Human Resources Committee on Feb. 16th, 2017

[Robin Miiller]

Right, and I think that one of the things we have recognized as we've evolved from strictly a housing organization into one that collaborates with necessary services to serve the people whom we're housing—so less focus on the housing, more focus on the people—is that unless we start doing that, we are not addressing the real issues around poverty.

As we said, ending poverty is homelessness prevention. That's one of the things that we've shifted to. We have achieved an end to homelessness as we define it, and built a system that responds rapidly to people who become homeless. Now we need to shift to a prevention focus. We need to make sure that we maintain that model and look upstream, as Wayne mentioned earlier, to keep people from entering into this whole realm to begin with. To me, that is what the strategy should be.

We have lots of investment in real estate strategies and lots of investment in other very siloed approaches to supporting people with social issues, but it is not an integrated approach. From my perspective, as I listen to the quarterback story, I think about how we have evolved in Medicine Hat.

There are lots of communities that tried to vie for that position in the community, but wait until the hard work starts. When the hard work starts, people start to say, “Oh, that's your job. We don't need to be doing that.” There are hard decisions to be made about de-funding programs that aren't doing well. People don't want to be as involved when it gets to that stage of the evolution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much. We're right up against the break. That hour and a half went by really quickly.

I have a quick clarification question for Jaime.

You mentioned that seniors were getting an “H” benefit. I just want to make sure I heard that correctly.

[Jaime Rogers]

The acronym is AISH, A-I-S-H.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Okay. Is that provincial?

[Jaime Rogers]

It's provincial. It stands for Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

Go ahead, Ms. Vecchio.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

You've spoken about some awesome things, and I just asked Glen about that as well. Is there a way that we could get some research or some of the data that you have, showing that change between 64 and 65, so that we can look at that as a whole? Would you be able to send that to the committee, please?

[Jaime Rogers]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank all of you for coming here early this morning and dealing with a bit of a drowsy group. We had a lot of good questions and I sincerely thank you for the work you are doing on the ground to put this issue in the forefront for this community. There is a reason we are here, and quite sincerely, it's folks like you.

We are going to break for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for being here.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, June 13, 2016, the committee is resuming its study of poverty reduction strategies, focusing today specifically on housing and neighbourhoods here in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

I'm very pleased to welcome a very full panel here. From the City of Medicine Hat, we have Celina Symmonds, city councillor, and I believe Mayor Ted Clugston is here as well. From Immigrant Access Fund Canada, we have Vanessa Desa, vice-chair of the board of directors, and Dianne Fehr, the executive director.

From Medicine Hat College, we have, from the executive office, Denise Henning, president and chief executive officer, and Kristen Desjarlais-deKlerk, instructor of sociology, in the division of arts, education and business. From the Miywasin Friendship Centre, we have Jeannette Hansen, executive director.

Welcome, everybody. We have a full slate and we'll get right to it. I know everybody has opening remarks. We'll try to keep them as close to seven minutes as possible. We're going to start with Celina.

The next seven minutes are yours.

[Ted Clugston, Mayor, City of Medicine Hat]

We'll be sharing the time.

Welcome to Medicine Hat, Canada's sunniest city, and we aren't letting you down today. I'd like to thank our MP, Mr. Glen Motz, for inviting me here today, and I thank this committee as well.

I am Ted Clugston, the mayor of Medicine Hat, and this is councillor Celina Symmonds. She is a city councillor as well as the executive director of our Medicine Hat and District Food Bank.

I would really like to welcome you to Medicine Hat, the city known around the world for successfully achieving an end to chronic homelessness.

When I first became mayor, I never even campaigned on homelessness. I never even said the word “homelessness”, but quickly my term became about ending homelessness, and I found out that this topic of ending homelessness was universal. There was an aching need to do something about this, not just locally or nationally but around the world. I became basically the talking head or the torchbearer for the first city to end homelessness.

After we declared that we would possibly end homelessness, and then when we did, I started hearing from politicians all over the world, including Canada, and then from the media. I have lost track, but I think I've done about 175 different interviews around the world on Skype and for print media. The New York Times was here yesterday just to do an interview on homelessness. There is an interest, and people want to do something about this.

We've tackled this complex issue, and I know there were some great people in this community who believed it could be done, and they were at the right place at the right time.

