Thank you.
I'll start by saying that we've done our work to understand what the housing and infrastructure gap is for first nations. The infrastructure gap, including housing, is now over $400 billion. For the housing gap itself, we're looking at over $135 billion. That includes capital operations and maintenance.
We need a whole-of-government approach to address the housing crisis in first nations in addition to enabling infrastructure that would help establish the changes we need to see in housing. In terms of the Build Canada Homes work being done right now, we know Build Canada Homes should be part of the solution to address the housing crisis in first nations, and we are hoping to see changes to the legislation that was tabled in order to ensure a few things.
First, there should be distinctions-based funding and supports included in the legislation, and objectives built in to ensure that Build Canada Homes addresses the first nations housing gap. Second, there should be legislated mandated spaces for first nations to participate at senior levels in governance, including on the board. Those are two very critical things, as we see it, for housing on the Build Canada Homes front.
There are other pieces to this puzzle. There's the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's section 35 program. We haven't seen an increase in funding there since the 1990s, and that's a core piece of the Government of Canada's ecosystem for first nations housing. We've seen significant decreases in the number of units being delivered through that program over the last decade, and we're looking for commitments on that front as well.
There are a number of things we're looking for right now, on a distinctions basis, in order to address first nations housing. We're looking forward to seeing more from the government on that.