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SPEAKING OUT: Housing is a Human Right! – Libby Davies

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Posted on 2008.04.17

SPEAKING OUT: Housing is a Human Right!

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): – Mr. Speaker, east Vancouver has suffered from years of government neglect on housing and homelessness. The build up to the 2010 Olympics has made things worse. Since 2003, 1,300 single occupancy rooms have been lost, eliminating most of the last market housing available to Vancouver’s poorest residents.

The federal government has shown again and again it does not care. It pledged another $25 million for the Olympics in the budget, but no new money for affordable housing.

People have had enough. This week the Carnegie Action Project, the Impact on Communities Coalition, PIVOT and UBC students launched a formal human rights complaint to the United Nations.

It exposes how the federal government has failed to uphold the basic human right to housing. The Conservative government must heed the urgent calls from the community and act now to ensure that existing low-income housing is protected and new social housing is built.

No one should be homeless in this wealthy country of Canada.

Closing Vancouver’s Insite drug clinic would violate the Charter of Rights, top court rules – Libby Davies

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Closing Vancouver’s Insite drug clinic would violate the Charter of Rights, top court rules

OTTAWA — Vancouver's controversial supervised-injection site should stay open indefinitely, the country's top court ruled Friday, calling the federal government's move to shut it down a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms…Shortly after the decision was released Friday morning, Davies said she felt "an incredible sense of relief and victory." "It's always been about saving people's lives," she said. "It's always been about a very important medical intervention to help people and the relentless opposition from the Conservative government has been just an incredible thing to take on. I feel so proud of all of the people who came together — whether they were academics, police officers, front-line activists, health professionals, and most of all, the drug users themselves — who were willing to stand up and have the courage to say they would fight all the way to make sure Insite continued its important work."

The original article, Closing Vancouver's Insite drug clinic would violate the Charter of Rights was published on September 30, 2011 in The Province. Author(s): Peter O'Neil , Bradley Bouzane
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