National Defence Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I call this meeting to order.

This is a continuing study on the housing issue from the motion adopted October 19, on the lack of available housing on or near bases for Canadian Armed Forces members and their families and the challenges facing members and their families when they are required to move across the country.

I want to welcome the witnesses to the committee meeting.

We will start with retired sergeant Christopher Banks.

Welcome back to the committee, sir. You have five minutes.

[Christopher Banks, Sergeant (Retired), As an Individual]

Thank you, and thank you for having me back.

My name is Christopher Banks. I retired in 2019 after 20 years as a sergeant and quartermaster in the army reserve.

During my career, I was fortunate to have been given many opportunities, which took me to bases and training centres across the country. I have been fortunate to meet and engage with many members of the forces and the veteran community.

The challenges that members face are nothing new. It has been an issue discussed since I was a young troop. I remember as a private seeing the PMQs being torn down in Toronto. Now there is nothing for Toronto. Toronto isn't alone in that regard.

In other cities where soldiers are often posted, housing is either privatized, such as in Vancouver, or insufficient, such as in Ottawa, which only has 145 units. To rub salt in the wound, earlier this year the government eliminated the PLD allowance that was meant to help members living in high cost of living areas. This was done in the guise of a pay raise, which didn't cover the loss of PLD, leaving many members losing income with an interim benefit still in the works.

This is a significant part of the recruiting and retention problem that the CAF faces.

Debbie Lowther, the CEO of Veterans Emergency Transition Services testified to the veterans affairs committee on October 31 this year that her organization has assisted and continues to assist serving members who are living in their cars due to the cost of living in their posting location. I encourage the committee to include her testimony in your study and invite her to testify in person.

With so many housing needs in larger metropolitan areas, I would ask the committee to study the possibility of repurposing federally owned office buildings in urban centres, which are no longer in use due to working from home, to use as apartment-style PMQs and barracks for military housing.

The situation isn't much better on bases either. Wait-lists for PMQs can be longer than the posting for some members. Barracks aren't always available or an option if the member has a family. Living off base in the current real estate and rental markets creates economic stress on the member and their family.

Members have raised the issues of corruption and apathy of the maintenance contractors. Families feel like they are nickel-and-dimed when making requests. Many of the PMQs are old and lack modern insulation, heating, wiring and are just outlived. Units are condemned or awaiting repairs or demolition while families wait.

For families, the challenges continue, with limited to zero career opportunities for spouses and limited jobs for those inclined to work part time. Education can be less than stellar depending on the posting. For those with dependants with special needs, a posting can endanger them. For health care, most of the bases don't have a full hospital. Off base, we are subject to the same lack of doctors that the whole country faces.

I also encourage the committee to include barracks in its study. Barracks are suffering from the same issues: There are not enough and many that do exist are in poor repair. There have been promises of new barracks to address the shortages on bases for more than 30 years.

Please consider not only the barracks that are full-time housing units, but also the transient barracks that are used for courses or taskings, particularly by reservists during summer training surges and operational pre-deployment phases. It is too familiar an occasion, when reservists arrive en masse to a base or training centre for months of training to be told there aren't enough rooms available. They will spend the sweltering summer or frigid winter in a tent.

What Canada needs—not even right now, but decades ago—is a surge in federally built houses and apartments on bases, such as what Canada did when soldiers returned home from the Second World War.

It doesn't need more privatization, which only exacerbates the problem. Every single time something is outsourced or privatized away from the military, the quality goes down. Only the cost goes up.

In conclusion, I would like to express the pain felt by the Canadians who comprise our armed forces. As I mentioned, this is part of the CAF's recruiting and retention problems. Many have given up. Far too many have had to choose between a healthy and stable family and their career. So many are asking why they should stay in the CAF, if this is how it is.

This is just one of many serious issues facing serving members. There is little faith among the serving and veteran communities that things will change. When we see how things are being addressed by the powers that be, many have lost faith in the system they defend.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Banks.

Ms. Hill, you have five minutes, please.

[Shannon Hill, Ph.D. candidate, Queen's University, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for the invitation to come before you today to speak about some of the research that I have been part of.

I come before the committee as a Ph.D. candidate at Queen's University and member of the Families Matter Research Group, which is led by Dr. Heidi Cramm out of Queen's University.

My doctoral research has focused on better understanding the educational experiences of adolescents living in Canadian military families as they frequently relocate and transition between schools and across education systems. I'm a civilian with no military experience; however, I grew up in a Canadian military family and have first-hand experience of what it's like to be a military-connected student. I also became a certified teacher in Ontario in 2015.

I'm here to share with you today what we currently know about how frequent relocations can impact the educational experiences of military-connected children and youth. To date, the knowledge base has been overwhelmingly informed by American research and often captures the perspectives of parents and educators.

