Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank Mr. Giroux and his entire team for joining us today for this study. I feel that we can now ask questions related to the topic that the committee was normally slated to study.
Mr. Giroux, you know there's a huge housing crisis and it's been growing for years. By the way, so that it appears in the committee's report, I'd like to mention that this crisis is even greater among first nations. We're having trouble meeting our targets for providing not only a sufficient number of housing units, but also good quality units that are spacious enough.
Here are some figures. Between 2015 and 2022, the proportion of first nations homes in need of major renovation fell from 20.8% to 19.7%. As for the proportion of homes in need of replacement, not only did it fail to decrease, it actually increased over the same period, from 5.6% to 6.5%. Finally, in terms of new unit and new home construction, we're only at about 20% of the volume needed to close the gap with the Canadian average.
Also, we recently learned that Indigenous Services Canada's budget for housing construction will drop from $20.7 billion in 2024‑25 to just $16.3 billion in 2025‑26.
How do you think we can meet the federal government's 2030 targets by cutting funding for indigenous housing construction in this way?