Human Resources Committee on Feb. 14th, 2017

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I still have a quick question. What would a new urban housing strategy for Inuit communities entail? What would you like to see proposed as it's being drawn up? Do you think it is at all possible for federal health to be provided without going through the provinces and territories?

[Aluki Kotierk]

I think the key to that would be long-term stable funding. As you know, in Inuit Nunangat, there's overcrowding and a shortage of housing all the time, but we're always in a position where we have to make a case as to why we need additional funding for housing, when, as was recently confirmed, our population is one of the fastest growing.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

It's very interesting to see the help you'll be getting from this young group, the young generation. They are from all over Nunavut, and we'll see in the very near future them working with you on getting things solved.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

For the next round of questions, we'll go to MP Boutin-Sweet.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will ask my questions in French.

CHRA and FRAPRU are both talking about housing strategies based on human rights and the right to housing. As you know, I am very supportive of that because I introduced a bill in the House of Commons that specifically calls for the right to housing to be included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. My colleague Ms. Rachel Blaney also presented one on the subject.

I would like to move on to the issue of housing for aboriginal people, since Inuit representation has increased considerably in the room this morning.

CHRA mentioned specific strategies for aboriginal people. It even talked about

unique housing trust.

According to Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, the shortage on reserves and in villages will reach 115,000 units by 2031. Forty-one percent of households live in homes requiring major repairs, and 51% of units have mould. I saw it myself when I visited Nunavik.

FRAPRU's brief speaks of poor housing conditions, saying that this constitutes a blockage that prevents access to other human rights.

I would like to know what FRAPRU and CHRA mean when they talk about blocked access to other human rights and

unique housing trust.

I will ask you to answer first.

I will then ask the two women from Nunavut to give us their points of view.

We rarely ask for your point of view on that.

[Stéphan Corriveau]

With respect to an aboriginal and indigenous strategy for the right to housing, in this area as in others, aboriginal people must have both hands on the wheel, as someone said. We think it is essential to learn from the mistakes of the past, where the development of community housing, social housing and housing in general was not well-thought-out, well-designed or understood by the people in the community. We mustn't make these mistakes anymore. The people of the communities themselves must control the process.

Faced with this situation, the federal government obviously has a fiduciary responsibility, which has been confirmed several times by the courts. For us, that means that a significant portion of the population across Canada has needs, but nowhere are those needs as strong as they are in the aboriginal population. Part of the problem is that indigenous people weren't the ones controlling the mechanisms.

There has to be a separate strategy because there is a distinct situation in terms of national rights, and statistics show that. We have a two-tier regime, and it is important that aboriginal communities, including Inuit communities, have the means to catch up and get what the general population had before.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

I would now like to hear from the witnesses.

Ms. Joly, could you answer my question?

[Emilie E. Joly]

Yes, of course.

Certainly, we are in favour of CHRA's approach to this. For us, it is essential that communities be at the heart of housing development. We need to make sure that housing really meets the needs of those people. In communities recognized as reserves under the Indian Act, housing is ill-suited to reality, which, as in the case of Nunavut, or Nunavik, Quebec, is a northern reality.

In our view, the investment in housing in the provinces must be managed locally and respond to needs in collaboration with local communities. For us, it's inevitable.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Ms. Joly, what about blocking access to other programs?

[Emilie E. Joly]

Yes, that's exactly what I was getting at. In aboriginal communities, in particular, but across Canada as well, we are seeing that if the right to housing isn't recognized, especially if there is no respect for that right, access is blocked to resources to meet other needs, particularly for low-income or middle-income families. We talked about energy poverty, but when you're homeless, what can you really heat?

We have a responsibility toward Canadians. The government must ensure that these rights are respected. For us, housing is really the cornerstone of the potential poverty reduction strategy. Indeed, without housing that is affordable, good quality and in good condition, meeting other needs is unthinkable, especially when it comes to food.

As I said earlier, 1 in 10 renters in Canada spend 80% of their income on housing. We can only imagine what these people have left over to clothe and feed themselves, and meet their other needs.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you very much.

A few seconds remain if the other two women would like to answer the question.

[Aluki Kotierk]

If I understood the question properly, in terms of Nunavut housing, Kiah has already talked about the overcrowded housing situation that we have. I think it impacts people's abilities for education when they don't have any place to do their homework, and there are so many people that they have to take turns sleeping.

On another level, it impacts people's health. As you may be aware, in Nunavut, among Inuit, TB is still rampant, and when we're in overcrowded situations, it does not help.

In terms of the setup of the house, it is important to include Inuit knowledge and Inuit ways of being with regard to how the house is set up. Many of us like to have an open space where we can eat our country food on the floor, so the house needs to be designed in such a way that it respects Inuit culture. It would be helpful, for instance, if there were areas where we could clean skins and prepare them for use, and some of the designs are not thinking of how Inuit would use the house.

One of the greatest challenges we also have is in terms of supports for owning a home, given that we have such a high rate of poverty and that we don't have banking services in many of our communities. There is no credit that Inuit maintain, in terms of credit scores, so trying to purchase a house, even if there were a house available for sale.... There are so many barriers to home ownership.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. I'm afraid that's the end of the time.

We now move over to MP Wayne Long, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our guests, and welcome to the students this afternoon.

My riding is the city of Saint John—Rothesay and we do lead the country, as a city, in child poverty, but I have to say that, listening to your presentations, we pale in comparison to the challenges you face.

If the committee is okay with it, I would like to share some of my time to ask some questions today with MP Tootoo.

Is everybody okay with that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you, Mr. Long, and Mr. Chair and committee members, for giving me this opportunity.

I think you can guess I'm going to focus specifically on Nunavut, as we have Aluki here.

