new social housing, to meet critical needs across the country, and permanently maintains the federal grants currently provided to the 365,000 low-income tenants who live in social housing units built by Ottawa before 1994.

Demonstrators left from downtown Sherbrooke early this morning to join the march beginning at 1:30 pm.