Human Resources Committee on Feb. 16th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 16 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), and the motion adopted by the committee on Friday, October 9, 2020, the committee will be resuming its study of urban, rural and northern indigenous housing.

I would like to welcome Ms. Dancho and Mr. Tochor as permanent members of the committee. I trust that either you have been vigorously campaigning, or you have been lobbied extensively because of the upcoming election of the vice-chair, which will be part of committee business today.

I would also like to welcome our witnesses to begin our discussion, with five minutes of opening remarks followed by questions.

From the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we have Yves Giroux, Parliamentary Budget Officer; Mark Mahabir, director of policy and general counsel; Caroline Nicol, analyst; and Ben Segel-Brown, analyst.

We're going to begin with Mr. Giroux, for five minutes.

Welcome to the committee. We look forward to your presentation.

[Yves Giroux, Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today, our first official appearance before the committee. We are pleased to be here today to present the findings of our report entitled, “Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing”, which we were honoured to prepare at the request of this committee.

With me today I have Mark Mahabir, director of policy (costing) and general counsel, and Caroline Nicol and Ben Segel-Brown, the lead analysts on the report.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer provides independent and non-partisan economic and financial analysis to parliamentarians. As the legislation states, we provide this analysis for the purpose of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability.

We'd be pleased to respond to any questions you may have regarding our analysis or any other PBO work.

Consistent with the PBO's legislated mandate, at the request of this committee, my office prepared an independent analysis of the federal government's spending to address indigenous housing needs in urban, rural and northern areas. This report examines indigenous housing in all areas of Canada except on reserves.

Canada has 677,000 indigenous households, living in urban, rural or northern areas. Of those households, 124,000, or 18%, are in housing need. Based on our analysis, there is a $636-million gap on an annual basis between what these households pay for shelter, and the level deemed affordable by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

The federal government has explicitly allocated $179 million per year to address indigenous housing and homelessness programs in urban, rural and northern areas over the 10-year term of Canada’s national housing strategy.

We also considered federal transfers to the provinces and territories for housing and homelessness programs. Federal transfers also contribute to the capacity of provinces and territories to provide housing support to indigenous households. These categories of support, when combined, amount to $838 million in federal support for indigenous housing and homelessness. Despite these amounts, a gap remains.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Mr. Giroux.

We're going to begin with rounds of questions, starting with the Conservatives and Mr. Vis, for six minutes.

Mr. Vis, you have the floor.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Giroux, for appearing before us today.

Based on your analysis, there is a $636-million annual gap between what indigenous Canadians in housing need pay for shelter and the level deemed affordable by CMHC. It was made clear during our last meeting that CMHC is not collecting data on rural and remote homelessness. If appropriate data were collected, do you feel the problem would be more acute and the monetary shortfall even greater? Do you feel that these are known unknowns or unknown unknowns?

[Yves Giroux]

It's difficult to determine whether the gap would be bigger if we had better data. One can assume that it probably would be bigger, but it's very difficult to say that with a high level of certainty. It's not known for sure, but my bet would be that it's probably higher.

As to whether it's in the unknown unknowns or the known unknowns, I think that probably falls into the known unknowns because we know there's a problem in that area. We just don't know exactly how big an issue it is. For that reason, it's not in the unknown unknowns, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, sir.

Your report states that for many indigenous families, “affordable housing is unavailable in their community given their household income”. You also make the point that many Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs are not designed to support low-income families who are not able to afford market rents and therefore rely on social housing.

How could your analysis help inform the appropriate mix of housing interventions—i.e., rent subsidies, rent supplements, social housing and even home ownership—that the government should be undertaking? Second, how could your analysis help inform how funds are distributed or administered through a separate urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy? Third, did your analysis find that the government was spending all the funds they've allocated to indigenous housing or are they returning surpluses to general revenue in any certain years?

[Yves Giroux]

For the third question, I'll probably defer to Caroline or Ben, but let me address your first question on the mix of programs.

It's a mix of various programs. There's a lot of information in the report, and various programs have various pros and cons: flexibility, targeting, admin costs. It's a mix of programs and, really, it's a policy decision as to which are more efficient. It depends on the objective of each intervention.

How the funds are distributed also depends on the programs. There are some programs for which there is direct federal government intervention—for example, some homelessness programs and some CMHC programs. For others, it's by agreements with provinces, which is often the case when it comes to subsidized housing. Provinces also have their own programs when it comes to all these various areas of intervention.

It's really a mixed bag, and that's one of the things that I found in looking at the results of the work of Caroline, Ben and Mark. There is a very wide range of programs in this area.

I will go to Caroline or Ben on spending all the funds or not.

[Ben Segel-Brown, Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer]

It's possible to say that less was spent than was allocated to some years. For example, under rural and native housing, there was approximately $12 million allocated for the last few years, and they spent about $8 million. In that case, the funds that were distributed reflected the operating shortfall of the particular housing providers, so it was linked with the degree of need. These aren't programs that create new housing.

