:
Welcome to Meeting No. 5 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of September 23. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee.
To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for the meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself.
I remind members that all comments should be addressed through the chair. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute.
I would like to now welcome our witnesses: Carol Camille from the Lillooet Friendship Centre Society and Juliette Nicolet from the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres.
Ms. Camille, you have the floor for five minutes for your opening remarks.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee for rural, urban and indigenous housing.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional territory of the Stl'atl'imx and the St'at'imc people, which I both work and live on, as well as the traditional territory that all of you are on while we are having this meeting today.
My name is Carol Camille. I'm with the Lillooet Friendship Centre. For the past 12 years, I have been their executive director.
The original purpose of the friendship centre movement across Canada was to support the migration of indigenous people from reserves to cities or urban centres. We were a place of coming together and referrals for community services. Today, friendship centres have expanded so much that we offer services in education, employment, health, addictions, stopping violence, recreation, emergency shelters and so much more.
Friendship centres reflect our communities and are identified as a hub for services. We have a small budget and about 36,000 points of service, so we know the importance of overlapping our resources. We know how to make a dollar go a long way to link up services for multiple purposes. We have a strong history of collecting evidence to show funders that supporting organizations is a good investment.
Lillooet Friendship Centre has six Upper St'at'imc bands surrounding our community. There is an urgent need for housing in all the communities. Currently, there is inadequate housing rentals within the Lillooet area. Many houses are sitting empty and they leave our community with a gap in services. A lot of out-of-town owners are renting out to contractors at an overinflated price. For the landowners and the homeowners, it's less energy and commitment on their part, so it's easier to rent to those contractors as they come into town for short stays. However, with almost a zero rental ability in the Lillooet area, we are seeing families of three generations and sometimes even four generations living in the same household.
The local indigenous communities have long wait-lists for housing on reserve. Therefore, these wait-listed families are forced to reside in urban communities sometimes even a great distance from their own immediate families.
Some larger urban friendship centres have housing programs, but most rural and remote friendship centres do not and, like the Lillooet Friendship Centre, those friendship centres are then tasked with seeking safe, affordable housing for indigenous individuals and families who require housing, or are homeless or at risk of being homeless. We work with families and landlords to find new housing sources and even to develop relationships with those landlords.
These are just a few tasks that my staff and I at the friendship centre do off the corner of our desks for our clients who come through our doors. We deal with these gaps in services in our community and start seeking funding support to fill those gaps.
All our support staff work with clients experiencing homelessness with personal healing from the harmful effects of colonization, residential school traumas, addictions and homelessness. For the past few years, we've provided meals and accommodations through our extreme weather shelter from the beginning of November to the end of March. Most recently—just last week—we got some additional support from the reaching home program to enhance the services provided for a 24-hour shelter service for our clients.
Indigenous communities all across Canada have said that they will take care of their members no matter where they live, but in the midst of the COVID pandemic that we are facing, friendship centres have seen that many band offices and client services have become hard to access. Services at friendship centres have seen an upward climb in supporting the indigenous clients that are in our community. Housing is one of those areas that we are having to face.
We are looking forward to being able to apply for urban, rural and remote funding for housing within our communities and working with community members to make that happen.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I am in Toronto, and I would like to acknowledge that Toronto sits on the traditional territories of a number of different first nations who shared this area for all sorts of reasons. My house in particular sits very close to a former Seneca encampment.
I want to thank Ms. Camille, because she gave an excellent description of the work of friendship centres in so many communities across Canada. Her experience is reflected in Ontario.
With respect to the range of services provided and the challenges around housing, in Ontario we have a demographic situation that is slightly different from other provinces. For example, 85.5% of indigenous people in Ontario live off reserve. Ontario has the largest population and the largest proportion of indigenous people living off reserve. Many seek housing and experience extreme housing insecurity. Of course, COVID-19 has made that worse.
The friendship centres in Ontario and the OFIFC have really been at the front line of providing housing for a number of years and have seen that activity increase in the last six to eight months. Friendship centres directly provide 151 units of housing. There are 29 friendship centres across Ontario that directly deliver 151 units of housing. That number is increasing all the time. This is a relatively new development because the need is so great. The friendship centres have actually begun delivering housing directly themselves.