From available research, we know that military families relocate three times more frequently than civilian families. Given the frequency of relocations that military families can experience, it has been reported in the United States that military-connected children and youth can attend up to nine schools before graduation.

Socially, relocating requires military-connected students to leave behind old peer networks and develop new friendships. This can be particularly challenging for adolescents, given the important role peer networks play in adolescent development. Since relocations do not always occur at the end of the school year, participation in extracurricular activities may also be put at risk for military-connected students. Again, depending on when a relocation occurs, tryouts or sign-ups for clubs and sports either at the school and/or community levels may have already passed, creating further social implications.

Academically, military-connected students may experience challenges such as curricular gaps and/or redundancies, particularly if they relocate across jurisdictional boundaries where differing standards and requirements exist. Given differences in standards and requirements across education systems, entry into school as well as post-secondary opportunities for military-connected students can be impacted.

For military-connected students with special needs, the challenges I've discussed can become further compounded and added to the challenges and stressors that military families face when trying to access and re-establish health care services following a relocation. Unbeknownst to most Canadians, there is no dedicated health care system that provides services to military families. As such, military families access publicly funded services and can be put on a waiting list for two to three years. However, military families may have to relocate to a new location before gaining access to services, thus starting this process all over again.

With differences that exist across special education systems, such as eligibility requirements, services offered and delivery methods, relocations and school transitions for military-connected students who require access to special education services can become increasingly complex and challenging for military families to navigate, particularly if they relocate to isolated or rural locations, where the availability and accessibility of specialized services can be limited.

It's important to note that despite available research focusing overwhelmingly on challenges faced by military families during times of relocation, positives associated with relocating have also been cited within the research, such as having the opportunity to start anew, travel and meet new people.

In the 2013 ombudsman report “On the Homefront”, it was identified that child and youth education is consistently identified as one of the dominant reasons for release from the Canadian Armed Forces. Despite this, there has continued to be a lack of Canadian research conducted on the educational experiences of military-connected children and youth. In fact, I am one of only a few individuals within Canada who is conducting research on this topic and trying to raise awareness of a unique population whose needs and experiences are not well understood.

At this critical point in time, where there is emphasis being placed within Canadian defence policy to support military families and reduce the implications of their high mobility, it is critical, moving forward, to increase Canadian research capacity to ensure that future strategic decisions to support the educational experiences of military-connected students are informed by Canadian evidence rather than international evidence, where key contextual differences can exist.

Thank you again for this opportunity. I look forward to our discussion today.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Hill.

Our final presenter is Alyssa Truong, please, for five minutes.

[Alyssa Truong, As an Individual]

Good afternoon. Thank you for having me today. Being here is an honour and a privilege.

I am a military spouse; however, beyond that, I strive to advocate and assist fellow military spouses and members of the defence community in advocacy, policy awareness and assistance.

I appreciate that today's discussion surrounds the housing crisis that's currently happening and precisely how that is affecting the CAF community. I have had the unique opportunity to hear many of the stories and struggles that CAF families experience regarding housing. I hope I can highlight some of those factors today. You will notice much of the information I'm going to provide surrounds the RHUs, and I trust that some of the other individuals can share some of the other factors.

First, the need for RHUs on many bases, and predominantly those that are situated in higher-cost locations, creates extreme stress for many families. Given the unique nature of military life, a family's financial climate can look different from post to post. For example, some provinces have additional requirements for job portability for regulated professionals such as nurses, counsellors, ECEs, or social workers. A spouse may be able to work efficiently in one region, but not in the other, thus affecting the type of home a family may need to acquire. Specific to those families requesting RHUs with children or dependants with medical needs, medical care may be delayed until a legal address is acquired by the family and can have medical implications for the family and individuals seeking ongoing medical care.

In addition, some RHUs have mould or poor ventilation, which can contribute to aggravating one's health conditions or create health challenges for families. For some bases there is greater compassion for medical needs, and in others, based on the experience of other CAF families, they've come up against roadblocks or barriers. When a family is placed on the RHU list, they are placed on a first-come, first-served basis. This does not take into account one's personal family situation. While some families do not have medical needs or require accommodations, many do. Many families have expressed that CFHA does not take into account the family's medical needs or personal situation, or places barriers to care, which can result in additional stressors or emotional fatigue for the family.

In some situations, the families coming in from an OUTCAN have a hard date by which they are required to depart the originating country. Without housing, a family would be placed in a very difficult and stressful situation.

Another factor that affects the CAF community is that the military member actually owns the RHU. In situations of intimate partner violence, this creates an inequitable, and I would cautiously say, human rights issue. It is often the policy of CFHA to suggest to the victims of intimate partner violence that they remove themselves and live in a shelter or seek other accommodations.

