Evidence of meeting #30 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was youth.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:25 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Unfortunately, that's time. Sorry.
Ms. Ashton, go ahead, please, for six minutes.
10:25 a.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Actually, just as a follow-up, National Chief Bellegarde is on the record as saying that the waiting list for post-secondary students is about 10,000. I appreciate the focus on the lack of funding, because really that is the main barrier as education costs go up and the 2% cap continues to be in place. That means less and less money for first nations people to be able to access post-secondary opportunities.
Speaking in terms of structural barriers that are deeply linked to poverty, one of the issues that many of my colleagues have been involved with is the call for a national housing strategy, recognizing that if people don't have a safe place to live, or a place to live period, the ability to access training, to hold down a job, and in many cases just simply survive is put at risk. I'd love to hear your views on both the urban reality and the on-reserve or rural reality. Is a national housing strategy critical? Should the federal government be involved in producing solutions around affordable housing, around housing on reserve, and is that part of alleviating poverty? Is this something you hear from the people you work with?
Perhaps we could start with you, Ms. Hare, and then Ms. Levine, and then Ms. Flanagan.
10:30 a.m.
Manager of Public Policy, Momentum
It's not an area of expertise for us to comment on.
10:30 a.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Okay. Thanks for your direct comment there.
Ms. Levine, what importance do you think housing has in terms of the connection to education, training, jobs, etc.?
10:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Aboriginal Social Enterprise Program, As an Individual
Thank you for the question. It's actually something that's near and dear to my heart.
I have been a board member of Vancouver Native Housing, which is an urban aboriginal social housing provider in Vancouver, for the last 14 years, and I can tell you that there have been points in time where I have looked at our waiting list, and I know that it has over 6,000 people. Those are typically aboriginal people coming from the reserves, coming into the urban community, and there is no housing for them.
Then I look at communities, particularly in communities with which I am most familiar in northern Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan. How do you even start? If you are living in a two-bedroom house and you have four families living in that house with 25 people, and you are sleeping on the floor, how do you even keep track of your homework? How do you do it? How do you even imagine anything different for yourself? There are health issues and it's an almost insurmountable situation. Everything really starts with a house, a safe, secure, affordable house.
One thing that's been on my radar for a long time is affordable home ownership. At Vancouver Native Housing, we're facing the expiry of some of our mortgages. We will no longer get that subsidy, so what can we do? We don't want to put our tenants, our residents, out on the street. One thing I see is the opportunity for our tenants to actually own their own units. That's something I personally have looked at over the last decade. I know that for our youth, it opens a whole new world of opportunity and possibility, but we just have not been able to unlock that funding. I think it is part of the solution.
In Vancouver right now there is a close to zero per cent vacancy rate. Can you imagine, if you're coming from a community with 95% unemployment to Vancouver and you're facing structural barriers and racism, and we can't house you at Vancouver Native Housing? It's an impossible situation, absolutely impossible, and I do believe that housing is part of the solution.
10:30 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
Again, it's not specifically in our area of expertise, but certainly in our experience there are two points. On the post-secondary funding piece, we strive to employ indigenous people to make up 10% to 15% of our instructors across the country. That is no easy feat considering how few indigenous students there are in science and technology. Those who we get we hear on a regular basis are absolutely struggling. They're in post-secondary. They have the funding, but it's so limited, and in many cases we have plugged holes for them in different creative ways.
The best single way we can get more kids going down that path is by having role models they can relate to who are in university, a college program, or employed. The can come back to the community and share those stories. It is the easiest, most straightforward solution to get more indigenous people into universities, those people on the waiting list, getting them in and supporting them properly.
From a housing perspective, we're doing major work around the housing issue when we're in communities where, as the example was given, they're overcrowding. Kids are sleeping in shifts, for example, so we actually design our programs like a summer camp in two different shifts so that kids who are sleeping can come when they're not sleeping, and then the other kids can come after. Those are the realities within which we are delivering our programs.
Part of the reason we get kids to attend is we feed them three meals during the science camp. That has a significant amount of value. It's a hook. It's the way that we get kids into our programs. Those housing issues are incredibly powerful, but the kids are still coming to the camp. They come every day. They're super eager. They are knocking on the doors asking when camp starts. They're devastated when we leave and are thrilled when we come back.
Despite the fact that they're dealing with those things, they are still very committed to experiencing and being part of these types of programs. We need some optimism, even though that doesn't excuse the problem, and we need to focus on it. It isn't preventing us from still investing in these kids. We can't wait to solve all those problems before we start to build on their potential to be contributing. They'll be lost.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Ms. Flanagan, I read a CBC article where they actually went to Nakasuk elementary school. It was about the Codemakers project. You were quoted as saying that Codemakers isn't just about creating computer programmers of the future, that it's also providing a range of skills that are useful in modern life.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Could you briefly elaborate on the Codemakers program and what it involves? How did you roll that out nationally or locally?
10:35 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
Codemakers is the national digital skills initiative that is supported by Google. Google has provided three years of funding to Actua. We are delivering coding programs across the country to youth so they get engaged and learn digital skills that they can then apply to real world problems.
One of the things that many people are talking about right now is coding.
10:35 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
They say we should all learn to code, and everybody should code.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
There are many initiatives that are going on to raise awareness about coding.
10:35 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
The important context around that is that kids need to code, but you need to understand how to apply that or what to do with that. Coding alone is not a means to an end.
The Codemakers program gets them engaged in experiences that build those skills and has them apply them so that they're actually learning how to produce technology rather than just consume the technology. That's the overall goal.
We are rolling that out through our national girls program, our indigenous program, and the programming that we're doing in remote and rural communities, so we're building the digital skills of youth who are underserved. That's a tremendous opportunity, especially in remote communities where the digital economy could signify massive new opportunities for them to be engaged without leaving their communities.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
Worlds UNBound is the program at the University of New Brunswick. That is supported by Actua.
10:35 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Actua
It's based in Fredericton, but they travel all around the province delivering programming.