The OFIFC is also one of three shareholders in a housing non-profit, the Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services Corporation, which owns upwards of 2,400 individual units that are supplied in a variety of ways, with preference to indigenous clients.
I think the critical thing to understand is that the success of friendship centres in Ontario in creating a real kind of economic, social and civic shift in the indigenous community relies very much on the provision of culture-based services. When the national housing strategy came out, it was a great disappointment to us that there was no specific indigenous set-aside. This would have created space for culture-based services in housing and self-determination in housing by organizations such as ourselves and others to address the issue of housing in this country. Of course, COVID has come along and has demonstrated just how dire the situation is, so here we are.
It's important as well to understand what “indigenous-led” means. When we talk about things being indigenous-led, we're talking about things being governed by indigenous people, managed by indigenous people, administered by indigenous people, delivered on the ground by indigenous people, research done by indigenous people and evaluated by indigenous people. This approach has led to the great success of the friendship centre movement across Canada, and certainly in Ontario.
With respect to what the OFIFC would like to see, which is the development of a national strategy on urban, rural and northern indigenous housing, it is also important to understand how this might intersect with enabling legislation on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and that the self-determination aspect is a critical piece to ensure that service providers with the greatest expertise are able to continue to do their work.
I'm going to leave it at that for now.
Thank you very much.
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Thank you very much for your question.
I'll continue in English, for the benefit of your colleagues.
[English]
First of all, we anticipate that friendship centres are going to get more involved in the delivery of housing, because it is such a significant need. In fact, if you would like to look at an example in Quebec, le Regroupement des centres d'amitié autochtones du Québec, is currently well into a phase of beginning to deliver housing to students and is expanding their housing approach.
This is something that is happening across the board, across the country. Housing is just an area that friendship centres are going to be delivering in.
What is the way that the national housing strategy could best serve us? The best thing would be to have a separate strategy that is specific to urban, rural and northern indigenous housing. Historically, indigenous interests, indigenous concerns, indigenous challenges and indigenous successes have never been addressed in the context of a mainstream approach.
A separate, specific approach to address these issues is what's required. Failing that, at a minimum, a set-aside needs to be created inside of the national housing strategy as it currently sits. Although this will be a flawed approach, it is what is needed at a minimum—an implementation that considers allocations made from a separate pot of money and delivered independently by an independent body directly to indigenous—
:
This hearkens back a little to the question by Mr. Vis about sustainability. Three years is not sustainable funding. Let's start with that. What little funding is available is usually quite short term. Also, no government has not done this—it doesn't matter what stripe.
Everybody is really keen on funding things for one, two or three years—or maybe four, which is a good term. However, as Ms. Camille pointed out earlier, when it comes to housing, you need to have decades-long time frames, and that never happens.
That is a trend across programming. Provincially we have been able to negotiate better agreements. With the federal government, as well, we have a 10-year agreement around employment. That is the approach that needs to be taken consistently.
The amounts are always insufficient. Indigenous organizations are always operating at a deficit compared to their non-indigenous counterparts—absolutely consistently across the board. We see that Ontario, where the amounts are literally one-third to two-thirds different from the amounts received by similarly located organizations in the field of work they're in.
It is an ongoing struggle. What it speaks to, frankly, is systemic racism. We can underpay indigenous people and indigenous administrators. We can offer indigenous people crappier services. That's the mentality, and it is highly problematic.
It's great for government, because we friendship centres provide consistently high-level, quality services for very little money, and it ends up hurting us in the end because we do that, so we can continue to do it, and so government continues to underpay us.
:
Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today.
I want to thank the friendship centres as a whole for what they do. As Ms. Nicolet was saying, there are many services; it's not just one particular service. In my riding I've been able to meet students with summer student jobs through Canada summer jobs who have been employed through the friendship centres. It's great to see what they're doing with education, elders and even addictions services and that type of thing. I want to thank you for doing this.
We've heard so far—and it's been a theme this afternoon—that the funding coming in isn't enough, not just for the housing portion but for all the services that are offered by friendship centres.
Since we know that the services vary so much, I'm interested in knowing how the centres differ from location to location, in the sense of rural versus urban.
