Evidence of meeting #16 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
CMHC did not provide that data to us.
Liberal
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
No. They gave us a list of all the projects and all the corresponding data, but only for projects that committed to creating indigenous units. We don't have the overall.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Okay.
Getting back to the Canada housing benefit, you say that only about 21% of the dollars have been spent. That's entirely under the jurisdiction of the provinces, right? Of the money that's been given to them, they're sitting on the unspent dollars. Is that what that figure indicates? We have transferred it. They haven't spent it. B.C., for example, has just announced that they'll be rolling out the Canada housing benefit despite the fact that they were transferred the dollars last year.
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Yes. Our report shows that in 2019—it's the first data for which we have reporting—no indigenous households received assistance from the Canada housing benefit—
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Did you get a racialized breakdown on all groups that received the Canada housing benefit?
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
It's part of the required reporting under their bilateral agreements that they identify the number of indigenous households who've received Canada housing benefits—
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
So unless the federal government makes it explicit that it be spent on indigenous households, we don't have jurisdiction there if the provinces refuse.
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Yes. We would have no cause to complain if they did not spend.... It would not be a breach of the bilateral agreement for them to not spend that money on indigenous housing units.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
—spend on indigenous housing, we have to do it federally. Okay.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Mr. Vaughan.
Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Mr. Giroux, is it possible to include in your analysis a picture of how the amounts transferred to the provinces for housing and homelessness assistance have evolved over the past few years? The provinces are expecting money that could be used wisely.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I will ask Ms. Nicol and Mr. Segel-Brown if we have a history of those changes. If we do, we can send it to you.
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Yes, we have the spending under the prior rapid housing initiative, which started in 2014. There was an increase in spending....
I'm sorry, it's not the rapid housing initiative, it's the homelessness partnering strategy. We have data for the prior homelessness partnering strategy. We could provide the spending for that over the past years. There was an increase in spending from the homelessness partnering strategy to the current Reaching Home strategy.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
In your study, Mr. Giroux, you put a lot of emphasis on the large proportion of indigenous households with a large number of people, which you also mentioned earlier.
According to your analysis, what challenges would this pose for programs in the area of appropriate housing construction?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Obviously, I do not work in the housing construction market, but I can say that the particular challenge of this situation is to offer housing with more bedrooms, that is, more than what the market is used to providing to the general population.
The market is often based on the needs of a typical family with two or three children, whereas, when dealing with or building with an indigenous clientele in mind, more housing with more bedrooms than usual and slightly larger living spaces must be provided.
So builders must consider an average household size that is slightly larger than what one would normally expect for a non-indigenous household.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Ms. Chabot.
Next is Ms. Gazan please, for two and a half minutes.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have a jurisdictional question. My colleague, Adam Vaughan, was speaking about provinces and the feds. In Manitoba, we often miss out on a lot of the funding opportunities due to the cost-matching requirements—something that our current Pallister government doesn't want to do. This has negatively impacted Winnipeg, for example, in terms of being able to secure adequate housing investment even when we are experiencing severe issues like trench fever—diseases of poverty—and losses to life in our community, which are becoming a regular occurrence in my riding.
How can this be changed to ensure that cities in dire need of housing dollars are not disqualified from funding when provinces aren't willing to participate in cost-matching programs?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
That's an interesting question. I would probably make the parallel with infrastructure programs. The federal government partners with provinces and territories for cost matching when it comes to building infrastructure, and some jurisdictions don't have the same means or policy priorities. In these cases, direct federal investment—going it alone—is usually the best way to ensure that some pieces of infrastructure are built that do not require cost matching and that there are federal programs that don't need or require cost matching by provinces.
It also means that the federal spending does not leverage provincial funding, but it's an effective way of ensuring that some needs are met despite what provinces want or do not want to do.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I appreciate that. It's clearly not working in Manitoba, and I feel like the provincial government is becoming the greatest excuse in the world for everybody not to help people dying on the street.
I want to go back to a question I had before about the $12.5 million. It was clearly not adequate, and it didn't work in terms of where people were qualified to get the funding. How much more would be needed? What would be a reasonable ballpark, considering the dire situation we're in in Winnipeg, with the greatest housing need?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
That's an interesting question. I don't have the numbers for Winnipeg per se, but we made an attempt at answering that question on page 38 of the English version. For example, we gave the cost to address 25% of the affordability gap for 100% of indigenous households in housing need. Another table shows the cost to provide x per cent of indigenous households in housing need with a typical indigenous housing unit.
We tried to give an order of magnitude for the country as a whole, but I don't have the data for Winnipeg, or Manitoba.
February 16th, 2021 / 5:45 p.m.
Liberal