Human Resources Committee on Feb. 4th, 2021

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Between 3,000 and 50,000 is a huge gap, though, in all fairness .

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Absolutely, but you can't finish a march without taking a first step.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That's a massive gap.

It's a start, but as I said, the 3,000 units is a drop in the bucket compared with what's needed.

We also know that sustainable, operational dollars are required if we want to keep functional these housing units we now have funded.

What are the plans for sustainable, operational dollars so these units can continue to exist and serve those in need of housing?

I have to be honest: the rapid housing initiative is already a panic. It's great that we have it, but how are we going to keep these things running?

When are we going to see a plan for that?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

That's what the budget is going to lay out—the plan forward. We thought it was critically important to get these dollars into the hands of the sector immediately to keep people safe and to keep the public safe, quite frankly, during COVID.

Please remember that when we took office, there was no tap, let alone a bucket, let alone any water in that bucket to serve this community, so we've had to construct all of those components over the last four years to get to where we are. I agree with you that we should have built these units 10, 15 or 20 years ago. It's why I got into politics.

However, we're at a really good place now where we're moving into supportive housing. As you say, the operational and the supports, which are two different questions, both need to be part of that solution. This three-legged stool needs that. Part of it is working with provinces and territories to make sure the health services arrive in residential settings in community-based programs, and the second part of it is how we pay the rent.

The good news there is that shelters are more expensive on a nightly basis than rapid housing. Hotels are massively more expensive when they're rented than they are when they're owned. We're remodelling the system. We'll be working with provincial, territorial and indigenous governments, as well as cities and frontline service providers, to get all three legs of that stool securely in place.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

Going back quickly, we have a couple of projects on the docket in my riding, as you're aware.

I would like just a yes or no answer so I can ask my next question. Do you have a date by which we will see more funding for the rapid housing initiative?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

It's budget day.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay. When's that?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

That's beyond my pay grade. It's very soon. How's that?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay. Thank you. You have no date.

The city councillors in my riding welcomed the $12.5 million through the rapid housing initiative, but they've shared very clearly and vocally with me that it didn't even come close to what is needed to deal with our very severe housing crisis, which I know you're very aware of.

The other issue they identified is that the criteria for the rapid housing initiative did not reflect the realities of the needs of our community. We need an indigenous-led harm reduction housing strategy with wraparound supports now. As a result of the funding criteria, many of our frontline organizations did not even qualify. Going forward, how will your government ensure that the funding criteria reflect the needs of our community and other communities and clearly support low-barrier housing?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Under COVID, the emphasis on rapid qualified those who had provided and created housing in the past, as opposed to people with new ideas and new initiatives. That is one of the design dynamics of rapid housing. As we move to a supportive housing program to end chronic homelessness, you're going to start to see the program broaden and start to take on new initiatives.

For example, I was talking with Sharon Redsky in Winnipeg this morning about the project near Thunderbird. It's a project-based application that's coming through the other half of the stream, which is indigenous-led and low barrier, and serves women in particular, who are the hardest group in the homeless sector to access and provide the most needed services to.

The next phase is going to learn from this program, take a look at those applications and model the next stage under the full slate of the programs that have been presented to us to make sure we can realize the aspirations of frontline service providers right across the country, particularly in indigenous communities.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'm familiar with the village project and certainly support it.

Thanks so much, Adam. Thanks for being a good sport.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Gazan.

Mr. Schmale, you are next, please, for five minutes.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Hello, Mr. Vaughan. It's good to see you here.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Everyone used to call me Adam.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I do when you're on the other side of the table. I won't do that now.

When it comes to the funding programs, whether they for the rapid housing initiative or any housing program—I could list them all, but I won't—are there any conversations going on about ensuring the efficiency of the program rather than spending x amount of time filling out application after application and waiting? What do you think about more direct funding, so taxpayer dollars have more velocity?

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

I absolutely agree with you. What I'm happy about with the rapid housing initiative is that it was a two-page application form with a turnaround time that was very tight. That is something we need to aim for. We have to do our due diligence of course, because there's a lot of money on the table, but compressing and simplifying the application process would see a lot of smaller cities and smaller projects get to the finish line more quickly.

We've changed CMHC from being a referee in this process to being a coach, and its frontline workers are helping to realize projects faster. That's why the compression on the turnaround times and the co-investment funds have been realized.

We also know there have been various demands from different players in the system to transfer the money to the provinces, let them distribute it to the cities and have the cities go to the front line. Think of housing money like water. The more people touch it, the smaller it gets and the more administrative costs are built into the transfer from partner to partner to partner before it hits the person it's supposed to help, which is the homeless individual. We've worked very hard to find ways of working with provinces, territories and indigenous-led governments to get the money directly to frontline service providers so the dollars are not administered four or five times before they hit a person's monthly cheque to pay for housing.

One of the breakthroughs on rapid housing—and it's worked really well in Quebec, in particular—is this relationship between the federal government and frontline providers. We're working in a coordinated fashion with the provinces, but getting the money directly to those projects and fitting it into the systems that Quebec and cities have designed. That is allowing us to get the dollars with less and less handling into the hands of the people who are actually doing the building and the people who are actually moving into the units we're constructing. It's a priority.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

That's a very conservative answer from you. I appreciate that.

It's true because I've got a note here from the Native Council of P.E.I. talking about the issue they're dealing with. It's about the timeline and capacity requirements of your program. In this case, it's the national housing co-investment fund. They said that the competitive application is 200 pages long, and it's very difficult for a small organization to get the expertise required without hiring out.

I appreciate those comments about streamlining and taking a look at the complexity of these applications.

I want to talk about the rapid housing, if I could.

Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

You have two minutes.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Two minutes. Okay, that's perfect.

For this organization in particular, my understanding is that the rapid housing criteria require groups to already possess land to build on in many cases. A lot of not-for-profit organizations are telling me about their limited capacity to carry debt when they don't already own the land.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

The emphasis was on rapid.... As we move towards supportive housing, which is the real solution to ending chronic homelessness, not quick acquisition of distressed properties, but an intentional move into supportive housing, you will see the criteria broaden to incorporate smaller communities with specific target populations they're looking to serve. That's where you'll start to see those rules and regulations relax.

I'd add one point. The idea of getting money directly to people is not a Conservative notion. The Conservative notion was not to have the housing strategy, so I'll correct you on the record.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

You know what? I gave you a compliment and you had to go too far.

Let's talk about those modular units. Yes, for speed they do work in a number of cases, but many times the construction jobs aren't always local—I want to understand if I misheard this when you were talking to Brad—but are where the factory is.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Yes, and what's good about that is.... I was talking with members of the Atlantic caucus about the idea that perhaps there is some economic development. You think about the softwood lumber issue in New Brunswick. There's a part of the country that has the resources needed to build these modular units. If we're going to move to modular units, and I think that's where the industry is going—I think we've gone from six to 16 providers across the country in the last two years, and we're working with the Canadian Standards Association to try to standardize this so that they're pre-approved in the sense—we can start setting up to create jobs through federal investments and take advantage of our natural resources to decentralize the construction and delivery of these modular housing units because they work whether they're three units, six units or 12 units. And that's an off-the-shelf, ready to go, approved high-quality, highly affordable housing program. You could literally build factories in every part of the country to meet the housing needs of Canadians right across the country. In fact, some of the resource providers in Saskatchewan, some of the folks who build temporary housing for the resource sector, are pivoting to modular housing to take advantage of this opportunity.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I agree. Modular housing is great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Schmale and Mr. Vaughan.

Ms. Young, please. You have five minutes.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you very much, Parliamentary Secretary Vaughan, for being here today to talk about this important issue.

I think we can all agree that you know your file better than anyone.