Advocacy groups say CMHC’s inability to get the NHC up and running will slow the country’s COVID-19 response
The federal government’s promised housing advocate organizations are still unstaffed – a crucial missed opportunity, according to observers.
This is despite applications having closed roughly half a year before COVID-19 took hold of Canada in mid-March.
Leilani Farha, global director of housing rights group The Shift, said that the National Housing Council and a related government body would have been a central component in the Liberal administration’s response to the coronavirus.
“You have a pandemic and your main policy to address the pandemic is [to say] ‘Stay home and wash your hands and physical distance,’” Farha told The Canadian Press. “That is a housing remedy to a deadly virus, so wouldn't it be top of mind and your first move to establish these two entities that are squarely looking at housing? It seems only logical to me.”
Tim Richter, president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, told a House of Commons committee last week that the right to housing, and the resolution of “inequities in systemic or structural barriers,” may well prove essential to the economy’s recovery.
“As the private sector well knows, when you listen to your customers and respond to their needs, you get much more efficiency and better outcomes. This is at the heart of the right to housing,” Richter said.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said in April that it will get the council off the ground this year, saying that it “remains a priority for the government.” The Crown corporation said that the delay was due to the “uncertain and evolving circumstances related to COVID-19.”