[Celina Symmonds, City Councillor, City of Medicine Hat]

We also know that there were aspects that were absolutely critical to the success of the plan. We know it required significant systems planning and mapping, a centralized point of intake, timing within the community for it to be able to create and maintain its own plans, and of course the collective impact approach to funding and service delivery.

Systems planning and a collective impact approach allow funding to be funnelled to those organizations that are in the best positions to create meaningful change. By building capacity within agencies that are already doing good work, we also see funding being able to be rerouted once the capacity is built.

For example, with our “housing first” programming, we actually saw agencies that came to the table and gave money back. Instead of not-for-profits saying, “Oh my gosh, we have money left. What are we going to do with it?”, they came back to the table and gave it back to the collective. I think that really speaks to that approach.

Of course system navigation and intensive case management were critically important parts of our plan to end homelessness, and they are very important in the plan to end poverty.

[Ted Clugston]

The City of Medicine Hat, this council and past councils, has always placed a high value on ensuring that people have equal opportunity to access city facilities. We have created partnerships with not-for-profits and social clubs to allow for free skating or swimming, or scheduled free bus rides to our local park, our man-made lake. We are actually in the process of working on a fair entry policy that would allow families with low incomes to access our recreational facilities and our transit at a lower cost.

The city also partners with the housing society, and we provide free land to build affordable housing units in the community. We have a community worker program funded by the City of Medicine Hat that is embedded within the school system. These workers act as a conduit and as a one-stop shop to help families to navigate systems within the community.

Our city council also recently unanimously approved a motion to support, in principle, our poverty reduction leadership team, and funded the creation of a report, a community call to action. We had that launched yesterday.

We also own our own utilities and are able to boast some of the lowest utility rates in the country, and the lowest in the province. However, moving forward, this will be a major challenge, as we have a carbon tax that we have to collect on behalf of the other levels of government and it will be passed on to our ratepayers.

Our community also has a robust program that we call a “HAT smart” program. It's a renewable energy conservation program. If you drive around the city, you'll see solar panels on the roofs of most of the businesses and the houses. That was a partnership between the City of Medicine Hat and the residents. We had a huge buy-in, $4.4 million, with rebates on a per capita basis. It's unheard of across this country. We are very proud of our leadership in this area.

[Celina Symmonds]

In order to end poverty in our communities, all levels of government need to do their part. We know that we are part of the solution and we want to work together.

We would like to leave you with what we feel is important for you to consider while creating your plan.

Number one would be autonomy within communities. We must be able to create our own plans and be able to maintain them within the community. We know that community experts are out there, and we want to utilize those people and those resources and take any funding that comes forward and be able to have autonomy within our plan.

[Ted Clugston]

We need a national housing strategy, that which includes new affordable housing projects as well as innovation around utilizing current housing stock and subsidizing private landlords, with consideration of working with municipalities and private developers to include affordable housing in new builds of apartment complexes and subdivisions. This strategy should be based around a housing first approach, which has worked here in Medicine Hat, and would include assistance planning and centralized intake.

[Celina Symmonds]

I know we talked about the fact that poverty is not just about income, but part of it is about income, so I believe it would be important to set policy around income support and basic minimum income to ensure that the basic needs of families are met.

In our community, we have government income programs designed to meet basic needs that are currently case planning for families to access the food bank, a community-funded organization.

[Ted Clugston]

As well, we need low-cost transportation. This is absolutely key for mid-size communities, to ensure that people have access to adequate transportation at a reasonable cost to both individuals and mid-size municipalities.

[Celina Symmonds]

You've heard from all of the experts. I would like to now tell you that I'm also a mom, and I'd like to share a story about that.

As a mom of four children, I was blessed enough to adopt three of them from the foster care system. They are natural siblings and have given me the most intense training in why it is that poverty is not only a generational problem for families, but why it's also important that we take a significant action now so that no child in our country has to live in poverty.

The first night I met my oldest daughter, she was eight years old. She had left a home with a mom who abused drugs and alcohol, and the entire family was entrenched in a world of poverty. On that very first night that she stayed in my home, I remember asking that eight-year-old little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, “I think I'll just stay home and get a cheque like my mom.” She had no idea how that one statement would essentially guide my lifelong passion to end the cycle of poverty.

