Human Resources Committee on Jan. 26th, 2021

[Margaret Pfoh]

Yes, for sure.

Probably the first one is economic. When we started doing the analysis with Lu'ma, we saw...and they know the numbers better than I do. What they did was they took a look at the allocation of dollars for homelessness in the province of British Columbia and they took a look at the statistical representation of indigenous peoples in British Columbia. They said, “Let's go back to the drawing board with the Government of Canada and say, if we represent 30% of all and it's $100 million that's coming through...”. Again, they know the numbers better than I do. I'm trying to stretch my memory on how it went. They then take a redistribution of those dollars and allocate the 30% to urban indigenous homelessness, which means that people like our housing providers that maybe never had access before could actually gain access to meet the needs of their urban indigenous homeless people.

From a more tangible perspective, just walking and talking the streets in downtown Vancouver, we hear a level of comfort about approaching and reaching out for support services because there are indigenous people leading those solutions.

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

If you could make a recommendation.... Like MP Vis said, I'm here to learn too. Certainly I'm learning more and more every day about this important file, but if you could give a recommendation to the federal government, what lessons should our federal government take from this experience when it comes to crafting a strategy for indigenous, and particularly urban indigenous housing? What would you recommend we do moving forward?

[Margaret Pfoh]

I believe the government has already received a document from the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association called the “For Indigenous By Indigenous” strategy. It looks at assisting the urban indigenous organizations that have been working together over the decades to come together in a more formal process. I think about what CMHC did recently with the Community Housing Transformation Centre. It was a quick turnaround solution that brought together an organization that can create transformative change for the housing sector.

I think we could do something quite similar in terms of an urban indigenous-led national organization, but have us at the table to help draw up the solutions, rather than doing these interviews and then coming back and giving us the solution you think you heard. Our providers have been on the ground for 50 years. They know what their communities need and they know what didn't work.

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

Ms. Pfoh, thank you very much for that.

My next question is for Mr. Wall. Hello from Saint John, New Brunswick, and thank you for your presentation. It was very informative.

I'd like to ask you how the expansion of the list of designated communities under the Reaching Home program to include three new communities in northern Ontario, including Kenora, has impacted your region. Can you just expand on that a bit?

[Henry Wall]

Given that it just started in the middle of the pandemic, I will say this. Symbolically it meant that for the first time, the federal government is a partner with us when it comes to ending homelessness. That is very meaningful to us, and it has taken us since 2007 to get to that. In the absence of that, we had to look at entering into MOUs with nations to see how we could pool our resources to address those who are experiencing homelessness in the urban setting.

From that standpoint, having the federal government as a partner actually means that you're with us finally, once and for all, as a government.

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

Just quickly, can you explain how an indigenous lens in leadership may make your new designation more successful?

[Henry Wall]

Absolutely. It really matters in terms of who's asking the question, as well, in terms of programming.

If I could give an example, just over two years ago the Province of Ontario changed who was responsible for overseeing EarlyON centres, which are responsible for providing families and children with access to community programs and so forth. There was a very indigenous-specific stream for that. We worked with our urban indigenous providers, including first nations communities.

In gearing up to it, we did surveys and whatnot, and the results were not reflective of what we were expecting. Our off-reserve communities are over half first nations, so we should expect that at least half the respondents from the survey would be first nations. In some of our elementary schools, the student populations were 80% to 90% first nations, but when we got the surveys back, there was very little representation from first nations families. We had to go back to the drawing board and ask what we had done wrong.

Who's asking the question is just as important as the question itself, so when we worked with our first nations communities and urban indigenous communities like friendship centres, all of a sudden we were hearing back from the families we wanted to hear from. It fundamentally changed how we were rolling out the programs.

With that, I'm really happy to say that while we're still early on in this, we now have in our communities at least six indigenous-led child care programs. Generations overdue, indigenous families are looking after indigenous families, and program delivery is happening the way it should be.

We've been able to play a role in levelling the playing field, because the other piece that needs to be recognized is that, even if there's an indigenous housing strategy, we're approaching this from the beginning with an imbalance of power. That has to be recognized. There's an imbalance of power for indigenous people but also indigenous communities in terms of land ownership. As you're rolling out programs, if ownership of land isn't part of it, indigenous organizations and communities will continue to be left behind even though on the surface it looks like we have an indigenous strategy.

With that example, I just want to say that it's so important who's asking the question. From a technical standpoint, let's keep it simple. This is about housing. Let's make sure it results in homes being created and that we don't put all our energy into the bureaucracy of getting housing to happen.

I can give you a couple examples of where we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Wall, I'm going to have to cut you off there. We're a couple of minutes over.

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

Maybe somebody else can follow up, but thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Wall. Thank you, Mr. Long.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I welcome the witnesses and wish to thank them for their participation.

Ms. Pfoh, thank you for your testimony. If I understood you correctly, you were enthusiastic about the federal government's plans to put in place a national indigenous strategy. But when you didn't see the first signs of such a strategy or its implementation, you decided in your province to make your own national strategy, designed by and for indigenous people. According to your testimony, this appears to have been a success.

Do you think the solution is for every province to have such a strategy? If so, what support could the federal government provide?

[Margaret Pfoh]

Toyaxsiim. Thank you for that.

We are going ahead with our own provincial urban indigenous housing strategy, largely because we anticipated that the national housing strategy would eventually include an urban indigenous housing strategy, and we wanted to hit the ground running and be ready for it.

Because I sit on not only a provincial organization but also on national organizations, I have had the privilege of having meetings with the previous minister, Minister Duclos, as well as Minister Hussen, Adam Vaughan and Evan Siddall. We knew that we were going to eventually get to a position where there would likely be some sort of an investment in urban indigenous housing, so here in British Columbia we took it upon ourselves to get the ball rolling so that when or if there is an opportunity for us to feed into that we would be ready to be partners with the federal government.

