Human Resources Committee on Nov. 19th, 2020

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

My first question is for Madame Nicolet. You indicated briefly in response to the questions from Madame Chabot how friendship centres support urban indigenous people in securing safe and affordable housing. I concur. I think the funding amount is grossly inadequate.

I know that your organization has done a lot of advocacy on prioritizing an urban indigenous housing strategy as a way to end homelessness and housing insecurity. In fact, you're quoted as saying, “The absence of any reference to urban indigenous communities in the national housing strategy constitutes a barrier to ensuring [that] the needs of urban indigenous people are rendered visible across government.”

Can you expand a bit on that, briefly? I have a few questions and limited time.

[Juliette Nicolet]

I'll try to be brief.

That comment needs to be put in the context of the three-streams approach that the federal government takes as an approach to all indigenous things. Three streams—FNMI, or “distinctions-based”, however you want to call it—necessarily elides the existence of urban indigenous communities in engaging exclusively, at an official or formal level, or quasi-exclusively with only the “representative” organizations.

It becomes very difficult for urban indigenous concerns and legitimate demands to be advanced from a policy perspective and then to actually get any kind of traction around implementation. The fact that it doesn't get mentioned is a continuation of the erasure of urban indigenous realities across Canada.

Does that answer your question?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, that's perfect.

Thank you so much. I wish I had a lot of time, and unfortunately I don't.

Madam Camille, since the announcement of the national housing strategy in 2017, the federal government has promised an urban, rural and northern housing strategy. However, there still is no strategy. In my riding, 70% of individuals experiencing homelessness are indigenous and over half were in child welfare.

Given that those experiencing homelessness are mostly indigenous, why do you think the government keeps failing to prioritize the human right of housing for indigenous people?

[Carol Camille]

I believe that concerns the ownership and responsibility of having to deal with our past and bringing it forward. Housing is central to healing from the traumas of the past. I think that once that acknowledgement is out there and we start working on it, there is an opportunity for things to change.

There is never enough money to put into it, especially when it comes to healing. Healing is the very depth of what is needed to answer some of the housing questions of all our indigenous communities and organizations.

It's really challenging when the housing project comes out and there is no strategy for it. Indigenous housing needs to be—and I've heard it said here already today—indigenous-led, indigenous-run and indigenous-operated for indigenous people, because that is where we will get most of our answers.

I hope that answers your question.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes. Thank you very much.

I agree. I think the dispossession of our lands, and then our being left homeless on our own lands is tragic.

My last question could be for either one of you. A 2016 report by the Urban Aboriginal Knowledge Network found that urban indigenous organizations in all provinces are underfunded. Demand for services keeps rising, and yet governments continue to refuse to adequately fund organizations. At our last meeting on Tuesday, I raised the fact that the dollar amounts allocated for the indigenous strategy—and that, again, is not yet released—is a pittance in comparison to the actual need.

Can either one of you speak to the importance of funding that is adequate and sustainable on an ongoing basis?

Madam Nicolet.

[Juliette Nicolet]

This hearkens back a little to the question by Mr. Vis about sustainability. Three years is not sustainable funding. Let's start with that. What little funding is available is usually quite short term. Also, no government has not done this—it doesn't matter what stripe.

Everybody is really keen on funding things for one, two or three years—or maybe four, which is a good term. However, as Ms. Camille pointed out earlier, when it comes to housing, you need to have decades-long time frames, and that never happens.

That is a trend across programming. Provincially we have been able to negotiate better agreements. With the federal government, as well, we have a 10-year agreement around employment. That is the approach that needs to be taken consistently.

The amounts are always insufficient. Indigenous organizations are always operating at a deficit compared to their non-indigenous counterparts—absolutely consistently across the board. We see that Ontario, where the amounts are literally one-third to two-thirds different from the amounts received by similarly located organizations in the field of work they're in.

It is an ongoing struggle. What it speaks to, frankly, is systemic racism. We can underpay indigenous people and indigenous administrators. We can offer indigenous people crappier services. That's the mentality, and it is highly problematic.

It's great for government, because we friendship centres provide consistently high-level, quality services for very little money, and it ends up hurting us in the end because we do that, so we can continue to do it, and so government continues to underpay us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Gazan and Ms. Nicolet.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Next we're going to begin the second round of questions, with Ms. Falk for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today.

I want to thank the friendship centres as a whole for what they do. As Ms. Nicolet was saying, there are many services; it's not just one particular service. In my riding I've been able to meet students with summer student jobs through Canada summer jobs who have been employed through the friendship centres. It's great to see what they're doing with education, elders and even addictions services and that type of thing. I want to thank you for doing this.

We've heard so far—and it's been a theme this afternoon—that the funding coming in isn't enough, not just for the housing portion but for all the services that are offered by friendship centres.

Since we know that the services vary so much, I'm interested in knowing how the centres differ from location to location, in the sense of rural versus urban.

Ms. Camille mentioned in her opening remarks that rural and remote centres may not have housing programs available to them. I'm wondering what the federal government can do specifically to help mitigate this. Is it just funding, or are there creative ideas? It's so important that there be an indigenous-based lens, absolutely, and that goal is enhanced by having indigenous voices at the table developing the policies.

I'm looking at what specifically can be done to help in the rural and remote areas.

[Carol Camille]

I think it's working holistically to relieve those socio-economic barriers; it's not just an increase of funding in one area, but an increase in all areas.

