Human Resources Committee on Nov. 19th, 2020

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Hache.

Next is Mr McLeod for six minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the presenters today. It's a very interesting discussion indeed, and a very important issue to be reviewing.

My question is for Arlene Hache.

First of all, welcome, Arlene. It's good to see you here. I know you've had a long career spanning decades working on the ground, helping people, helping the homeless, helping women, helping families and helping people find shelter in the north. You've seen many programs. You've seen many projects come and go. Some were successful. Some were not.

I think you earlier started to talk about solutions. In your opinion, if you were in a position to design a program today that would best illustrate all your knowledge and expertise, what would that look like?

[Arlene Hache]

Well, I think we have to start from where people are, not where we think they should be.

Twenty years ago we did low-barrier housing because I experienced homelessness. My goal was to get women out of the cold. How they behaved and my expectations were secondary to that. Now, 30 years later, everybody is on a trend talking about low-barrier housing as if it were a new thing.

That's how community people are: everything is low-barrier, because they're so inclusive. I think of low-barrier housing as housing controlled by community people, designed by community people and delivered by community people.

A community from the Northwest Territories contacted me today. It wants to develop a housing project, but to do it, the housing corporation is insisting the housing become the property of the housing corporation, not of the community. That's a case of “don't do it that way”.

The other thing they talked about is vandalism in small communities. I said we're interested and we have the support of construction workers to train women to construct and maintain their own housing so that vandalism isn't an issue.

I think it's a question of tying education and skills into housing models and having diverse housing models. Women I know don't want to live with five other women and 50 other kids; they want their own home and they want to be able to support their own families in an appropriate way.

I could go on about lots of different solutions. There are many. I've seen them and I've seen them work. I'd like to have a deeper conversation with people about that.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I also want you to touch on some of the challenges we're seeing with on-the-ground support. You mentioned that the Government of Northwest Territories has the NWT Housing Corporation, which has a number of programs. It focuses on the programs it delivers.

CMHC has one person in the north—one person who deals with people in the Northwest Territories and also deals with Nunavut. He's on holidays right now, so he's gone for two weeks; then he's going to have to self-isolate for two weeks. There's a month gone while we're trying to deal rapidly with housing applications. I'm getting a lot of calls from people asking where they should go and how they can get help.

Do you feel that if we had more capacity, more expertise in the regions of the north helping people apply and put proposals together, we would see more success in drawing down the number of applications?

I know that COVID has shone a brighter light on this, but the reality is that we still have programs we're having a hard time getting in the north, such as the co-investment fund and others.

[Arlene Hache]

I'll give you one example. Do you remember the Arnica Inn? It's an example in which the two departments, the federal government's and the territorial government's, were not talking. The women's group was ready to go ahead; the person who owned the hotel was ready to go ahead. These two governments couldn't talk and blamed each other, so the deal was off the table.

COVID hit, and two weeks later the deal was back on the table, and within probably three months the hotel was bought, housing was provided, and people had housing. What that taught me is that those governments can work together.

You must have heard, though, that $60 million given by the federal government to the territorial government has been sitting there and is sitting there two years later.

Of course I flipped out. I said, if you can't move it out, I can move it out for you. I actually know how to write proposals and know how to talk to community people.

I think you're right: we need more resources. My big thing, however, is that there's a perception that the federal government is too far removed to be the avenue of support. Not in my books; in my books, I'd rather work with the federal government any day than with the territorial government, because for some reason the territorial government is totally immobilized.

There have to be on-the-ground resources, yes, but there has to be a federal avenue to access those resources without necessarily going to the territorial government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Mr. McLeod.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I hope I have enough time to ask one more question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Okay. Go ahead, very quickly.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I just want to mention the concern about putting all of the money for homelessness into the capital city in the Northwest Territories, which causes an outmigration from the small communities.

Could you just quickly touch on how it needs to be across the board?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Please give short answer, Ms. Hache.

[Arlene Hache]

At the end of the day, housing in Yellowknife is not required. It has to go to the communities, but they wouldn't have the capacity to write the proposals. All of that money, $60 million, should not be located in Yellowknife, none of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Hache. Thank you, Mr. McLeod.

I now give the floor to Ms. Chabot for six minutes.

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

Thank you.

I hope the sound is better. I had to change platforms at IT's recommendation.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for accepting our invitation to appear before the committee. Their testimonies are great.

My questions are for Chief Haymond.

I have several questions for you about the shortcomings of the programs put in place for First Nations. In fact, I have read that in the National Housing Strategy, the 2017-18 budgets provided $600 million over three years, specifically to support housing on First Nations reserves. I understand from your testimony that these amounts are clearly insufficient. Among the gaps, you mentioned chronic underfunding. I would like to know if you are seeing any improvements.

You said that we need new ways of doing things in terms of governance. You said that one of the issues is that 20% of the need is for migration of members who live off reserve.

Could you tell us more about these issues?

Thank you very much.

[Chief Lance Haymond]

First off, I'm not getting the interpretation.

I don't mind because I understood the majority of your questions. However, I will answer in English.

You're right that it has been a challenge. Current programs fall far short of meeting our housing needs in Quebec. We have figures that show that the needs of first nations in Quebec have gone from 7,000 units in 2000 to 10,000 units in 2018.