Today Savannah is in her last semester to become a teacher. She has truly broken the cycle of poverty that she felt she was destined for at the age of eight years old.

I tell you this story not to brag about my child—well, maybe a little—but to demonstrate two things. First, poverty is generational and ingrained in a child's brain at a very young age, and second, with a planned intervention and sustainable work to reduce and eliminate poverty, that brain can change. We can end poverty and give everyone the opportunity not just to survive but to thrive.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We are going to Vanessa from Immigrant Access Fund Canada.

The next seven minutes are yours.

[Vanessa Desa, Vice-Chair, Board of Directors, Immigrant Access Fund Canada]

Thank you so much.

I know that this is supposed to be about homelessness, but in this opportunity for us we're going to be speaking on education, training, and employment strategies to reduce poverty in Canada. I'd like to begin with a story of poverty, survival, resilience, and transformation.

Abdul Ali came to Canada full of dreams for a brighter and safer future for him and his family. He believed that his master's degree in accounting, flawless English, and years of experience in senior management positions at a multinational oil company would serve him well. After sending out hundreds of job applications without success and using his savings to settle his family, Abdul did what so many immigrants to Canada are forced to do. He took a minimum-wage survival job as a clerk at a convenience store to put food on the table for his family of four.

Abdul's story is a common one. Despite the fact that Canada actively recruits skilled immigrants for the contributions that they and their families can make to our economy and our future, we have not created the conditions that allow them to thrive. Despite their higher levels of education, on average, they face higher unemployment rates and lower wages than Canadian-born workers and are disproportionately represented in Canadian poverty statistics.

I want to give you just a few of those statistics from the 2006 census data. First, 22% of racialized and immigrant persons live in poverty compared with 9% of non-racialized persons. In the large metropolitan areas, the statistics are much worse. In Vancouver, 58% of all those living in poverty in Vancouver come from racialized and immigrant groups. In Toronto, they are 62% of those living in poverty. Here's one more statistic—41% of chronically poor immigrants have university degrees.

You've met them. They are the taxi drivers who drive you to airports, the clerks in grocery stores, and the cleaners and security guards in office towers across the country.

This is preventable poverty, devastating to the families who experience it and who arrive on our shores expecting so much more, and a huge loss to Canada's economy and to all of us as Canadians. It is estimated that if immigrants' observable skills were rewarded in a manner similar to that for Canadian-born workers, the increase in incomes would amount to $30.7 billion, or about 2.1% of GDP. It is imperative that the Government of Canada provide leadership in redressing this situation.

Why does it happen? There are several complex and mostly systemic reasons.

The number one reason is the lack of recognition and acceptance of immigrants' international credentials. Four years after landing in Canada, only 28% of newcomers with international credentials were able to get them recognized. Second, the demands of many employers for Canadian work experience as a prerequisite for employment create a hurdle that is almost impossible to overcome. Third, immigrants are excluded from the social and informational networks that often lead to employment. Fourth, immigrants lack access to the financial resources to pursue the licensing, training, and bridging programs that would help them to overcome these systemic barriers.

Now for some good stuff. What is IAF and how do we fit into this picture?

The Immigrant Access Fund is one of those social innovations made possible when governments, communities, and the private sector come together to make a difference. We are a unique, character-based, microloan program that lends up to $10,000 to immigrants across Canada to enable them to return to work in the occupations they trained for and worked in prior to their arrival. Immigrants can use our funds for whatever will help them on this challenging get-out-of-poverty journey. Since our start in 2005, we have lent over $17 million to 2,700 newcomers.

I said we were unique. What makes us unique? The payback rate on our loans is over 97%, and the majority of the almost $10 million in IAF's loan capital pool comes from the private sector through an innovative social finance model that leverages the assets of foundations and high net-worth individuals.

I have a statistic that I'm sure you'd really like. It's that the return on public sector funds invested in the Immigrant Access Fund is 900%.

It's about poverty. What difference do we make? At the time that they apply to us, 42% of IAF applicants are unemployed and the remaining 58% are in survival jobs. After completing their licensing plan, 81% report being employed in their field. The really staggering statistic is that IAF borrowers go from earning an average of $16,000 per year, when they apply to us, to earning $50,000 per year in the first year upon completion of their learning plan. This results in an increase in taxes paid to federal and provincial coffers of $6,500 in the first year alone.

