THUNDER BAY — Eliminating homelessness is one of the key planks of federal Liberal Party leadership candidate Karina Gould, and the hopeful says her plan will also include supports for mental health and addictions.
“We have a decision to make if we really want to tackle this problem or not, we can't tinker around the edges,” she told Newswatch about her housing plan in an interview. “We actually have to be bold about it.”
Party members are voting on who will lead the Liberals into the next election after, in January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign. Gould, a three-term MP, who has held several cabinet positions and was government house leader, is competing against former Liberal MP Frank Baylis, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney and former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
The voting process is ongoing and the Liberals are scheduled to announce their new leader on March 9.
In Thunder Bay, local leaders and service providers have been grappling with what one official in late 2024 called “an epidemic of homelessness” in the city after the completion of the most recent point-in-time count, which attempts to quantify how many people in the city are without a place to live.
“I know that mental health and addictions is not solely an issue of homelessness, but it's part of my plan in terms of eliminating homelessness in Canada,” Gould said.
Her plan, in part, calls for the use of accords between Ottawa and the provinces and territories to integrate housing with mental health and addictions supports, increasing the stock of cooperative housing and reducing reliance on the private sector, developing a housing construction strategy aimed at increasing production and focusing on modular homes and expanding support for first-time homebuyers.
“It would be investing in rapid housing initiatives, but also building agreements with provinces and territories to provide wraparound support, which would look like access to mental health services, access to addiction services and access to employment and career training services,” she said.
“Because it's one thing to house someone, it's another thing to enable them to be stable, and if we really want to tackle homelessness, mental health and addiction, we actually have to do it all together.”
Overall, Gould said she’s committed to improving government services and supports, not cutting them, especially as long-threatened tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump, and subsequent retaliatory ones announced by Trudeau, go into effect.
“What we see today is that now is the time to invest in supports for Canadians and Canadian industries, it is not the time to send our public service into crisis when we need them the most,” she said.
“It is about ensuring that we are making the investments to provide income support to the thousands of Canadians that could potentially lose their jobs as a result of these tariffs and it's also about supporting the businesses and the industries who are impacted by these tariffs as well.”
Gould said that, regardless of the outcome of the ongoing vote, she feels she’s shaped the scope of debate within the party.
“Look, I'm in it to win it,” she said. “I'm playing to win, but at the end of the day, we don't need two Conservative parties in this country.”
“We need a centre party that takes good ideas from the left and takes good ideas from the right.”