I think it is important to be abundantly clear that when I speak about the dispossession of urban indigenous people, we never ceded our rights as indigenous peoples because of colonization, and so we never ceded the right and responsibility to sit as equals with the federal government. That's why we're preparing.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Do you think the federal government should establish a national indigenous housing council?

[Margaret Pfoh]

No. When I speak about a national housing leadership, I'm speaking about the government supporting us through some form of a partnership in the creation. We can't create it out of nothing.

As you know, Henry talked about that whole “who's asking the question?” I mean, most of us have no equity to bring to the table. For us to be able to actually sit as equals, we need to have the federal government recognize that we need a funding stream to help us do that. I believe the CHRA outlined some of those needs in their “For Indigenous By Indigenous” document, but we want to do it ourselves. You guys can fund it.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

It's very clear.

Since the beginning of our work, many witnesses have emphasized the importance of “by and for indigenous people”. I think that will be taken into account.

Do I still have time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

You have just under two minutes left.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Fine.

Good afternoon, Mr. Wall. You talked about preventing homelessness. You said there are long waiting lists and that there is a 257% increase in waiting lists since 2011. These are pretty disturbing numbers. It is my understanding that your organization has also seen a migration of indigenous community members from reserves to urban centres.

What are the challenges for housing? Does it increase the prevalence of homelessness?

[Henry Wall]

Meegwetch for the question.

There are not many places in Canada where, when you want your child to attend high school, you have to send that child away to another community. That's a reality for many of the 40-some first nation communities that are in the district known as Kenora. If you want to seek access to primary care or you need to seek medical attention, not many of us have to get into a plane, fly a couple of hours, and then you visit a strange community to access the hospital medical care for that reason. Not many of us are living in a home where we're sharing it with 15 or 20 other members of our family. We're talking about a two-bedroom home that has mould issues and hasn't been invested in. We have many families that are in that situation. We're hearing very often that it is better to be homeless in Kenora or Sioux Lookout than it is to be back home, because of the shortage of housing.

We're very involved in health transformation and getting an all-nations health system in our region. I'm happy to say we're making good progress, working in partnership with ANHP.

Something that is quite disturbing for me and that we hear very often is that our elders are not accessing medical care very often. They're afraid of losing their spot in the home in their community, because there's just not enough homes in that community. We have a situation where families are not choosing to live in an urban setting. Families are forced to move to an urban setting. That has a direct impact on our homeless population. It also has a direct impact on, as I mentioned, the number of people who end up getting stuck in the justice system. From an investment standpoint, it just makes pure economic sense to start investing in homes, and maybe a little less on our judicial systems.

Here's what I mean by that. We did a project in Sioux Lookout, in partnership with the Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services. It was really a one-of-a-kind project in the Ontario context. The goal was to take those who were chronically homeless, provide them with a home, no conditions but all supported. It was housing first through an indigenous lens. We found that the transformation in the 20 individuals who were provided housing was incredible. We're talking about individuals who have lived on the streets for decades, who communities have written off, but are now looking at being enrolled in employment programs and are looking at access to jobs.

On the financial piece, with regard to the return on investment, the project will have broken even in four and a half years. In other words, the capital investment that went into that building will have repaid itself through other savings in four and a half years. Providing culturally appropriate housing for 20 individuals resulted in almost $300,000 in policing savings in the first year.

That's just one project. It's one example I wanted to give to you, but the thing I really want to talk about is that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Wall.

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

We're going to go to Ms. Gazan, for six minutes.

[Henry Wall]

—when we talk about the high percentage of indigenous people living off reserve—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Wall, please.

[Henry Wall]

—we also need to recognize that it's not a choice. Families are forced to move. When we talk about creating homes and where those homes are created, our programs need to be flexible enough so that families and organizations who know this stuff, and they're in the business of making this happen, can choose where it's best to support those families and where that infrastructure should go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Wall, it's going to be impossible for all members to be able to pose questions if you don't respect the chair and the timeline. I would ask you, please, to pay attention when I attempt to interrupt so that we can try to maintain some sort of order here.

Ms. Gazan, please go ahead, for six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

I feel very privileged to have both Henry Wall and Margaret Pfoh here today. I really appreciate their expertise in this area.

My first question is for Margaret Pfoh.

This was my morning: I represent the third-poorest riding in the country. It's -39°C. We're dealing with trench fever, a disease we haven't seen since the First World War. It's a disease of extreme poverty. I've been on the phone, because we have a housing crisis in our community, 70% of whom are indigenous. We are worried about losing lives here.

The government continues to promise to release an urban, rural and northern distinctions-based indigenous housing strategy, but we have yet to see the strategy. In your opinion, how critical is it to ensure this strategy is released in order to address the current housing crisis we are seeing?

[Margaret Pfoh]

It's absolutely essential. T’oyaxsut nüün for raising that.

You are not alone. We see this across the country. We see this here in British Columbia. We see that COVID-19 has only exacerbated that very real risk to life. In any given community here in B.C., the statistics are that anywhere from 30% to 65% of the homeless population are indigenous, and I know, based on my conversations with my partners across the country, that it can be as high as 99%, given some of the remote communities. If an urban, rural and northern housing strategy is not put in place, you will only continue to see those numbers climb.

We're outpacing population growth by 4:1. It makes sense that this is not going to go away without an adequate strategy in place. In fact, our language has been that there is no national housing strategy without an urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy, and that is distinct from the three distinctions-based groups.