For the other programs, it's more difficult to say, because there is an allocation for the 10 years. In many cases, we're still at the very start of that. Particularly, the Canada community housing initiative has $200 million, of which we've spent only about $100,000.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

When was this program started?

[Ben Segel-Brown]

That was started in 2017, but the funding phases in over the 10 years of the national housing strategy.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

Over the course of this study, several witnesses talked about the problems with CMHC proposal-based funding programs.

Proposal-based funding creates excessive administrative burden for community-based housing providers. Moreover, communities with the greatest need may not have the capacity to access funding through this type of process.

Does your analysis support these views, and please explain why or why not? How could your analysis help CMHC to better ensure that its programs not only address the needs of indigenous families, but also provide good value for money?

[Yves Giroux]

Well, the analysis indicates that there are different administrative costs according to different programs. In that sense, the analysis could be very useful for CMHC, and also for other government departments involved in supporting housing and homelessness programs. They could look at how the admin costs vary. We all know that admin costs are funds disbursed that don't go to the intended recipients, so the government could aim to limit the admin costs so that more of the money goes directly to those in need of housing assistance or funds to address homelessness.

In that sense, there is a wealth of information in the report that could truly help CMHC and federal government departments better target their programs and reduce their admin costs. There is lots of information in the report, but there is also lots of information that we have in the office that did not get published because it's too detailed. We wanted you to have useful information, but we didn't want to overload the committee with too much information.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you. That was very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

Next we're going to go to Ms. Young, please, for six minutes.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to Mr. Giroux for being here today and for the report.

As you said, it's a wealth of information. I went over it in the last couple of days and was really struck by the fact that the provinces appear not to be using federal transfer payments on indigenous social housing.

Is that a fair assessment, as you see it?

[Yves Giroux]

Well, I would say it's difficult to make that blanket statement. Provinces and territories receive program funding from CMHC. They also receive general transfer payments, for example, equalization or Canada social transfer. Money is fungible, and it's not always clear exactly how much is coming from exactly which program that eventually gets spent.

There is some level of spending from the federal government that is a bit difficult to trace back to specific housing programs. As I said, money is fungible, so it could be money from other federal sources that ends up in these programs.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

I guess the fact of the matter is that there are so many different programs. That in itself is one of the problems here.

Do you think, as some of our witnesses suggested, that they need an indigenous CMHC, and that would be the answer to many of the problems that are faced with indigenous housing? Do you think that would be the way to go for the federal government?

[Yves Giroux]

That's probably an idea that is at least worth considering very seriously.

Right now, there are several departments involved in programs to support affordable housing and combat homelessness, including CIRNA, the Crown-indigenous relations department. If the funding for indigenous people were to be funnelled through one department, I think that would probably help focus the minds when it comes to clientele who have very specific needs, as demonstrated in our report. That's certainly an idea worth considering.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Page 28 of your report talks about how the total number of units targeted to indigenous people is not tracked by the provinces. This speaks to an earlier question about data.

How does your experience in analyzing all of this government data support other witnesses who told us there was a need for an indigenous-led data strategy by the government?

[Yves Giroux]

The report was based on data that was provided by government departments. In the course of drafting the report, we found that getting accurate, high-quality data proved to be a challenge. I'm not saying here that departments were unwilling to provide data, quite the opposite. They were collaborative in providing data, but the quality of the data itself was not what we would have expected.

To give you one quick example, we got updated data the week that we published the report. It is a bit late when you have a report of that magnitude to get revised data a couple of days before you go to publication, taking into account that you have to translate and publish the report.

Data quality is an issue. What you're suggesting could probably help solve at least in part that problem.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Would data also help in the area of discrimination based upon race and family status when it comes to indigenous people?

[Yves Giroux]

That's a very delicate question. I'm not sure if data in and of itself would be a sufficient condition to address that issue. It would certainly be a first step. Having better data would probably allow us to better quantify whether discrimination is present, first and foremost—my bet is it's probably present—and then to what extent, allowing governments to take better action against that.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

The Ontario Auditor General report suggests that the province hasn't been effective in negotiating guaranteed rents at or below market value for units.

Is that one of the problems here, especially, that it is different in each province so that indigenous peoples are treated quite differently depending on where their home is?

[Yves Giroux]

That certainly could be one of the issues because of the very different programs, the patchwork of programs, that exist across the country depending on where you live and which jurisdiction you depend on for affordable housing. It makes things much more complicated. Anybody who reads this report hoping to find one conclusion will be sorely disappointed for that very reason because there are wide differences across the country in terms of affordability of housing and also accessibility of housing programs. The needs vary across the country, but the support available also varies across the country. It makes it very complicated to come up with one easy picture of the solution, one easy fix to the problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor.