Build affordable housing instead of stubbornness!

We are in the midst of a housing crisis.

Ottawa wants to pay 108 million to fund 5,400 social and affordable housing units in Montreal. As it does in all major cities across the country under a federal program established in 2018.

In Montreal, the City (Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal), housing co-ops and other organizations have sent their projects to the federal government. Ottawa assessed them. Said yes. The check is signed.

But the work has not started because of yet another Quebec-Ottawa dispute, journalist Olivier Bachand, of Radio-Canada, revealed on Monday.

Under a Quebec law, Quebec must approve the vast majority of projects (5,400 units out of a total of 5,900 affordable units). And that’s silly, as we say in good Quebec.

The Legault government would have liked Ottawa to pay the billions (over 10 years) of its National Housing Co-Investment Fund (the FNCIL) unconditionally into existing provincial programs (AccèsLogis), under provincial jurisdiction over of dwelling. For its part, the Trudeau government wants to pay the money directly to those responsible for the projects submitted to it (Quebec does not finance these projects).

Quebec finally gave in recently, accepting “in an exceptional way” that a federal body (CMHC) manage this program in Quebec, explains the office of Minister Sonia LeBel.

Except that Ottawa and Quebec are still discussing the templates of forms to be completed.

This is not a joke.

Quebec, which must approve each project due to Quebec law, finds the Ottawa forms complicated and ill-suited to civil law.

The Mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, is discouraged, and we understand her.

Indeed, after four years, the foolishness has lasted long enough.

While we are discussing forms in Quebec, the federal government is building affordable housing with its program in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary…

In Ottawa, we are told that Quebec has begun, in recent weeks, to give its agreement in principle to some of the projects in Montreal, without however signing the mandatory form of Quebec law.

In the midst of a housing crisis, Quebec and Ottawa have much better things to do than continue to persist with forms. Let the two levels of government each throw some ballast and agree as quickly as possible on the commas of these pesky forms. And that Quebec authorizes (finally) the construction or renovation of 5,400 affordable housing units in Montreal, as well as other projects elsewhere in Quebec that are also on hold.

Quebec and Ottawa must get along quickly. In the next weeks. Because after mid-July, we are getting dangerously close to the start of the election campaign, where this kind of authorization is generally no longer allowed in Quebec (it’s a gray area).

Either way, the talks should be over long ago.