Given the geographic moves that come with CAF life, this creates a problematic situation as a spouse may not have the financial means to relocate immediately, or if children are involved, the ability to seek housing on the economy. The public knowledge of this policy creates a potentially unsafe environment as spouses are often cautious to leave an abusive situation because the member owns the RHU, perpetuating the cycle of abuse.

We've often heard the tag line that living on base is a privilege, not a right. While I sincerely acknowledge the privilege of living on a military base at a reduced rate, I would gently suggest that housing is one of the most significant stressors for military families. Families may have short posts, children with special needs or other complexities, that prohibit them from living off base at a higher economic cost. Currently housing is neither equitable or accessible, and more accessibility would decrease the stressors for both CAF families and their members.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

We'll commence with our six-minute round.

Mr. Bezan for six minutes please.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I want to thank everyone for coming and testifying at committee today. This is an important study. As Sergeant Banks talked about, this is part of the retention issue that we are dealing with in that a lot of people in the military find themselves undervalued. Last week government officials were here. They talked about $40 million a year going in and they built a grand 38 homes in the last two years. They originally identified that they were going to build 1,300 homes over 10 years, and that was five years ago. They only built a total of 137 homes in that five-year period.

We know that there's a wait-list of over 40,000 people wanting to have military housing. We know that according to the minister's testimony there's a need for and a shortfall of another 7,000 homes. We had the Canadian Forces Housing Agency here, and when I said that 19% of the homes that are currently in stock are in poor condition, they said, no, they're just below average.

Would you describe these as below-average homes and compared to what, or are they just in poor condition and we shouldn't be putting our troops in them?

[Christopher Banks]

I would say that it's probably all of the above. It really depends on the units that you're looking at.

I was talking to a friend of mine who left the army reserve and went to the navy. He was telling me about homes that are in his community of PMQs that are unoccupied. Some are falling apart and some are mid-renovation, and there has been a series of renovators going in and not finishing the work. It's all of the above.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You made the statement that these are corrupt contractors and corrupt maintenance contractors. Are these individuals who are on the payroll of national defence or are they private citizens?

[Christopher Banks]

The contractors I'm talking about are not DND employees. They're contracted, subcontracted or, in some cases, sub-subcontracted out from whoever gets the contract for base maintenance for that particular base.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Do you call them corrupt because of their not finishing the jobs they're hired to do, or are they overcharging or not competent?

[Christopher Banks]

Again, it would be all of the above, because it is subjective to the units that we're talking about.

I don't have experience living in the PMQs myself—I would recommend asking Alyssa that question—but I do have experience as an officer in charge of the Brampton Armoury for 10 years. I dealt with those contractors. There was a lot of work done 99%, and they never showed up again. There's a lot of work done on paper, but I never once saw anyone come into the building to do that work. That kind of contract corruption is, I'm sure, what they were referring to.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Sergeant Banks and Ms. Truong, in the issues around finding appropriate housing, there is a need to go off base, because there is a lack of available or proper housing for families. Then you have to go into competition.

The Liberal government has made a lot of hoopla and photo ops with their housing accelerator fund. Can you tell us whether this has done anything to help provide housing for military families?

[Christopher Banks]

I've been out for four years. I'm going to defer to Alyssa on that one.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Okay.

[Alyssa Truong]

I'm not sure that I can adequately answer that question.

We live on base and have for two and a half years. I wasn't aware of the policy. I do know about the new PLD situation that has just switched. I can only speak from my experience. Should my family live off base, due to my husband's rank, we would only see about $150 a month.

Unfortunately, we live in the Borden area, so a three-bed, two-bathroom home would be close to $3,800, which would be significantly more than what we are paying on base. It is more of a financial inequity situation.

I'm not sure if that answers your question.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You're saying that the housing accelerator fund hasn't done anything to generate extra housing to bring down the cost of living to address the needs that military families have, and you're not aware of any members who have been able to access any of that so-called housing that the government says they're building.

[Alyssa Truong]

I cannot speak to that, unfortunately.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I receive letters from current serving members. I know of one family that was based in Manitoba at CFB Shilo, and they were transferred to Halifax. They sold their home, put a bid on a home in Halifax and still couldn't afford to buy the house. They had a combined income of over $125,000 a year, and they're living in a tent in Halifax. That's the way our current serving members are being treated.

How do we fix this?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have 10 seconds to answer that question.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Anyone...?

[Christopher Banks]

I put the recommendation in my opening statement that what we need is the same war surge in housing that we saw after the end of the Second World War.

I think that's probably it.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Lambropoulos, you have six minutes.