Mr. Robillard asked about the housing situation. When I was housing minister in Nunavut, probably about five years ago, we needed about 3,300 units just to meet our current demand. That was growing with a forced growth that I think is now between 75 and 90 units a year. That's over a billion dollars just to meet our current demand right now, and that was a number of years ago.

On top of that you have the other issue that was mentioned, the declining funding from CMHC on the social housing agreement. That's putting an extra burden on the jurisdictions to be able to maintain the units.

My question for Aluki is this. You mentioned long-term, stable funding. I know that's something that the Government of Nunavut has always been pushing for, to allow for better planning and expenditure of those resources, and not just with housing. Do you see the lack of what you called “social infrastructure” in the communities as partly the result of a flawed funding model, not only for Nunavut but for NWT as well?

Basically, the funding over the years has been allotted on a per capita basis. You have a jurisdiction with the highest cost of any kind of living, a small population, and one-fifth of the land mass of Canada. Do you see the inadequacy of historical funding as contributing to the lack of social infrastructure and making it difficult for Inuit people to get out of the poverty that we're stricken with?

[Aluki Kotierk]

Qujannamiik. Thank you for that question.

This touches upon something that I've talked about quite frequently, that in Canada it's coast to coast to coast. It's not just coast to coast. I know that in building Canada, through the nation-building exercise, there was a lot of infrastructure investment from the east to the west. This is an opportune time to say that there needs to be that kind of investment in the Arctic, in Inuit Nunangat.

An Arctic infrastructure strategy would be ideal, rather than one-offs where we get a pool today and focus on a treatment centre tomorrow. There should be some kind of thought on how we're building Canada, given that so many of us Canadians like to say that we're a northern country. It's important that Canada make investments in its north, not in an ad hoc way but thinking about the infrastructure needs that we have, whether it be electricity generators or the infrastructure we have at the community level, which includes housing.

There's an endless supply of needs in our territory and across Inuit Nunangat, so I think it needs to be part of that broader vision of what Canada is, particularly when we're going into Canada 150.

[Hunter Tootoo, Independent, Nunavut, NU]

Another thing I want to touch on that has been mentioned a few times here is the nutrition north program. I was at the indigenous affairs standing committee and there was a consensus that the program was like the analogy of the chicken and the egg. Everyone knew that egg was going to be scrambled before the program even started. That's how wonderful it is.

Do you feel the program should be just for nutritious food, or should it be adjusting and giving people the opportunity to be in line with the rest of Canada for basic needs. I mean things that you buy that you need every day, like toilet paper, diapers, toothpaste, different things like that? The program used to cover some of that stuff, and now that they've changed it just to cover nutritious food, it's more of a step backwards. The subsidy that there used to be for some of the basic things that you use every day has disappeared, and the price of that stuff has gone up.

Do you think that the program should focus on just the basic needs that everyone has on a daily basis, or should it be expanded?

[Aluki Kotierk]

Absolutely, I think it should be focused on basic needs. It even begs the question, whose nutritious food? Whose idea of nutritious food is it based on? Many of us, for instance, will eat caribou, fish, or walrus, and we supplement it with palauga, bannock made with white flour. It is absurd for the federal government to tell me that white flour is not nutritious, because I'm adding it to my nutritious food.

On a side note not necessarily related to nutrition north, I think there needs to be investment in harvesters, and the cost of small equipment that harvesters require to be able to get their own nutritious and healthy foods to put on their own tables.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Tootoo, for bringing that experience to the table.

Now we are over to MP Dhillon for the next six minutes.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

I'm going to be splitting my time with MP Ruimy.

My question is for the FRAPRU representative.

Earlier, you talked about federal and provincial jurisdictions. Do you think the federal strategy should specify where the money must be used, even if the matter is provincial?

[Émilie E. Joly]

Respecting jurisdictions is important to us. Having said that, I think we have to get to a point where the federal government, and the provincial and territorial governments are really working together to improve their planning. We often see that investments are made for cycles that do not always match, and that planning is not necessarily linked up either. With respect for provincial, territorial and federal jurisdiction, we are convinced that it is possible for governments to better align their planning.

Furthermore, I think the federal government has some opportunities right now. It can include investments that will go through provincial and territorial programs, but will be dedicated to long-term planning.

The importance of social infrastructure development was mentioned earlier as part of the national housing strategy. In our view, when you use the term “social infrastructure”, it means that you have to think of infrastructure and, therefore, of construction. If each province and territory hasn't already done so—and most of them have—they should establish construction and renovation programs of social housing and affordable housing. These programs will allow for the implementation of federal investments, but the federal government must distribute these funds to the right places. Therefore, long-term infrastructure planning is needed to build new social housing, for instance. We think the programs are there, and the federal, provincial and territorial governments need to work together to have not only short-term programs, but also longer-term planning.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Do you think that funds should be distributed to particular groups, such as vulnerable groups? I'm thinking of seniors and women in particular. I think women submit a lot of the applications for social housing. There are also refugees.

[Émilie E. Joly]

My colleague talked earlier about families. I think the Government of Quebec, among others, and the Government of Canada have made a lot of effort to improve the situation of families in recent years, and it has worked well.

In reality, single people often live in very precarious situations. That's often the case for single women, especially older women, for instance. There are many needs, but you can't just have directed policies. Of course, we have to work to get more seniors out of poverty, but we can't tell people they need to wait until they are 65 before we can help them out of poverty. We need programs that focus on early childhood, families and single people, and then we can respond to particular situations.

Minister Morneau's last budget contained interesting investments, for example for women who are victims of spousal violence and need quick access to emergency housing. However, we believe that a poverty reduction strategy must have a comprehensive vision that meets all needs. We are convinced that Canada has the means to respond to all needs. I don't think that pitting needs against each other is a good strategy.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you.

I'll now turn things over to my colleague.