What are our recommendations to you?

First, continue to address the systemic barriers in licensing and credential recognition processes. Good progress has been made through the pan-Canadian framework for the assessment and recognition of foreign qualifications, developed under the Forum of Labour Market Ministers. The framework commits governments, licensing bodies, and other stakeholders to work together to increase the transparency, fairness, timeliness, and consistency of foreign qualification assessment and recognition processes. Given the impact that recognizing international credentials has on reducing poverty and preventing people from falling into poverty, greater priority needs to be given to this area and the measurements of success and accountability mechanisms need to be built into the framework.

Second, recognize the role that mentoring and bridging programs can play in reducing poverty. These programs support immigrants to overcome the barrier of no Canadian experience and help to connect them to social and informational networks that lead to employment in their field.

Third, ensure that the policies and practices of regulatory bodies, governments, and other stakeholders are aligned to support the various stages of the labour market integration journey faced by immigrants. Too often we have seen our loan applicants take one step forward, to then find themselves pushed three steps back by counterproductive policies and practices. We would be happy to answer questions about that.

Fourth, create an environment that inspires, supports, and rewards social innovation and social finance. IAF is an example of what can be achieved when governments, the private sector, and communities come together to align common interests to tackle the social challenge of reducing poverty.

I started with Abdul and I would like to go back to him. I promised you a transformational story and his is truly that. Abdul borrowed $3,200 from IAF to begin the process of getting his accounting designation in Canada. By the time he had completed two courses, he was hired by a company in Calgary with a starting wage of $40 an hour, but it is Abdul's profound words that stay with us until today. “When I came home with that first paycheque that reflected my years of education and experience, and the dreams and hopes that have brought me to Canada, a paycheque that meant that my family's struggles with poverty were over, my wife and my children cried.”

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much for sharing that story.

We're going to move quickly to hear from Medicine Hat College.

Denise and Kristen, the next seven minutes are yours.

[Dr. Kristen Desjarlais-deKlerk, Instructor of Sociology, Division of Art, Education and Business, Medicine Hat College]

Medicine Hat College has partnered with multiple stakeholders to create a poverty reduction plan for the city of Medicine Hat. This plan, known as “Thrive”, which I'm sure you heard a great deal about, is Medicine Hat's strategy to end poverty and create well-being. It was created after years of partnerships, community consultations, and stakeholder discussions around ending poverty in our municipality.

[Dr. Denise Henning, President and Chief Executive Officer, Executive Office, Medicine Hat College]

Medicine Hat College offered two of its employees to the poverty reduction leadership committee, the PRLC, which operated as a cornerstone to make Thrive a reality. As a team, along with the consultant Dr. Alina Turner, whom you heard from earlier, the PRLC engaged in multiple community consultations whereby Medicine Hatters had the opportunity to discuss the ways in which they were personally impacted by poverty, how they defined poverty, and the degree to which they saw poverty influencing their community. These discussions included individuals experiencing poverty, individuals engaging in community planning, and concerned citizens wishing to offer their thoughts on poverty in Medicine Hat.

As a result, a comprehensive picture of poverty in Medicine Hat that included lived-experience perspectives of poverty was created. These cross-sector meetings allowed for citizens to offer input into the development of the poverty reduction plan. MHC encouraged student volunteers to be a part of these community consultations as recorders to allow facilitators the ability to concentrate on facilitation instead of record-keeping. In doing so, the college encouraged students to expand their practical lived experience and become part of the solution for this important social movement in our community.

Additionally, Dr. Turner designed a survey, distributed through Medicine Hat, that received many responses that demonstrated and reflected on poverty, thereby increasing the scope of the consultations and enabling the PRLC to further generalize its findings and information. Consequently, Thrive draws on a multi-faceted definition and understanding of poverty that then drives community action in 13 different priority areas, including leadership and systems change, community system planning, income security, business innovation, energy poverty, affordable housing, homelessness, food security, transportation, health and wellness, learning and literacy, resilient families, and community safety. Each of the areas was identified in the community consultations, and each has activities associated with its founding on evidence-based practices.

At its core, Thrive endeavours to end poverty in Medicine Hat by 2030. In doing so, Thrive will bolster the well-being of all Medicine Hatters and will make Medicine Hat a resilient community where all can access the resources they need to thrive.

