Human Resources Committee on Feb. 17th, 2017

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

Okay. For any of the other projects you've worked on, what would the funding models be like in most of those cases?

[William R. Storie]

If you are talking about the youth centre, the land was given by the township on a 10-year lease. Two residents of the township, two entrepreneurs, are paying for the structure. The province committed to it and I believe last week made the announcement that they were giving $327,000 or $328,000 to it.

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

I'm going to switch over to Nicole really quickly, because we recognize that we're dealing with different issues, whether it is seniors, youths, or newcomers to Canada. There are so many different things that we're dealing with.

What are the needs of newcomers to Canada, the refugees who have come here? What are some of the things we need to do or some of the resources that are lacking that we can assist with?

[Nicole Read]

I think the greatest need is housing. What I hear around the table in metro Vancouver is that we're really struggling. It's well known that our vacancy rates in metro Vancouver are very low, the cost of housing is very high, and we have people with many children who are packing into these smaller units. There's an urgent need for housing in this region.

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

Then housing is the number one issue. What about other settlement services, such as language?

[Nicole Read]

I think it's the connection to any kinds of supports, supports to wellness and the transition of children into the school system. You have kids now going into the school system. There is an under-resourced and underfunded education system here in B.C., so that's certainly a challenge.

Making the transition into employment, I would say, is another significant issue.

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

Thanks so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Now we go over to MP Ruimy, please.

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

Thank you very much, everybody, for being here. As you know, this is very personal for me, because this is my home. This is my riding.

Mayor Read, you mentioned the report from 2010. We've seen reports time and time again, saying “Let's reduce this. Let's fix this”, but we never seem to actually gain the traction. We never seem to get ahead of the curve. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that the stigma is huge. It stops us from saying, “Well, we don't care about those guys,” or “They're not important, so we're not going to worry about them.”

I'm an operations guy. When I see a problem, I want to go and solve it. My hands are tied because there are too many obstacles, intergovernmental obstacles.

Mayor Read, can you talk to us about the challenges that a small, emerging city like ours is facing in moving forward?

[Nicole Read]

There are two issues. There's the issue of the currently homeless population that costs a lot of money to reverse. Those people may or may not ever be able to seek gainful employment. There's a lot of damage done by the drugs that are on our street now, fentanyl. A number of people have to be revived many times.

I think the direction needs to go to our children. As an emerging city, we are some distance away from post-secondary education, and we've been working with Simon Fraser University to bring a cohort program. I'm an alumna from Simon Fraser University. They have great programming. Making that accessible to our children is very important. We've run up a proposal for a civic facility through Minister Sohi and a number of other ministers—Minister Bennett—that will house a museum and archives that can showcase aboriginal issues, but most importantly also house a post-secondary space so that we can bring a cohort program into our city.

We need our kids in this city to be able to access post-secondary education. Some of the kids in this city might not traditionally transition well into the larger universities, so what we've talked about with Simon Fraser University is the ability to wrap support and get some funding from either the provincial or federal government around supporting the kids making the transition into post-secondary education. We would actually create an opportunity for kids who might not otherwise be able to go to university because of the transit, the commute, the distance, or the support systems that need to be in place.

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

Along the same line, poverty is not partisan. The big elephant in the room is exactly this. If all governments work together, this should be a no-brainer, so the question is why, and I'm going to come back to that.

How do you think municipalities can play a more active role in setting priorities so that you can actually pull the levers yourself? It's your city. You're the one who's tasked to run this city, and I imagine there are some times you feel your hands are tied. How can the municipalities actually pull more levers here?

[Nicole Read]

There has to be more inclusion in terms of the position of the municipalities or the level of government above our citizens.

We see day to day what's going on and what's working and what's not working in a city. Most of the time when we're engaging, we're engaging in bilateral conversations with cities and federal governments or cities and provincial governments. This issue came up yesterday in metro Vancouver's meeting with Minister Duclos that we have meetings with the federal government, but the province was not there.

