We share responsibility for housing on reserve with our colleagues at INAC. Currently we spend about $282 million—I'm just referring to my notes—to house first nations on reserve annually. Budget 2016 added an additional $554 million over two years, of which $138 million was directed to CMHC for renovation and retrofit programs. That was the bringing back of a program that was introduced some years ago.
That's the purview of our activity. CMHC's participation tends to be more market-oriented than that of INAC, which tends to be more deep support, but we share that responsibility with them.
I have visited a number of first nations communities—not 41. Every time I travel I try to do that, because it's a core part of our responsibility. People were surprised when I referred publicly to the status of housing on reserve as “abysmal”. That shouldn't be a controversial statement for a civil servant to make, and we definitely share your concern.
Part of the problem, of course, is a local political problem. There is a correlation between those communities that collect and enforce rent, and will actually evict people—and support people so that they can pay the rent—and the housing outcomes we observed in those communities versus others where that is not as enforced and there's less political courage, I would say, with respect to rent collection.