Human Resources Committee on May 16th, 2019

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

To go back to those stacks of emails that were exchanged between you and the B.C. government about the B.C. home ownership plan, there was talk there of a premium for these unconventional down payments.

[Evan Siddall]

Yes, sir.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Will you be suggesting to the government to charge a premium on any mortgage ensured by the CMHC that has a shared-equity component of the property?

[Evan Siddall]

No, because it's not borrowed money.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

You believe that it was not borrowed money.

[Evan Siddall]

It doesn't create a financial burden on the part of the homeowner, sir. That's the difference.

What we're worried about in charging that premium is that there's an increased risk because of the burden of leverage or indebtedness, and the shared-equity mortgage program was designed, of course, not to be that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Could I ask you one last question? It's on the administrative component of it.

You're saying there is no additional risk to the homeowner component, but that there is additional risk to the taxpayer, because the taxpayer is footing, through a Crown borrowing program, these equity stakes that will be going out. Would that not, then, engender a premium to be charged just in case? Are you saying there's absolutely zero risk to the taxpayer as well? Or is it just to the homeowner that there's zero risk?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Make it a brief answer, please.

[Evan Siddall]

Zero risk is a thing that I want to be careful not to endorse.

In answer to your question, sir, there will be no additional premium charged to the homeowner. That's correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Up next is MP Ruimy, please, for six minutes.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you all for still being here.

There are a lot of interesting conversations going on, but I want to come back to and follow up on comments made by my colleague Gordie Hogg on homelessness.

We know this is a subject that has blown up, so to speak. We see it everywhere, in a lot of small cities and in a lot of big cities in this country. We are almost at a breaking point.

In my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, there's actually a standoff happening between the province and the municipality, for lots of different reasons. It's unfortunate, because both sides want to see progress being made. The question is how that progress is being made. What are the challenges they face, and how can they move forward with this? It's an almost impossible situation to be in.

There's a program called Reaching Home. That's where I want to come from, because when people talk to me about homelessness.... You have to break it up into silos. You have people who have addiction issues, and they're deeply entrenched. You have seniors who just can't afford to pay any more; they're stuck and they don't have a home. You have single-parent families that just aren't making enough money. You have youth who are couch surfing; they are totally left behind and they have no place anymore.

One of the things I always say is that those are separate issues. What I want to tackle, if we really want to prevent homelessness, is this: How do we catch the young people so they don't fill the pipeline of future homeless people?

I think the Reaching Home program is speaking to that. Can you help me out, Mr. Flack?

[Graham Flack]

You're right about unbundling the elements of homelessness. One of the big elements of the government's plan, as members are aware, is actually Evan's very ambitious plan of access to a home for everyone. The homelessness piece.... As you make the possibility of homes more affordable for people, you can move people into that market. As you say, if seniors have enough income, they are able to rent and not rely on this.

You specifically focused on youth and not creating a new pipeline for that. I would unbundle that problem by saying that it isn't simply a homelessness problem. If we have those youth successfully transitioning to school, so that they have a source of income when they come out of that, then they have the means to avoid homelessness.

That's an example of one of the things that members are voting on in the mains—the Pathways to Education program. It's an exceptional program in many communities in Canada that has had tremendous results in moving people who are at risk in the high school area into education pathways that, as you say, cause them not to join that cycle; otherwise, they may be homeless because their parents were in a precarious economic position.

I think the real hallmark of the Reaching Home strategy is this bottom-up community approach to determining how best to do that. There are different approaches that may work in different communities, in terms of how to avoid homelessness and what to do. Rather than there being, in the federal strategy, rules we're imposing on how to do that, the communities are developing their own approaches to that.

For example, in indigenous communities that are more remote, the answers to how to address homelessness in that youth component could be quite different from those in a larger city.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

If the mayor of my city is faced with a very divisive issue that has been going on for the last three and a half years, what resources could that person access? There are the housing strategy, temporary modular housing and all those things, but they don't speak to a large portion of it.

How do we help municipalities get over the hump they're facing?

[Benoît Robidoux]

That program is community-based. This is one of the rare programs at the department that is community-based. It's not with the provincial government and it's not directly to people but to communities. This is a first. The way it's designed is that we provide incentives for everybody to sit together as a community and figure out together the right thing to do. I have to say too that the government would have doubled by next year the funding for most of the regions.

Again, this provides for more to be done. With regard to the health component, we know that in the past, with the old program, prevention was not really prioritized the same way. The community could decide that prevention would be one big part of their plan. The national housing strategy has a big component for affordable housing that will feed into trying to find homes for homeless people. That's part of the investment that will complement the homelessness strategy.