Ms. Camille mentioned in her opening remarks that rural and remote centres may not have housing programs available to them. I'm wondering what the federal government can do specifically to help mitigate this. Is it just funding, or are there creative ideas? It's so important that there be an indigenous-based lens, absolutely, and that goal is enhanced by having indigenous voices at the table developing the policies.
I'm looking at what specifically can be done to help in the rural and remote areas.
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I think it's working holistically to relieve those socio-economic barriers; it's not just an increase of funding in one area, but an increase in all areas.
To prevent and end homelessness in urban and rural communities, there's a lot of stuff to maintain the continuum around employment and education. Housing is one area. We can look back in history and see that when aboriginal people are living in a home or an area, they tend not to move around as often if housing is available for them within their own local community.
Bringing in stronger programming around housing, education and employment and making things happen on the ground where they live will be instrumental in being able to maintain the continuum for housing.
I strongly believe that the smaller communities.... Quite often, if you're a population of under 5,000, you can't apply for some of these programs. There are some that are available for those smaller communities, but they would not even begin to deal with the inadequate programming that's in place.
Thank you.
I want to touch on health and safety. Every person needs safe housing. It contributes greatly to stability in life in general, and indigenous people aren't excluded from this truth; they definitely need safe housing as well.
I wonder whether you've noticed differences between urban and rural and remote locations, and whether being in, let's say, a remote or rural location versus an urban location adds another or a particular or different vulnerability to what first nations people experience.
I don't know whether that makes sense, but what are some of the other vulnerabilities, if there are any, that they may experience just by virtue of being in rural and remote areas, which may affect the housing situation?
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Thank you for that. It's really helpful.
Building on that answer, I think indigenous friendship centres have incredible social, intellectual and cultural capital, but perhaps we're talking today about the financial capital and the physical capital that is associated with housing, i.e., physical assets, that need to be purchased.
You talked about, and I think I actually read, a report on your website that suggested that about one third of friendship centres in Ontario are moving towards becoming housing providers. You've suggested that many more would move along that path.
How can friendship centres leverage the capital they already have, and where can we help most in enabling them to be successful at becoming housing providers? How does that work? What does the model look like?
:
In Ontario, there's a very specific set of circumstances, which are not necessarily replicated across the country. In the first instance, we have the Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services corporation, which is an organization that the friendship centres work with regularly to actually develop capital. Friendship centres in Ontario are able to do that with OAHS easily.
The other particularity in Ontario is that the provincial government provides a level of support for programming that is pretty much unmatched across the country, so we have a wide, wide range of provincially funded programs, including, for instance, child care.
One of the things to understand around housing is that there are all the different component pieces, and really, a blanket approach nationally is not going to work. For instance, in Ontario, maybe we need capital, but maybe we need operations, and maybe we need funding for the things that should be built around the housing. In other provinces, you'll need all three of those things, or maybe you'll need just one of those things.
This is where governments make the rest of us crazy. The lack of collaboration and inter-governmental coordination becomes very, very challenging and, frankly, stupid, because it's a lost opportunity to leverage what different actors are doing in the landscape to make a greater impact.
What can you do? I think you start by paying attention to what's happening on the ground in each place you're going, and then you figure out what's needed. You need to ask people. The needs in Lillooet are going to be different from those in Sioux Lookout or Moosonee, or Toronto for that matter. In fact, there might be more similarities between Sioux Lookout and Lillooet than there are between Toronto and Sioux Lookout or Toronto and Lillooet. Anyway, it's really about an approach that allows you to identify how best to leverage what funding you're providing as opposed to saying, “We're going to do this and it's going to be the same across the board”, which is not helpful.
Does that answer your question?
:
I have a little bit of a delinquent side, and I'm often set straight. I'm sorry.
Ms. Nicolet, you're right that there can't be a uniform policy from one province to another because the realities are different. For example, in Ontario, 85% of indigenous communities live in urban areas, while the opposite is true in Quebec, where the majority still live on reserves.
How could the real need for quality and affordable housing be estimated? I won't ask you to put a number on it, since you said that the solution must be sustainable, that a long-term vision is needed, and that piecemeal financing is not appropriate. The solution must take into account the realities of indigenous peoples and the fact that management, in every sense of the word, must be done by these communities.
How could we really estimate this need if we had to quantify it? I'm talking about quality and affordable housing. It would give us a better perspective to get to work to really meet the needs rather than doing it piecemeal. Could we get this data?