Thrive was first presented to the City of Medicine Hat in December of 2016 at Medicine Hat College Eresman Theatre, a space donated by Medicine Hat College for this important initiative. Audience members included members of the Medicine Hat College community. Medicine Hat College further demonstrated its commitment to Thrive through the introductory address, where I was given an opportunity to share about growing up in a reservation community and growing up in poverty.

Medicine Hat College strives to continue to champion Thrive through maintained community partnerships with stakeholders across our city. Going forward, we aim to offer advocacy, space, community service, and faculty and staff researchers to ensure that Thrive is successful. While Medicine Hat College's involvement in the development of a poverty reduction plan was important, Medicine Hat College's continued commitment to the full implementation of Thrive is even more so.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you to both of you.

From the Miywasin Friendship Centre, we will hear from Jeannette Hansen for seven minutes.

[Jeannette Hansen, Executive Director, Miywasin Friendship Centre]

Thank you. We very much appreciate this opportunity to present the history of our organization as well as what we're doing to address poverty issues in Medicine Hat.

I'm going to do an overview of our centre. Miywasin is a Cree word, and it means “it is good”. Our friendship centre is a partnership that targets the needs of the aboriginal community in the Medicine Hat area and develops and maintains services to meet those needs. This project was based on the medicine wheel concept, where the central hub of the wheel is an aboriginal service delivery centre, and the focus of the centre is for programmed activities and workshops, recreation, counselling, tutoring, cultural resources, an information centre, and housing support, etc.

In November of 1994, the government announced a new direction for child and family services to be delivered in Alberta. The four key areas of change were to move to community-based planning and delivery of children's services, to integrate the planning and delivery of children's services, to ensure aboriginal services are more effective and culturally sensitive, and to focus on early intervention programs.

We incorporated in December of 1996 and opened our doors in June of 1997, with funding from the provincial government under the early intervention aboriginal pillars. In 2002, we expanded our programming and incorporated housing supports into the services we deliver through the purchase of a three-storey apartment building in downtown Medicine Hat. The main and lower levels of the building accommodate our offices and programs. The second and third levels are apartments, bachelors and one-bedrooms, totalling 16 suites.

In 2015, we went from transitional housing to implementing some of the housing first model principles. A counsellor works with the client to get them housing right away, either in-house or through referrals, and then puts the supports in after.

In 2005, we added a three-bedroom family house to our portfolio. This house is for aboriginal families who are at risk of homelessness. In 2008, we completed an aboriginal needs assessment, and from that assessment, we supported Métis Capital Housing Corporation in securing a duplex for aboriginal seniors at risk of homelessness.

In 2012, we purchased a camp in Elkwater called Camp Miywasin. These facilities are used to expand our cultural programming. In 2014, we completed a business plan for Camp Miywasin, applied for urban partnership funding through the Alberta Native Friendship Centres Association, and received a grant to upgrade the facilities and expand programming.

In addition, we received funding to do a feasibility study for the Miywasin Centre in Medicine Hat. We held several community consultations to get feedback on the future of the Miywasin Centre, looking at where we are now and future space requirements, whether to renovate, build new, etc. As a result of this, we applied to Alberta Indigenous Relations to do a business plan to build a new native friendship centre in Medicine Hat to meet our expanding needs.

In 2016, we also changed our name from Miywasin Society of Aboriginal Services Medicine Hat to Miywasin Friendship Centre Medicine Hat. Within the centre, we work in partnership with the Métis Urban Housing Corporation and Métis Capital Housing Corporation branch office, the Métis Nation of Alberta Association Local Council 8, the Medicine Hat Métis Trading Company Society, and the Miywasin Aboriginal Women's Society in delivering services to our communities.

Under the Miywasin Friendship Centre umbrella, we offer the following services: a counselling program, a cultural program, an elders program, a youth program, and a housing program. We are holistic in our delivery of services, being all things connected and supported. The expectation from the aboriginal community is that we must provide for all aspects of life to create a healthy balance: housing, food, safety, belonging, being culturally connected, healthy choice options, spirituality, elder support, parenting skills training, activities for youth to keep them engaged and away from crime and involved in recreational, education, and support services, mental and emotional supports, and transportation and emergency services.

