A coalition of organizations from the economic, union and environmental sectors is calling for the creation of a “national plan” for housing in Quebec, while calling on the Legault government not to neglect the environmental crisis to which the major deficit in supply contributes. public transportation in the province.
The G15+ collective was formed in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was disrupting Quebec’s economy. Its members, including the Quebec Employers Council (CPQ), the Association of Technical Resource Groups of Quebec (AGRTQ) as well as the Vivre en ville organization and the Quebec Federation of Workers, have then united their voice behind 29 recommendations which were submitted to the Legault government to help it organize the economic recovery of the province.
Since then, however, “the world has evolved,” summarized Tuesday the general director of Vivre en ville, Christian Savard, in an interview with The duty in the presence of two other members of this coalition of organizations. Faced with a “housing crisis” which has worsened and that of climate change, which has “accelerated”, the G15+ group decided in the last year to revise its “road map”, added Mr. Savard.
These are 45 new proposals that the collective, which has more than 15 members, presented Tuesday evening to the National Assembly in front of several members of civil society and deputies, including the Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau , has learned The duty.
The G15+ group is asking Quebec in particular to create 5,000 social and community housing units per year for the next five years by providing sufficient public funding to cover 50% of construction costs. The Quebec government and cities are also invited to renovate their surplus public properties so that they can then accommodate social housing projects.
There is work to be done that is quite urgent and necessary.
“It is a figure established according to the capacity to deliver that the government had put forward in terms of budget”, but which has not yet given the expected results, notes the general director of the AGRTQ, Eric Cimon. “There is work to be done that is quite urgent and necessary” to meet the needs of the least well-off tenants, he continues.
The employers’ conundrum
However, the housing crisis is juxtaposed with that of the labor shortage, the two colliding to cause many headaches for employers, particularly in the regions, noted the president and CEO of the CPQ, Karl Blackburn. Some entrepreneurs thus find themselves having to build housing themselves to accommodate new workers in the municipalities where they settle, with all the logistical challenges that this entails, he stressed.
“Now, entrepreneurs, in addition to managing and operating their business, are in some cases real estate agents, housing builders,” continued the president of the CPQ. It is certain that for employers, this inability to find housing is as big a problem as the labor shortage, because if you have workers, but you are not able to house them properly , you will not be able to keep them in your municipality. This is a major problem. »
The G15+ group is therefore pressing the Legault government to organize general meetings on housing which will allow the rapid development of a national plan aimed at tackling the different facets of the housing crisis. “Time will not resolve things by itself this time,” warned Christian Savard, the problems of access to housing having increased the number of homeless people in Quebec between 2018 and last year.
Environmental crisis
However, we must not only build housing quickly, but also ensure that we limit their energy footprint, believes the collective, which proposes a series of ways to make the construction environment more ecological. “Indeed, it is not because there is a housing crisis that we should not face the environmental crisis and build in a way that reduces our greenhouse gas emissions,” summarized Christian Savard Tuesday.
The collective also proposes to elected officials to double the public transport offer in Quebec within 10 years in order to slow down the rapid growth of the automobile fleet in the province, which goes against the tide of the fight against climate change. “We believe that we must move towards an improvement in the service offering throughout Quebec,” underlines Mr. Savard, according to whom Quebec would have every advantage in taking inspiration from Ontario, which has developed its transportation network collective in a “quite spectacular” way in recent years.
G15+ intends to meet in turn with different ministerial offices in Quebec and Ottawa in the coming months to make its requests heard.