:
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for all your amazing testimony and the work you're doing in these communities.
In my previous role as shadow minister for indigenous-crown relations, I met with a large number of community leaders and financial stakeholders with respect to housing. The advice provided was often the same, and I think you both mentioned it in your testimony today: that indigenous communities want the tools to make their own decisions, including housing decisions, and they also need the financial ability to do so.
What it seemed to lead to is, as you mentioned, that it's not just housing, but water treatment, social programming, education, and.... The list goes on.
In respect to housing, I'd like to get your opinion on some of these themes. They're pretty big topics, and I only have five minutes, so let's talk about indigenous infrastructure programs, because part one of what you mentioned was in regard to funding.
Would a partnership with indigenous communities through infrastructure capitalization agreements such as Alberta's billion-dollar indigenous opportunities fund be a potential answer to housing, and specifically to create new revenue streams for communities to leverage capital towards further economic self-determination?
I will go into the next part after you answer. Thank you.
I'd like to begin by thanking members of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for inviting me to contribute to this very important topic of urban, rural and northern indigenous housing.
I'd like to give a massive shout-out to Adam Vaughan and Michael McLeod, who are champions of housing for the north; I appreciate their efforts, as a woman who has experienced homelessness.
I position myself as a settler and as a person with lived expertise of homelessness who came north as a young woman fleeing violence. Internally, the traumatic responses to childhood violence that I experienced revealed themselves in clinical depression, constant suicidal ideation and a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Externally, they revealed themselves in a lifestyle of chaos, instability and risk that limited my ability to form and keep healthy relationships and to enter into and succeed in the workplace.
It was in this context that I met and connected with first nations, Inuit and Métis women and families who were similarly impacted by trauma, but at the genocidal level aptly described in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report.
As a first-hand witness for more than 45 years to the ongoing policies and practices that had been instituted by governments and housing service providers, I can attest to the dehumanizing, disempowering and destructive ways both systems have contributed to the current condition of epidemic rates of poverty, homelessness, addictions and violence in the north.
It was those colonial frameworks, portrayed in gaslighting ways as helping indigenous people who lacked all capacity to function without support, that drove me into the sphere of advocacy and into establishing a low-barrier, peer-led shelter, which I led for 25 years.
I can confidently say that I myself and other women I know with lived expertise of homelessness—and within an indigenous context, indigenous women and families—know specifically what the problems are and know specifically what the solutions are. We can provide concrete examples of both of those things.
I'm conscious of my time, but I would like to list a few of the challenges and a few of the solutions.
The challenges are that money and resources are held by governments and service-provider organizations that operate from a colonial framework today; that the voices of indigenous people and indigenous women are excluded from decision-making and solution designs; that there is hidden homelessness, and therefore it's hard to put a number on exactly what kind of housing you need and how many housing dollars you need; that there are housing monopolies, particularly in the north, and the housing monopoly includes the housing corporation that en masse evicts people into the street and into the bush without options for other types of housing; that there are punishing policies across government departments, a lack of housing stock and the divide between the “violence against women” sector and the “women's homelessness” sector.
The solutions include a national housing strategy. We have one, and I really appreciate that national housing strategy; it just has gaps. One gap it has is an indigenous-specific stream that is controlled by the indigenous community.
We need an urban indigenous housing strategy. We need the ability to access federal dollars outside of provincial and territorial governments, simply because, at least in our area and from my perspective, they are totally immobilized and don't know how to get money out the door.
Another solution is to ensure that indigenous programs are controlled by indigenous communities and organizations. Of course, I really support the Recovery for All campaign that was initiated by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness and the recommendations from the Women's National Housing and Homelessness Network.
Another needed solution needed is to ensure that there is a gender-specific approach. It's not that women are more important than men at all; it's simply that they experience homelessness differently, and the contributors to homelessness for them are different.
Finally, what I could give you is two or three examples of clear indicators of what the problems are and what the solutions are, if I may. I don't know how much time I have left.
I'll just begin with one, and that is that an indigenous woman from a small community in the north won the first UN judgment under CEDAW against Canada and against the NWT Housing Corporation for racism and discrimination after she lost her housing due to partner violence. The UN recommended that the Government of Canada hire and train indigenous women to provide legal advice to other indigenous women around their rights and the right to housing.
