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Death of Social Housing

Social housing is one of those wonderful mixed economy solutions that Canada produced post WW2 while governments were reeling with the demand for housing for their returning soldiers. For a few decades after WW2 our governments responded well to the best interests of the citizenry utilizing tools at its disposal to address the needs and demands of politically savvy constituents. Housing was seen to be an essential entitlement . Governments prided themselves on ways to help people get housed in financing schemes that the private sector could not meet.

The best tool was the Bank of Canada from which money then was and still now can be accessed by the federal or provincial governments at low or no interest rate. It was the practice of borrowing from the Bank of Canada after WW2 that provided housing for soldiers, built highways and schools, and infrastructure like subways and seaways.

People were politicized. If their government could send them off to foreign lands to die, then the same government had the duty to provide for those who had sacrificed their lives or health, as well as to provide for their families, and to provide for those who sacrificed at home for the war industry. .

The attitude was the same in all the western world. Citizens expected and demanded that government existed to take care of the people. and to provide a way of living that made it possible for people to go to school, be healthy, get jobs, and to prosper.

By the mid 1970's the bankers in Canada were frothing at the mouth demanding an end to the use of the Bank of Canada which, incidentally, never provided more than 25% of our needs at the best of times . The private banks always had a corner on the market.

The big banking families operated the money systems of the world and funded the industry of the world. These families always had a lot of power and influence over governments since they funded many of their campaigns and chose their leaders. They still do. The financial/corporate elite have their private meetings planning the restructuring of the world to feed their greed.

By the mid 1970's, people were beginning to forget their own power and were succumbing to the pressure of the globalizers who were telling us that the world needed to be privatized for our "own good", but really it was for their profit. Globalization or corporatization is the process of the transfer of the power and wealth of the world into the hands of fewer and fewer people, a global elite. In Canada the legal instrument which really propelled us into that process was the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) entered between Canada and the USA in

1987 followed by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a few years later which included Mexico. The corporate elite of Canada (called the Canadian Council of Chief Executive Officers

(CCCE)) brag about their ongoing pressure over the years that propelled our government to accept the FTA and NAFTA

NAFTA expanded on the FTA to permit corporations to sue a country directly for any action which affected their profits or future profits. Corporations can sue any host country for millions to billions of dollars if it changes its labour, environmental, land use and other law that reduces the profit or future profit of the foreign investor.

Why do our governments no longer fund adequate housing for anyone, including the poor? Housing is a "land use" issue. Governments can now be sued if they provide housing that competes with the private sphere..

We must get out of the FTA and NAFTA. All we have to do is give 6 months notice. But, the Liberals, Conservatives, BQ ,NDP and the Greens refuse to give notice. They refuse to say no to developers.

Why? One, they now fear their government will be sued for lots of money. Two, their ideology now is to serve the elite , not the people. 3. Their own greed. After their term of office they are rewarded with cushy profitable positions in corporate boardrooms and do very nicely thank you very much. No sleeping on the streets for them.

The Canadian Action Party says :1) Get out of FTA and NAFTA. Give the

6 months notice now. 2) Get back to the use of the Bank of Canada to supply the money needed..3) Restore the power to the people.

The really bad news is TILMA, The Trade and Investment Labour Mobility Agreement , entered by Gordon Campbell premier of BC and Ralph Klein, Premier of <http://alberta.in/>Alberta.in March of 2006 that went into effect in April of 2007. That agreement filled in any holes left in NAFTA. We heard no warnings or any storm from the NDP or the Greens for the whole year preceding the agreement until only weeks before it took effect. After the fact the NDP whine that the matter was not permitted debate. But why did the NDP not raise a fight during that year? Nor did the Greens to this day. Why? They are all too comfortable with their tea and crumpets, and their fat pensions, and pay raises. Not for them the hungry belly, or cold cement, or mind and soul numbing, illicit drug relief!