I could go on and on about the training side in regard to the other programs we have that are supporting this community—in the case of youth, for example, finding them a job and a house, putting them on a stable path and maybe providing them with some health support too if they have drug additions or other issues. There are lots of programs. Again, as we were saying before, provinces put a lot of resources into that. The idea is to create some complementary things and to move forward, but with the community.

The answer is really within the community. As the DM mentioned before, I believe, the coordinated intake that we're trying to implement with the community, where they know where these people are so that they're not being treated many times at different places but in kind of a coordinated way, will help a lot in terms of having more success and delivering better outcomes for these people.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Do we have any results as of yet, or is it too soon?

[Benoît Robidoux]

It was launched in March, so it's a bit early for the results. We'll have them at some point.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Next is MP Benson, please, for six minutes.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

With regard to both the internal evaluation by your department and the community consultations, I might get in trouble for this, but when communities asked for an ability to have some flexibility on their end to deal with it, I don't believe that equated to ending the criteria to use Housing First as an approach. That's an evidence-based approach to ending homelessness, one of the only ones in the world. I think it was a huge mistake for you to back off from that.

Now, I realize that the federal government provides only a very small amount in the whole scheme of things, but that's the point. What happened in most communities, what happened in my community, was that there wasn't enough to do Housing First because there wasn't enough from the provincial government for the supports. Communities were struggling. They had to choose. It was either-or. I'm trying to say that it has to be both. I'm not blaming anybody for saying get rid of the criteria because it really hampered their community. Those folks are on the front line, and those people are standing in front of them. I acknowledge that. I just think that's very unfortunate.

I had a conversation this morning about a program started under a previous government. I don't really care whether it was Conservative or Liberal. To be able to actually respect community development, there needs to be some consistency when people are interacting with the federal government. I think it was a huge mistake to take that away, as some communities were just starting to realize.

Some of the pieces that you've kept in Reaching Home, the coordinated assessment and all those things, grew out of communities starting to look at the solution to homelessness as easy: It's a home, a safe and affordable place to call home. Whether you're addicted, whether you can't go to school, you need a place to live. The fact that students in my riding live in cars and still go to school—I mean, they deserve a medal, but they shouldn't be having to go to school that way. They hang in there.

When it comes to social programs, I find that the federal government doesn't give community groups the same respect they give business. You had people at the table, you did your own internal evaluation, and none that said to remove this great piece of work, an intervention that actually has been proven to make a difference. I don't know if you want to comment. Obviously, you can tell where I'm coming from. I don't like people who say that Housing First is a program. It is not a program. It has principles and values that allow a community to get somewhere. I guess I'm imploring you to reconsider or to do all you can to encourage those communities who have.... Like, the Medicine Hats will continue on with Housing First, because that changed that community.

However, I would like to see the federal government again championing that evidence-based research intervention. That's the next piece of work that we needed to do, and now we can't. How does it work for women fleeing violence? How does it work for young people? We know that young people are homeless for very different reasons. They would have liked to stay at home. They've left home because it's dangerous, because they've been assaulted or because there was violence. I know groups are coming forward now to say they'd like to look at those other aspects.

I'll give you a chance to comment on my.... I don't know what you'd call it. It's not a rant; it is really a plea. Speaking as someone who was part of that transition in her community—I'm speaking that way, not as a parliamentarian—it made a big difference. We needed to keep going, and now I can't.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Be very brief, please.

[Graham Flack]

We appreciate the comments. I just want to be clear. Communities can and, as you indicated, still are using housing first as an approach. The change in the program, though, was to allow communities to take the decision on which approach to use. It also doubled the funding.

I just wanted to highlight that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

MP Long, for a very brief round, maybe just under three minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to everybody for coming in.

I lived this one first-hand. My mom is a senior citizen, obviously. She's in her early eighties, and she does some odd jobs here and there; she still works a bit. All I've heard, really, over the past four years is, “Well, you know, I can't work too much because they're going to take my GIS away, and they're going to do this. Come on, you must be able to change that limit,” and things like that. I'm happy to say that through budget 2019 there were some changes: full or partial exemption up to $15,000, and full exemption on up to $5,000 annual employment from the current $3,500.

Can somebody comment on those changes and what they'll mean to seniors, and give us the impact of those changes? Thank you.

[Graham Flack]

I'll pass it over to Benoit to explain the change, but let me just start by saying that, as public servants, of course we are here to serve members, but when we can serve their mothers as well that is a particularly gratifying thing to hear.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!