That United Nations recommendation has not been fulfilled to this day, in spite of the calls for justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and the woman who won that case remains homeless today.
The other example I'll give you is that the YWCA transition house in Yellowknife that was burned to the ground one night, and overnight, 33 indigenous families were homeless. All of those families were housed overnight in private market housing that sat empty, and they were able to get into private market housing through the use of a rental supplement.
The reason they couldn't get into it before is that the landlord who holds a monopoly in the north actually has an illegally stated policy that they don't rent to people on welfare. The Government of the Northwest Territories, which is their primary tenant, refuses to challenge that policy under human rights legislation or in court.
:
Good evening. I too would like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to present.
As mentioned, my name is Lance Haymond. I am the chief of the Algonquin community of Kebaowek. I'm the portfolio holder for housing for the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador. I also am the co-chair of the chiefs committee on housing and infrastructure at the national level with the AFN. I co-chair with regional chief Kevin Hart from Manitoba.
I have with me Guy Latouche, who is an urban planner and who works as an adviser for the AFNQL on the housing and infrastructure file.
We have been informed that the committee is interested in barriers to housing for indigenous peoples. Please note that we are concerned about this issue on an ongoing basis. In addition, we have well documented the housing needs and issues facing the first nations in Quebec.
It has long been recognized that aboriginal communities face significant housing issues. Since 1996, such major reports as that of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and that of the Public Inquiry Commission on relations between Indigenous Peoples and certain public services in 2019, have largely addressed this issue.
The state of the housing situation in first nations communities in Quebec has been well documented over the past 20 years. We have been collecting data since 2000, updating it every four years, and we have the best data on housing needs in the country.
It should be noted that our current housing stock is made up of 15,541 housing units, but we must add 10,000 units, renovate 8,000 and provide infrastructure to more than 9,000 sites to meet needs. This means there is a financial need of nearly $4 billion just for the Quebec region.
The need for new housing units arises in particular from overcrowding of houses, population growth over a five-year period, and the need for housing for members who currently live off reserve but would like to live in their home community.
The migration of members accounts for nearly 20% of the housing needs in Quebec. The housing situation outside the communities is not well documented; however, we know that aboriginal people who migrate to urban areas often find it very difficult to access adequate and affordable housing. It is not uncommon for these to be, in reality, off-reserve members whose band council is unable to serve them because of gaps in government programs.
This brings me to talk about the role of housing in society. Housing has decisive effects on the health and well-being of individuals and communities, on the efficient functioning of the economy and on many aspects of the social and cultural characteristics of society. We often hear that housing is a determinant of health. It is true, and it is even more true in the context of the current pandemic.
It is also a determinant of the academic success of our young people and the economic development of many of our communities. Let us not forget that it is an essential factor of social inclusion.
In his report, Commissioner Viens noted that the severe housing crisis affecting first nations people appears to be the epicentre of many problems experienced by first nations in Quebec.
Several indications show that first nations housing is an underfunded sector. Over the years, federal budget allocations have not evolved in line with need. On average, between 225 and 250 housing units are added annually to the communities' housing stock. I remind you again that the current needs are for 10,000 housing units over a five-year period. This again is well documented.
Existing federal programs meet less than 15% of the on-reserve housing needs. The housing problem of first nations in Quebec is worrying. Populations are growing, the sector is underfunded and the gap between needs and achievements is widening.
I would add that one of the side effects of the pandemic is the explosion in construction costs. I fear, even if the status quo is maintained, that less housing will be built in first nation communities with the regular budgetary envelopes of Indigenous Services and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The accumulated backlog is concretely reflected in the living conditions inside the housing stock: overcrowded housing and outdated units, many of which need major renovations.
The situation worsens if we consider the various challenges faced by first nations that create difficulties in implementing housing projects. In fact, our first nations must deal with a series of obstacles in the implementation of their housing projects.
We have identified five.
One is chronic underfunding and difficulties to access capital, as access to all currently available housing contribution and ministerial loan guarantee programs is, in effect, driven by the financial situation and resources of the community.
Second is the lack of capacity at several levels, starting with basic infrastructure. I am talking here about public water and sewer services, which are an essential prerequisite for any housing project and a prerequisite to access funding from our federal partners.
