Montreal Protest Against Quebec’s Housing Bill Which Favours Narrow Private Interests

Housing Is a Right!

Montreal

September 16 – 1:00 pm
Préfontaine Metro
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There is no better example of government corruption than the use of positions of power and privilege to pass laws which favour vested interests despite the harm they cause to so many. This is the case of the Quebec government’s housing Bill 31, An Act to amend various legislative provisions with respect to housing, tabled on June 9 by France-Élaine Duranceau, the Quebec government minister it claims is responsible for housing. By being responsible for housing, people generally understand that the society is duty-bound to house the population, not serve real estate moguls and developers are served hand and foot while the ever larger number of people deprived of affordable housing are left in dire straits.

The bill was immediately contested by numerous housing rights groups, neighbourhood organizations and various collectives calling for decent affordable housing for all. For years, they have been calling for solutions to the housing crisis, investments in public housing, and the renovation of derelict and decrepit buildings.

It is the social responsibility of governments to finance housing in a manner that everyone can be properly housed but this has not been the aim of successive governments. Housing advocates point out that the stranglehold of narrow private interests in housing must be broken. The situation whereby “property management companies” control the commercial and residential market has to be addressed. Failing that, it is these private interests which dictate the changes they demand so that they can make even greater profits.

Minister Duranceau defended her bill by declaring that its aim is to create a balanced relationship between landlord and tenant. What nonsense. The current tenant’s act, which Bill 31 is intent on gutting, provided tenants with a modicum of protection against a landlord’s ability to raise rents with impunity and to refuse to repair buildings or even to make then sanitary. Even then, the number of housing units was totally inadequate and the housing crisis has existed for many many years and is getting far worse with the number of new arrivals increasing exponentially.

What does it mean to have “a balanced landlord-tenant relationship”? A landlord can be your neighbour who rents out a unit or two; they can be a small real-estate firm that owns 10 doors (signifying the number of units they own); they can be a large real-estate firm that owns 3,000 doors and wants nothing more than to increase profit margins. Then there are the plethora of companies that rent out hundreds of unhealthy, dilapidated and uninsulated units with no repercussions because there is not enough housing to turn to.

To claim the bill creates a balance between landlord and tenant is a statement for which the government must be held to account. It is such a self-serving lie typical of those who have positions of power and privilege and do not give a damn so long as they serve the vested interests who keep them in power.

Housing activists are boldly persisting in bringing this to light and demanding that the government rescind its bill and take the measures which are required to house the people of Quebec. In 2023, the people expect governments to carry out their social responsibility to guarantee the fundamental right for all human beings to be able to feed, house and clothe themselves, educate themselves and have access to health care according to objective requirements. The corruption of governments at all levels is nowhere more evident than on the question of housing and their schemes to use real estate to pay the rich.

Talk of a landlord-tenant balance, when hundreds of families are looking for a decent, sanitary and affordable place to live, to which have been added students, immigrants and homeless people struggling to find a home, shows the extent to which the people are not governed by their peers. The rulers’ smug belief that they can divert people into debating this and that amendment to improve the alleged “balance” shows how cynical they are. But the people are having none of it.

Since June 23, demonstrations against Bill 31 and in support of tenants’ rights have been taking place in several Quebec cities, the most recent being August 25 when 500 people marched in downtown Montreal.

Join in the next event scheduled for September 16 at 1:00 pm, at the Préfontaine metro station, organized by the Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec (RCLALQ).

Montreal demonstration for right to housing, August 25, 2023