After the Legault-Trudeau tête-à-tête on immigration, this week we were treated to another episode of the endless series co-produced by the federal government and the Canadian provinces, “Papa is right”.
With the housing crisis having become the topic of the day in Canada — and one of Pierre Poilievre’s favorite themes — it was only a matter of time before the Trudeau government decided to transform itself into a champion of tenants -voters.
The indignant cries of Prime Minister Legault and his Ontario neighbor Doug Ford in the face of this umpteenth intrusion into a provincial area of jurisdiction were perfectly justified, but Mr. Trudeau has long demonstrated that the sharing of powers provided for by the Constitution does not concern him .
In the desperate situation in which his party finds itself, we can understand him feeling a certain urgency, but he could have had the courtesy to notify the provinces, even if only a few hours in advance, that he was was preparing to crash into them once again.
In Ottawa, we know very well that tenants threatened with eviction or facing an unreasonable rent increase want nothing to do with constitutional quibbles. Anything that can help is welcome and whoever makes a fuss is necessarily playing the wrong role. For ordinary people, the debate on the “spending power”, which Quebec has been calling for to be limited for decades, is similar to that on the sex of angels.
Ottawa’s paternalistic attitude in areas where it in principle has no business is a particularly irritating aspect of Canadian federalism. Justin Trudeau may recognize that “Quebec has its way of doing things”, each new federal initiative suggests that he is not doing enough or that he is doing it poorly.
This is all the more infuriating since Ottawa has the bad habit of regimenting the provinces into programs from which it ends up withdrawing itself when its financial situation deteriorates, leaving the latter with the choice of paying the bill or to bear the odium of the abolition of a service.
In Quebec, even more than elsewhere in the country, there is a rush to register for the new dental insurance program announced by the Trudeau government, but the experience of health fund transfers is cause for concern.
We still need to avoid allowing dad to justify his intrusion. Rather than getting involved in housing, Prime Minister Legault believes that Ottawa should work to contain the influx of asylum seekers, which contributes to the shortage and, consequently, to the increase in rents. That would certainly help, but his own government is far from blameless. It took him forever to admit that there was indeed a crisis, when all the indicators were already red. Of course, we cannot hold him responsible for the inaction of his predecessors, but the measures he has taken are clearly not up to the drama that is unfolding.
Both the provisions of Law 31 and the clumsiness of the Minister of Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, have created the unpleasant impression that the Legault government has the interests of owners more at heart than those of tenants. Repeating like a mantra that the solution to the housing shortage is to build more is a truism that does nothing to help those who currently find themselves on the street.
We believed for a while that the government would agree to improve the “Françoise David law” and at least protect people aged 65 and over from evictions, but Mme Duranceau discovered “perverse effects” which seem to have dissuaded her. Initially, it also seemed open to the creation of a rent register, as requested by many organizations and municipalities, but the owners’ point of view ultimately prevailed.
Now Dad is proposing a Canadian Tenant Charter, which would force landlords to provide a “clear history” of rents, as well as a uniform lease from coast to coast. The irony would be that it provides for the possibility of transferring it to a third party, a measure that Law 31 essentially eliminated.
We understand that all this may seem intolerable in the eyes of Mr. Legault, but he knows very well that Dad is always right. It was even why he once wanted to leave home.