In some communities the problems arise even further upstream. They do not have the necessary land base to pursue new housing development. We must never forget the human aspect. Human resource capacities must be improved in several first nations.
Then there is location. Many communities, particularly those located in remote or isolated regions where the economy is not flourishing, depend heavily on social housing. However, the CMHC program barely makes it possible to build 60 social housing units per year in first nations communities in Quebec.
I find it wise to invest in housing within first nations communities. When we admit that housing plays a capital and central role in society, it is easy to imagine all the benefits of upstream intervention for all levels of government. This avoids having to deal with repeated crises.
We have a strategy in Quebec to get out of this crisis. It is based on three pillars: improving skills and capacities within the communities, implementing a housing catch-up project, and a new governance approach. This strategy calls on all stakeholders, and I will be quite blunt; we cannot hide from the fact that additional federal investment will need to be made so that we can start bridging that ever-increasing gap.
Thank you very much.
To go back to your first question, I agree with Ms. Hache. I really think the partnership needs to be clearly defined. The challenge when you talk about provincial entities—and in particular, Quebec—is that they are quick to tell us they are not responsible for indigenous housing on reserve. That's an immediate challenge.
We have seen instances, and the best example that comes to my mind is in B.C., where the provincial government is investing significant amounts of money to address the shortcomings in the federal funds. Thus, it will lead to more housing on reserve for the communities living in British Columbia. I think that if more provinces were open to having those kinds of dialogues it would be an interesting start and another option for us to look at.
In terms of whether that can be achieved inside or outside of the Indian Act, I really don't think it is relevant to the discussion. I think the political will and the nature of the partnership to be determined will ultimately lead to outcomes. It's not really necessary to simply remove the Indian Act to be able to develop investment funds that build capacity, generate income, and start helping us address meeting our housing needs across the country.
Thank you to all the presenters today. It's a very interesting discussion indeed, and a very important issue to be reviewing.
My question is for Arlene Hache.
First of all, welcome, Arlene. It's good to see you here. I know you've had a long career spanning decades working on the ground, helping people, helping the homeless, helping women, helping families and helping people find shelter in the north. You've seen many programs. You've seen many projects come and go. Some were successful. Some were not.
I think you earlier started to talk about solutions. In your opinion, if you were in a position to design a program today that would best illustrate all your knowledge and expertise, what would that look like?
:
Well, I think we have to start from where people are, not where we think they should be.
Twenty years ago we did low-barrier housing because I experienced homelessness. My goal was to get women out of the cold. How they behaved and my expectations were secondary to that. Now, 30 years later, everybody is on a trend talking about low-barrier housing as if it were a new thing.
That's how community people are: everything is low-barrier, because they're so inclusive. I think of low-barrier housing as housing controlled by community people, designed by community people and delivered by community people.
A community from the Northwest Territories contacted me today. It wants to develop a housing project, but to do it, the housing corporation is insisting the housing become the property of the housing corporation, not of the community. That's a case of “don't do it that way”.
The other thing they talked about is vandalism in small communities. I said we're interested and we have the support of construction workers to train women to construct and maintain their own housing so that vandalism isn't an issue.
I think it's a question of tying education and skills into housing models and having diverse housing models. Women I know don't want to live with five other women and 50 other kids; they want their own home and they want to be able to support their own families in an appropriate way.
I could go on about lots of different solutions. There are many. I've seen them and I've seen them work. I'd like to have a deeper conversation with people about that.
:
I'll give you one example. Do you remember the Arnica Inn? It's an example in which the two departments, the federal government's and the territorial government's, were not talking. The women's group was ready to go ahead; the person who owned the hotel was ready to go ahead. These two governments couldn't talk and blamed each other, so the deal was off the table.
COVID hit, and two weeks later the deal was back on the table, and within probably three months the hotel was bought, housing was provided, and people had housing. What that taught me is that those governments can work together.
You must have heard, though, that $60 million given by the federal government to the territorial government has been sitting there and is sitting there two years later.
Of course I flipped out. I said, if you can't move it out, I can move it out for you. I actually know how to write proposals and know how to talk to community people.
I think you're right: we need more resources. My big thing, however, is that there's a perception that the federal government is too far removed to be the avenue of support. Not in my books; in my books, I'd rather work with the federal government any day than with the territorial government, because for some reason the territorial government is totally immobilized.
