Trudeau pressed for budget bill changes to beef up proposed ‘right to housing’
OTTAWA — Housing advocates want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to tweak his government’s omnibus budget bill to give greater teeth to the bodies overseeing a new right to housing.
Characterizing housing as a human right is meant to provide a legal remedy — usually through a tribunal — for anyone wrongfully denied a home for reasons including ethnicity, religion, or gender identity.
The right the government is proposing to enshrine into law is tucked inside its 392-page budget implementation bill. The bill includes rules for the Liberals’ 10-year national housing strategy — now valued at more than $55 billion in combined federal, provincial and territorial spending — and two new oversight bodies.