The province administers the funding that you give it. It needs to do that responsibly. What we saw in Maple Ridge of late with our situation with the shelter is that the city put forward a piece of land, and we bought a piece of land for $1 million for supportive housing because the government's experts told us that we need supportive housing to which we can transition these vulnerable people in the shelter. We have done what we needed to do as a city, but there are decisions being made at the provincial government level that the federal government is not looking at, such as how the money is being spent. Is it being spent to match our Canadian values? Is it being spent in terms of the agreements that we have internationally?

This is really important, because this case that has happened in our city is a perfect example of how the multiple levels of government are not working from the same value systems. We have a set of values as Canadians for how we deal with people who are in poverty and in need. I believe as a Canadian historian that a fundamental value that we've always stood behind is the treatment of people. The treatment of people who are vulnerable right now in the city in the shelter that you're going to see is absolutely substandard.

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

Thank you.

Finally, we know that you're working on the youth mental health clinic, and there's some really great work going on there. Can you tell us a bit more about that, the challenges of trying to find the funding for it, and where you think the federal government can play a role in youth mental health?

[Nicole Read]

The civic facility that I mentioned, which has the potential for post-secondary education and a museum and archives, has upgrades to our leisure centre that our kids access, but it also includes—this is one building that's on the same site, essentially—the youth mental wellness facility. We need some upgrades to the Greg Moore Youth Centre, which is where this youth mental wellness facility is located. It's really critical for us to be able to get funding.

I think the federal government does definitely have a role to play with our kids. It's clear that this is a value for our federal government. Our provincial government is invested in mental health, obviously, being responsible for health care in this province, so we're communicating to both levels of government about the need. The challenge is that we communicate separately to each level of government. I come to my different resources in the federal government and I tell them that I need it. Then I go to my resources in the provincial government and I tell them that I need it.

There's an awful lot of politicking going on in this city right now. You're going to see that at one o'clock today. At the end of the day, we have kids in need in this community, and the decisions that get made about our most vulnerable people—who, in my opinion, include our kids, who need to access mental health resources—need to be made separately and apart from politics. If the federal government invests money that needs to get down to the ground level in cities, you need to make sure it gets there. There should not be spending that is unequal, spending that is done for partisan reasons. We need to make sure that the money that's invested from our federal government gets to the places that really need it. It should not be spent through the in-between provincial government in cities that have more relationships or better relationships with the provincial government.

Sometimes smaller cities need to fight really strongly and really loudly for what they need, and that's the position that I find myself in right now in this city. I think it's really important that we have open channels of communications that are multilateral.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

MP Sansoucy is next.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also thank the witnesses for being here with us today.

Thank you, Ms. Read for specifying that the recommendations of the 2010 report are still relevant, and also for reminding us that Canada still has enormous challenges to meet if it is to fulfil its international treaty commitments.

Mr. Elliott-Buckley, in concluding you said that in the context of our study we should take the needs of aboriginal communities into account.

Can you tell us more about the specific situations there? Can you also tell us how in our report we should make room for different solutions that might come from those communities?

[Stephen Elliott-Buckley]

Thank you for the question.

I don't have tons of experience with first nations issues. What I look at is how Canada is as a country and what our relationship is like with the first nations. I think we need to treat it more as an international relations issue, where we sit at the table with another group of people who have a lot of capacity and knowledge about what they need, and then work together to develop a plan, paying attention to the metrics and the issues that people talk about, what they need, and making a mutual commitment to be able to address what's going on, build a plan, and have some money to actually fund it.

As Canada, the federal government and the provinces as well, we have a responsibility in our relationship with first nations to create solutions, and that includes cash, really.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

You speak about listening to the people. Yesterday, witnesses spoke to us about the importance of listening to people who are experiencing poverty in their lives. We have to allow all of the communities to reassess their needs and find more relevant solutions to them.

When you talk about listening to people, is that what you mean?

