UN housing watchdog chides Liberals for watering down rights in housing strategy
OTTAWA — A United Nations housing watchdog is taking the federal Liberals to task over what she sees as the government’s about-face on a promise to put a human rights lens on its housing strategy.
In a scathing letter, Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, says her support for the strategy is waning, based on indications that the Liberals “may not recognize the right to housing” in forthcoming legislation to enshrine the 10-year, $40-billion program into law.
A Liberal point man on the housing file told the Commons last week that the government didn’t want to declare a right that creates a belief that people can “prosecute their way into housing” and that they need landlords, not lawyers.
Farha’s letter called the government’s position “discriminatory and patronizing.”