There have to be on-the-ground resources, yes, but there has to be a federal avenue to access those resources without necessarily going to the territorial government.
I hope the sound is better. I had to change platforms at IT's recommendation.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for accepting our invitation to appear before the committee. Their testimonies are great.
My questions are for Chief Haymond.
I have several questions for you about the shortcomings of the programs put in place for First Nations. In fact, I have read that in the National Housing Strategy, the 2017-18 budgets provided $600 million over three years, specifically to support housing on First Nations reserves. I understand from your testimony that these amounts are clearly insufficient. Among the gaps, you mentioned chronic underfunding. I would like to know if you are seeing any improvements.
You said that we need new ways of doing things in terms of governance. You said that one of the issues is that 20% of the need is for migration of members who live off reserve.
Could you tell us more about these issues?
Thank you very much.
:
First off, I'm not getting the interpretation.
[Translation]
I don't mind because I understood the majority of your questions. However, I will answer in English.
[English]
You're right that it has been a challenge. Current programs fall far short of meeting our housing needs in Quebec. We have figures that show that the needs of first nations in Quebec have gone from 7,000 units in 2000 to 10,000 units in 2018.
Part of the explanation can be found in the housing portion of the annual capital base budgets of first nations, which have remained the same since 1990. We know that over the past 30 years, the consumer price index has experienced a phenomenal increase; however, cost provisions for material and labour have not kept pace with the reality of building housing in communities.
This pandemic is the prime example of how this is going to cause further grief. I'll give you an example.
Earlier in March, just before the pandemic, my community negotiated a budget with Indigenous Services and the Province of Quebec to build a brand new police station. We negotiated a budget for $2.7 million to build that police station. When we opened our offices back up in June and started to facilitate having the discussions, we went out and got a new estimate, and the cost had increased from $2.7 million to $3.177 million in the space of three months. That's just one example.
Our figures also show that significant improvement occurs when the federal government injects additional funds into first nations housing. When this happens, the needs curve does not decrease, but we see it flexing. Otherwise, the growth of the housing stock of the communities depends on regular federal budgets.
I mentioned earlier that CMHC's budgets build about 60 units in Quebec, and in total we build around 225 to 250 on average per year, but that's only because first nations communities are investing so many of their own dollars to achieve those meagre numbers of units.
The current and foreseeable context suggests a worrying future. In fact, the magnitude of the needs, the growing demographics, and the increase in construction costs risk leading us to a deterioration in the housing conditions of first nations members, with funding remaining status quo.
We've seen in particular that when CEAP in 2009-10 was put forward as a stimulus, it had a positive impact. The funding, $600 million over three years, put more money into the system, allowing us to build more units.
I hope that responds to your question.
Thank you.
I have one more question for you, with regard to children in care.
I live in the city of Winnipeg. We have been called the epicentre for the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. In fact, we're the reason it started, because of an incident with the young Tina. That being said, we know that one of the groups at highest risk for violence, for being murdered or for going missing is girls aging out of care, indigenous young women aging out of care.
We know that even now, even though we know this is true as we've seen in the national inquiry, there's not enough action on the ground to make sure that our young women are safe. What are a couple of first steps that you think need to happen immediately to ensure safety for kids aging out of care, often into poverty and homelessness?
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The simple answer is yes. I think we are heard, again, because we have the regional liaison committee in Quebec, which puts Mr. Latouche, representatives from ISC and CMHC, and me together to find solutions. Absolutely I think it contributes to our finding real solutions.
The ultimate goal, as I indicated in my opening remarks, is to take care and control of first nations housing for our communities, but we have a lot of work to do. We need to build capacity in our communities. We need strong housing agents. We need chiefs and councils to really understand what the cost of housing is. Our big push right now is capacity building.
The second axis of our strategy really relates to what the different types of funding and programs are that we as first nations can develop, and that make the most sense for us in Quebec. I'm a firm believer that the solutions to our challenges in relation to housing will really come from us here in the region; we will find our own solution.
The third axis is to really change that governance with regard to how housing is delivered, in the sense that if we do one and two, we will determine the governance structure that we need to take over care and control and delivery of first nations housing to our member communities in the province of Quebec.