[Stephen Elliott-Buckley]

Yes. I think that from an outside perspective, we can look anywhere in the country and try to examine what's going on on reserves. I watched several years ago with Attawapiskat.... From my vantage point in Vancouver, what I see is mediated by the news, politics, and partisanship, and the hot potato that it became. It wasn't just one example of one place in the country where something awful was happening; it was an extreme example of something that's pandemic in the country on reserves.

It would be great for me to weigh in and give my opinion about it, but I don't really know anything. I can share thoughts, but the people who know what's going on are the people who live there, the people who are trying to engage in solutions. They are the ones we need to listen to because, frankly, we are not experts. Even if we study and we're historians or political scientists, we are so far removed that we don't really have as much legitimacy as the people on the ground.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Ms. Read, you said it was important to broaden the Housing First program and make it more flexible. Did you also mean that we have to find preventive solutions?

[Nicole Read]

Absolutely. I think there has to be prevention in any housing solution that we're dealing with. The Housing First money is spent under a very good principle: we invest in housing first because people can't think about getting their lives forward without having safe housing, a shelter, a roof over their heads. However, a number of the people we're trying to house through the Housing First model in metro Vancouver need other things. The other things are not being provided. We need some means of bringing together resources to provide solutions such as outreach.

Vicki Kipps mentioned the number of forms. We see this across the board with people who are in poverty—the number of forms they have to sign to get access to services. We need resources that can work with people, sit with them, and transition them into the different services that they need through the continuum.

In this province, if we put people in housing under Housing First and those people need health care, there is an expectation that they will be able to make it to appointments. Things like that are simple for all of us, for you and me, but some of these people who are really struggling need help. They need assistance, and it's ongoing, and it's beyond Housing First.

The other thing is that Housing First doesn't fit well for youth, who are within the provincial system of care, yet we see them on our streets. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were notified about a youth who was sleeping in McDonald's. We were trying to mobilize food cards because McDonald's was willing to have the child sleep overnight in their restaurant as long as he was buying food.

This is not something that fits well within the 65% allocation for Housing First. We need to have a bit of flexibility around that 65% so that we can allocate it, as a region, into the areas that we feel.... We'll try to invest the 65% in Housing First because we are working under Housing First principles—there is no question about that—but we do need a little more flexibility in terms of the proposals we accept.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

You talked about the importance of working together. I will put the same question to you as I put to Mr. Elliott-Buckley.

In the programs we are going to propose, should we make more room for the communities so that they can define their needs themselves, as well as the solutions and programs, and what must be developed for each of them?

[Nicole Read]

Absolutely. We know our community well. We work together, especially in this community, where we have a very connected environment of service provision. We have eyes on the ground all of the time. We know what we need in this community. We shouldn't be subject to higher levels of government making decisions about what we need in this community, decisions that are partisan-based or steeped in politics.

At the end of the day, when we have kids in need and we have vulnerable adults in need, we need to get in and support them. We do need a stronger voice, but we don't have power in the voice. lt's sad, because right now....

Fighting for vulnerable people in this community as I do comes from a long history of working with some of the aboriginal communities across our country and understanding that sometimes you have to stand in a tough pocket to make change, but at the end of the day, I shouldn't have to scream. I shouldn't have to get angry. I shouldn't have to leverage the media in order to get the resources I need for vulnerable people in this community. It's wrong. I should be able to have a conversation, which I've done with my MP, and have conversations with my MLA, and know that as Canadians, with values that support vulnerable people, we will drive the resources that we have available to make those changes.

That's not what's happening in this community. In this community, when I need services brought to something.... When I had a tent city on a residential street, I had to scream in the media. I had to bring in the opposition.

It's wrong. It's just wrong. It's a waste of my valuable resources that could be going into other things in our community, like making sure that we are driving the messages up to higher levels of government about our seniors and our kids.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that sentiment.

Next, for six minutes, we have MP Dhillon, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions will mostly be for you, Nicole. I think the passion we hear in your voice, the frustration, touches all of us around this table.

You mentioned the fight you have to represent those who have no voice, those who are vulnerable, and you said you had to go to the opposition, to the media. Has that been very effective?