Part of the explanation can be found in the housing portion of the annual capital base budgets of first nations, which have remained the same since 1990. We know that over the past 30 years, the consumer price index has experienced a phenomenal increase; however, cost provisions for material and labour have not kept pace with the reality of building housing in communities.

This pandemic is the prime example of how this is going to cause further grief. I'll give you an example.

Earlier in March, just before the pandemic, my community negotiated a budget with Indigenous Services and the Province of Quebec to build a brand new police station. We negotiated a budget for $2.7 million to build that police station. When we opened our offices back up in June and started to facilitate having the discussions, we went out and got a new estimate, and the cost had increased from $2.7 million to $3.177 million in the space of three months. That's just one example.

Our figures also show that significant improvement occurs when the federal government injects additional funds into first nations housing. When this happens, the needs curve does not decrease, but we see it flexing. Otherwise, the growth of the housing stock of the communities depends on regular federal budgets.

I mentioned earlier that CMHC's budgets build about 60 units in Quebec, and in total we build around 225 to 250 on average per year, but that's only because first nations communities are investing so many of their own dollars to achieve those meagre numbers of units.

The current and foreseeable context suggests a worrying future. In fact, the magnitude of the needs, the growing demographics, and the increase in construction costs risk leading us to a deterioration in the housing conditions of first nations members, with funding remaining status quo.

We've seen in particular that when CEAP in 2009-10 was put forward as a stimulus, it had a positive impact. The funding, $600 million over three years, put more money into the system, allowing us to build more units.

I hope that responds to your question.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

You mentioned the migration of members living off-reserve, which accounts for 20% of the need.

What problems or challenges does this cause?

[Chief Lance Haymond]

Well, it causes an increased demand in a community that already has huge housing needs internally. With the young demographics that we have, we see new family formations happening quite quickly, so the demand inside the community is already large. When members want to come back and live in communities, normally they get put on a waiting list, and they will wait in some instances for years—

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

Okay.

[Chief Lance Haymond]

—unless they have the financial ability to move in the direction of home ownership, which is also an important aspect. Housing is not just social housing. We need to have a spectrum of housing that meets the various realities of communities.

In some communities close to urban centres, you will see that the vast majority of their stock is home ownership, but the further you get away from those urban centres, the more reliance and dependence on social housing increases; it's proportional to the distance away from major centres.

Often people leave because of poor housing situations, but after a while living in the city—as Madam Hache mentioned, with the inherent risks that come with moving to cities—these people want to come back to their home community for culture, for safety, and just for the reality of.... Do you know what? As an indigenous person, it's hard to live in a city after you've spent the majority of your life living in a first nation community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Chief Haymond.

Merci, Madam Chabot.

Next we have Ms. Gazan for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for coming here to provide your important testimony.

My first question is for Madam Hache. I just want to start by thanking you for the critical work you're doing in advocating for 24-7 low-barrier safe spaces. That's something I've fought really hard for. I have certainly worked very closely with my colleague Adam Vaughan, as well as with advocates in our community who've been fighting for this for nine years to get the first low-barrier safe space open just a couple of months ago. I really commend your work because I know it's life-saving work.

We also know that the need for low-barrier safe spaces for women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA individuals is part of one of the calls to justice in the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. The first part is establishing how important it is as a life-and-death measure and ensuring that we not just establish 24-7 safe spaces but also ensure ongoing sustainable funding for these lifesaving places.

[Arlene Hache]

First, I would like to say that these spaces have to be run by indigenous people. We've had, for example, indigenous women who have had to talk into a box outside to get into a shelter and they haven't been allowed into the shelter because there was an assumption that they had been drinking. Because of that, they have gone back home. So there has to be not only 24-7 but also ongoing funding, permanent funding, to ensure that women can move from high-risk situations to safe spaces to private-market safe spaces, if I can call them that.

It's a very long road, so those arbitrary timelines that people put on someone's journey from where they were to where they need to be are damaging and destructive and counterproductive, and they create a cycle. Our funding generally goes for one year—the maximum it's ever gone is three years—when actually we've been able to demonstrate evidence-based standards of excellence and excellent service delivery. So why wouldn't we make that permanent the way you do with education? You know, if you can demonstrate that you know how to do your job and do it well, why wouldn't there be permanent core funding?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

I have one more question for you, with regard to children in care.

I live in the city of Winnipeg. We have been called the epicentre for the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. In fact, we're the reason it started, because of an incident with the young Tina. That being said, we know that one of the groups at highest risk for violence, for being murdered or for going missing is girls aging out of care, indigenous young women aging out of care.

We know that even now, even though we know this is true as we've seen in the national inquiry, there's not enough action on the ground to make sure that our young women are safe. What are a couple of first steps that you think need to happen immediately to ensure safety for kids aging out of care, often into poverty and homelessness?

[Arlene Hache]

The first thing that needs to happen is to again hear that voice of lived experience from those young people, because there is a presumption that the system is their advocate. In fact, I've had it said to me and, really, I've watched it over four decades. There's nothing more destructive to a community than child welfare bodies, child welfare authorities, because they are literally incapable of understanding or taking a strength-based approach. They talk about it, but they actually don't know how to do it. We developed a family support model that we went to elders with, and the elders told us that's how we talk about it all the time but nobody listens to us. There are natural traditional ways of supporting families, which no one is hearing about, so we have to go back to the community and talk to them about how they naturally support families, because they know how to do it.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much for your wisdom. I'm enjoying having you on our committee today so much. It's good for the heart.