With this in mind, we constantly deal with budget constraints. We find that we must be everything to everyone and provide a variety of services on limited budgets and with limited staffing. We deal with a highly mobile population and they have high expectations for services. We do not have enough space for program delivery and/or expansion. We require constant upgrades to our facilities and are currently in need of new program delivery facilities. Therefore, we need infrastructure funding to build a new friendship centre.

Regarding aboriginal service providers for aboriginal people, it is important for the government to realize that aboriginal people prefer to deal with aboriginal people and agencies first. We have the cultural background, empathy, and understanding of the needs of aboriginal people and can better meet the needs of our clients.

We need more direct control of aboriginal funding, particularly control of housing and homelessness funds. We know what our clients needs are and how to deliver the services. In the past we have contracted directly with the federal government; now we go through the local housing authority. We have some concerns in that it does not have appropriate aboriginal representation, takes 15% of the aboriginal funding for administration, and we are expected to deliver our housing program on a shoestring budget and understaffed.

We also have aging facilities that require constant upkeep. For some years this has not been a government priority, so we scramble to find funds to maintain our facilities. It is also time-consuming and jeopardizes our programs to have to wait for the housing authority to put out a request for proposals and to be in competition with non-aboriginal agencies for aboriginal funding when we have been in the delivery of aboriginal housing services for over 15 years and work in partnership with other aboriginal housing agencies within our centre.

We need sustainable and multi-year funding agreements directly with the government. They need to be seamless in their delivery so we do not impede delivery of our services to our clients. They also need to be flexible in that we can provide staffing and upgrades to our facilities as needed.

In dealing with the homelessness situation in our community, we have found in the past year that our apartment complex has been broken into at least half a dozen times, and homeless people have slept under a cubby below the stairs in our basement, set up a bed in the storage area in our laundry room, and slept openly in the corridors on the main level. They have also broken into our storage area in the basement where we have our freezers, and they have stolen meat and other produce that was kept there. We have this captured on video cameras, which have since been stolen by the perpetrators.

We now have to contend with replacing the cameras with a more secure security system, repairing the damage to our doorways, and purchasing more food, which was going to support our youth and elders programs.

It seems a constant struggle to deal with these situations and keep our housing costs down and our units affordable, particularly when we are understaffed and under budget.

Another area of contention is having our programs, services, and housing all together in one facility. We have found that some of our at-risk clients in our housing are dealing with addictions and mental health issues. This has a negative impact on our youth program, particularly when we are trying to provide a safe place for them to gather for activities, and most of the time this is done after school and in the evenings. This, combined with lack of space, is another reason we are looking to build a new friendship centre that separates programming and housing.

Another area of concern is project funding. It is limiting and interrupts services to our clients. Why must we continually come up with new ideas to meet the criteria of the funders rather than the needs of our communities? Examples are new horizons for seniors and urban partnership funding. These two programs require new ideas every year. Why, when you have a good program that meets the needs of your community, do you have to constantly change it up? This is more of a detriment, and it impedes the delivery of quality programming that is much needed in our communities. We require sustainability for programs that are working in our communities.

Another area of concern is sustainable funding for youth programs. We have used urban, multi-purpose, aboriginal youth centres and cultural connections for aboriginal youth programming through the Métis nation in the past, and civil forfeiture funding through Alberta Justice. It is a struggle when governments change, programs change, criteria changes, funding levels change, etc. It is a minefield out there, and it is very time-consuming trying to access support for our programs. Youth need consistency and sustainability.

It is very important for aboriginal organizations to continue to deliver programs to aboriginal people based on their needs.

In summary, long-term sustainability and consistency is required for aboriginal agencies in the delivery of housing and support services to the aboriginal community. There are unsatisfactory funding levels when aboriginal agencies are dealing with constant increases in operating costs, property taxes, utilities, and ongoing facility maintenance, which impede our ability to provide safe, affordable housing.

Program delivery strategies must come from the grassroots level where there is a proven track record, rather than from a government directive coming down.

We need a commitment from the Government of Alberta to match federal aboriginal funding in our communities. We need infrastructure funding to build a new friendship centre and for our expanding services to meet the growing needs of our aboriginal communities. We need more direct aboriginal control of aboriginal funding that is delivered in our communities and to contract directly with the federal and provincial governments nation to nation. You'll see this coming through the Daniels case and the MOUs that were just signed with the Métis nation.