[homeles_ot-l] Amended Right to Adequate Housing Bill Re-adopted and referred to Parliament for Third Reading

[Linda Lalonde]

FYI.
 
Linda.

--- On Fri, 3/26/10, Bruce Porter <bporter at socialrights.ca> wrote:


From: Bruce Porter <bporter at socialrights.ca>
Subject: Amended Right to Adequate Housing Bill Re-adopted and referred to Parliament for Third Reading
To: bporter at socialrights.ca
Received: Friday, March 26, 2010, 6:14 PM



Hi Everyone, 

Bill C-304,  An Act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians ,  was adopted by the HUMA Committee on Monday and will be reported back to Parliament for 3rd Reading later in this session.  Originally submitted as a private members bill by Libby Davies,  the Bill was enhanced by a number of important amendments at the HUMA Committee in December to provide stronger protections of the right to adequate housing.  It had to be adopted again after the prorogation of parliament.  We are very excited about the possibility of seeing this Bill pass into law during the current session of parliament.  The Bill provides a ground-breaking framework for a new accountability to  international human rights and includes a clear commitment to eliminating homelessness.

It will, however, take a concerted effort by organizations and individuals across the country to ensure that Bill C-304 is passed at 3rd Reading.   The major obstacle at this point is that the Bill includes an amendment (3(5)) that was deemed inadmissible by the Chair of the Committee, providing for Quebec to be exempted from the Act while still receiving full unconditional payments.   The Liberals and NDP joined the Bloc in over-ruling the Chair at Committee in order to keep this provision in the Bill for the Report back to Parliament.  However, the Speaker of the House may make a similar ruling on 3rd reading if the Conservatives challenge the provision, as they did at Committee.  That would mean the Bloc amendment would be struck from the Bill, and the Bloc has said they will not support it if that happens.  Liberal and NDP support is not enough to constitute a majority without either Bloc support or some Conservative support for the Bill.

While Parliament was prorogued we worked with a number of Quebec groups to try to solve the problem of the inadmissibility of the Quebec provision.  We developed proposals providing for asymmetrical status for Quebec, built around Quebec's "ratification" of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1976 and its commitment to implementing the right to adequate housing through control of its own housing programs.  It was a challenge to come up with a version of a new provision that was deemed admissible by the legislative clerks.  At an rate, at the last minute, when the Committee was about to meet,  the Bloc indicated that they would not support any alternative provision to the original opt-out.  So the Bill was adopted as it had previously been amended in December 2009.  The Conservatives also refused to support an amendment to the definition of accessible housing and which would have required unanimous consent.

We will keep people posted on strategies to get this bill passed as things develop.   

We have posted unofficial texts in English and French of  Bill C-304 at the following links  We will circulate the official version once it is reported to Parliament. 

http://www.socialrights.ca/documents/Bill%20C-304%20Unofficial%20E.pdf 

http://www.socialrights.ca/documents/Bill%20C-304%20Unofficial%20F.pdf 

We look forward to working with all of you to get this passed into law.

 

In solidarity

Bruce Porter - Social Rights Advocacy Centre
Leilaini Farha - Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA) 

www.socialrights.ca 


www.socialrights.ca 


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