HUMA Committee Report

CPC – Supplementary Report

The Conservative Party of Canada supports the desire of Urban, Remote and Northern Indigenous Peoples for autonomy over their housing needs, in line with the “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” (FIBI) principle.

The fundamental nature of this principle, however, is that Indigenous Peoples decide for themselves how their housing needs are addressed. While this report contains helpful information and shares the realities faced by many, the recommendations are wordy, confusing, and overly prescriptive.

This is the result, in no small part, of the Liberals’ use of their numerical advantage to torque the study’s recommendations in an effort to pre-emptively fit the needs and direction of the government.  Despite those efforts, it is clear that this Liberal government has failed to deliver on their years’ long promise to create a dedicated, funded program within the National Housing Strategy to address the housing needs gap for the 87 percent of Indigenous Peoples not living on reserve lands, but in the urban, rural, and northern parts of Canada.

Housing insufficient to needs is a reality for more than one hundred thousand Indigenous people – completely unacceptable circumstances that should concern every Canadian. As requested by this committee, the Parliamentary Budget Officer investigated this issue and identified “a $636 million annual gap between what these [Indigenous] households pay for shelter and the level deemed affordable by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).”

In the interest of brevity and clarity, we submit alternate, but very much analogous, recommendations built from this report, which certain members of the committee would not entertain in their virtue-signaling obstinacy and steadfast commitment to federal paternalism.

1. That the Government of Canada and the other orders of government work with Indigenous peoples, governments, communities, and organizations to co-develop an Urban, Rural and Northern (URN) Indigenous Housing Strategy adhering to the “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” principle.
2. That said URN Indigenous Housing Strategy be implemented as soon and with as few bureaucratic impediments as possible, with sustainable funding at a level commensurate to the gaps identified by the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s document referenced in this report.
3. That the Government of Canada report back to the Committee on progress towards the development of a national housing strategy for Indigenous peoples living in urban, rural, remote and northern areas in a final report by November 2021.
4. That Employment and Social Development Canada, in partnership with Indigenous peoples, communities, service providers, housing providers and organizations, review and evaluate Reaching Home’s coordinated access systems, expand the number of Indigenous-led community entities in the program, identify and correct administrative bottlenecks, and report back to the Committee on these items with a final report by November 2021.
5. That the federal government and Statistics Canada commit to collect and publish improved data on both existing programs, and detailed population statistics of urban, rural and northern Indigenous people and communities to support the work of the proposed new URN program and report back to the Committee on these items with a final report by November 2021.