Okay, I'll just go right into why Gabriel Housing Corporation needs some assistance in trying to provide housing to aboriginal Canadians.
Our operating agreements and ongoing subsidies are expiring. We need the federal government to look at them and to renew them.
A novel idea would be to provide housing corporations such as ours with capital grants to provide us the means to purchase new houses, and even to purchase older ones and renovate them. That would be an ongoing program that we could certainly utilize to meet the demand.
A training and education fund program would be nice, because then we could train our own people in the trades to build and renovate our own houses, which would create employment and a profit to subsidize our own operations.
We need a repair and retrofit program. We have such an aging housing stock that it costs money to repair and retrofit them, so we ask the federal government to come up with a program to assist us with that endeavour.
On devolution, we need the federal government to take back responsibility for social housing. We experience many shifts in federal and provincial government policy in support of our programs, shifts that are onerous and time-consuming for us, which take away from the efforts we could be making elsewhere.
We need the government to come back to the table. A national housing strategy, of course, would stabilize our funding and our priorities for social housing. That would definitely be helpful.
On aboriginal control, we need more direct control of housing and homelessness, especially homelessness. Almost 100% of the homeless people in Regina are aboriginal, but we have no say when it comes to assisting our aboriginal clients. There needs to be some give there in letting the experts do what they do. At Gabriel Housing, we look after aboriginal Canadians.
The end result, Mr. Chairman, is that aboriginal people will come to us before they go to other housing providers. We have the cultural awareness of what our clients are dealing with on a daily basis. We deal with their issues every day. That's why, when we look at our strategic planning, we build that into our planning, and I'm sure it works out, so we need to continue that process.
By providing the core housing needs of aboriginal Canadians, we will participate in the Canadian economy, but until the Government of Canada takes a stronger lead, we'll continue to see rising homelessness and a further reduction in the quality of life for aboriginal Canadians.
That's my presentation, Mr. Chairman.