Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning to you all, and thank you for the invitation to appear before this first panel of the committee.
As some of you may know, CHRA represents the social, non-profit, and affordable housing sector in Canada.
What we are talking about in these public hearings is competitiveness. Unless everyone living in Canada, regardless of their economic status, has access to safe and affordable housing, there can be no competitiveness. People cannot be competitive if they do not have a roof over their heads. Housing is such a fundamental part of the economy and of a functional society that it cannot be overlooked in budget policy.
In November 2017, the federal government made a major stride forward in supporting housing for low-income people with the release of the national housing strategy. The strategy contains a number of measures designed to protect and expand the affordable housing sector in Canada. Although CHRA welcomed the strategy and we worked very closely with the federal government in its development, the fact is that there remained barriers and gaps both within and outside of the strategy, preventing people from accessing safe and affordable housing. I'll identify four such gaps.
First, the most glaring gap in the NHS was the lack of an indigenous housing strategy.
The NHS did commit to work with first nations, Métis, and Inuit to develop three distinctions-based housing strategies, and we expect those three strategies to be unveiled this fall. However, there has been no commitment to developing a housing strategy for the 87% of indigenous peoples living in urban, rural and northern settings. The fact is that indigenous peoples living in urban and rural centres face core housing needs and homelessness at much higher levels than the non-indigenous population.
CHRA's indigenous housing caucus has developed proposals for the content, structure and governance of an urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy. We'd be happy to share copies of that with the committee.
Second, one of the measures contained in the national housing strategy was an extension of the federal lands initiative. This program transfers surplus federal lands and properties to housing providers to encourage affordable housing development. Under the NHS, its budget was increased to $200 million over 10 years, up from $2 million per year. Although a tenfold increase is, of course, welcome, an average of just $20 million a year remains insufficient.
Furthermore, many communities in Canada, particularly smaller communities, simply don't have federal lands or buildings to be transferred. CHRA is calling on the federal lands initiative to be expanded, and for its mandate to be expanded, so as to allow the program to acquire surplus provincial, municipal or even private lands and buildings, which could then be transferred to affordable housing providers.
Third, as part of the National Housing Strategy, a new program was announced, the Federal Community Housing Initiative, which will extend rent subsidies until 2027 for housing providers whose operating agreements end before then. This is an important program, but we are concerned about how it might work. According to certain CMHC proposals, providers whose operating agreements end after 2020 will not automatically have their funding extended. They will have to apply and demonstrate that they will be self-sufficient before 2027.
Self-sufficiency will simply not be possible for all housing providers, particularly those providers who serve the most vulnerable and low-income tenants. As a result, CHRA is asking that all housing providers currently under federal operating agreements be grandfathered into the new program and that there be assurances from the federal government that there will be a continuation of federal operating subsidies to housing providers beyond the 10-year window envisioned in the housing strategy.
Lastly, the NHS contained a new program, the national co-investment fund, that will invest up to $16 billion over 10 years to renew and repair existing housing and build up to 60,000 new units of affordable housing. Again, although 60,000 new units are most welcome, over 10 years that only averages out to about 6,000 units per year. Of course, as you all know, the demand for affordable housing greatly exceeds this number.
As an example, in the city of Toronto, the wait-list for affordable housing is well over 82,000. In Montreal, it's well over 25,000.
We need new policy tools and proposals to improve the affordable housing available. There are funding and operations management models, both locally and internationally, that we can consider. We would be pleased to discuss these models with the members of the committee.
Mr. Chair, again we appreciate that the federal government is once again taking leadership in affordable housing through the national housing strategy, but even with this strategy, there remain gaps and improvements that can be made to federal policy to stimulate greater affordable housing capacity, which leads to greater competitiveness for all Canadians.
We look forward to working with you to address those gaps.
Thank you.