To prevent and end homelessness in urban and rural communities, there's a lot of stuff to maintain the continuum around employment and education. Housing is one area. We can look back in history and see that when aboriginal people are living in a home or an area, they tend not to move around as often if housing is available for them within their own local community.

Bringing in stronger programming around housing, education and employment and making things happen on the ground where they live will be instrumental in being able to maintain the continuum for housing.

I strongly believe that the smaller communities.... Quite often, if you're a population of under 5,000, you can't apply for some of these programs. There are some that are available for those smaller communities, but they would not even begin to deal with the inadequate programming that's in place.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

I want to touch on health and safety. Every person needs safe housing. It contributes greatly to stability in life in general, and indigenous people aren't excluded from this truth; they definitely need safe housing as well.

I wonder whether you've noticed differences between urban and rural and remote locations, and whether being in, let's say, a remote or rural location versus an urban location adds another or a particular or different vulnerability to what first nations people experience.

I don't know whether that makes sense, but what are some of the other vulnerabilities, if there are any, that they may experience just by virtue of being in rural and remote areas, which may affect the housing situation?

[Carol Camille]

The first thing that comes into my mind is around stopping the violence for our families. It is one issue that in rural and remote communities is very challenging for us. Providing them with a safe home or transition housing and getting families to safe locations, we usually have to parachute them out of the community and put them into another centre.

I am, however, a strong believer that we can do it at home as well. We need to be provided the same supports as those communities that we have to transport them out to. Definitely this is an issue we would strongly like to look into so as to be able to offer those services within our community.

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

Wonderful. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Camille. Thank you, Ms. Falk.

Next we have Mr. Turnbull, please, for five minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, thank you for being here. This is great. I'm learning a lot already.

Ms. Nicolet, maybe I could ask you a clarification question or two first.

Earlier you said that about $1 billion would be a good start. I just wanted to ask if you felt like that was for Ontario. I know, or I think, you were speaking on behalf of the federation for Ontario. Were you talking nationally?

[Juliette Nicolet]

If my executive director were here, she would say to me, “Tell them Ontario.” So let's say, $1 billion for Ontario, and you can add up for the rest of the country.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

All right. Thank you.

You also talked about coordinated access, and you said it doesn't work for indigenous people. I just want to clarify what you meant by that, because I've done some work in supportive housing. I know how integrated services work, and people talk about intensive case management. I want to just understand a bit better what you meant by that. Maybe you could unpack that for us.

Thanks.

[Juliette Nicolet]

I realize we're tight on time, so I don't want to take up too much of it.

The critical piece there is the inside coordinated access. There's reliance on relationships and on referrals. Eight or nine times out of 10, the relationships with indigenous housing providers and indigenous community organizations, such as friendship centres, don't exist, and where they do, referrals are not made as regularly as they should be. People don't self-identify for fear of being discriminated against, and even when they do, they're not necessarily sent to the right places. Again, it's this circumstance in which the system is built for actor A, who's devoid of any kind of characteristics, and then you plug in an indigenous person and you're surprised that it doesn't work. Well, it doesn't work because there are specific needs that will never be addressed by a process that assumes everybody is the same.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that. It's really helpful.

Building on that answer, I think indigenous friendship centres have incredible social, intellectual and cultural capital, but perhaps we're talking today about the financial capital and the physical capital that is associated with housing, i.e., physical assets, that need to be purchased.

You talked about, and I think I actually read, a report on your website that suggested that about one third of friendship centres in Ontario are moving towards becoming housing providers. You've suggested that many more would move along that path.

How can friendship centres leverage the capital they already have, and where can we help most in enabling them to be successful at becoming housing providers? How does that work? What does the model look like?

[Juliette Nicolet]

In Ontario, there's a very specific set of circumstances, which are not necessarily replicated across the country. In the first instance, we have the Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services corporation, which is an organization that the friendship centres work with regularly to actually develop capital. Friendship centres in Ontario are able to do that with OAHS easily.

The other particularity in Ontario is that the provincial government provides a level of support for programming that is pretty much unmatched across the country, so we have a wide, wide range of provincially funded programs, including, for instance, child care.

One of the things to understand around housing is that there are all the different component pieces, and really, a blanket approach nationally is not going to work. For instance, in Ontario, maybe we need capital, but maybe we need operations, and maybe we need funding for the things that should be built around the housing. In other provinces, you'll need all three of those things, or maybe you'll need just one of those things.

This is where governments make the rest of us crazy. The lack of collaboration and inter-governmental coordination becomes very, very challenging and, frankly, stupid, because it's a lost opportunity to leverage what different actors are doing in the landscape to make a greater impact.

What can you do? I think you start by paying attention to what's happening on the ground in each place you're going, and then you figure out what's needed. You need to ask people. The needs in Lillooet are going to be different from those in Sioux Lookout or Moosonee, or Toronto for that matter. In fact, there might be more similarities between Sioux Lookout and Lillooet than there are between Toronto and Sioux Lookout or Toronto and Lillooet. Anyway, it's really about an approach that allows you to identify how best to leverage what funding you're providing as opposed to saying, “We're going to do this and it's going to be the same across the board”, which is not helpful.

Does that answer your question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Thank you, Ms. Nicolet.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you.

Your testimonies are very enriching—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Ms. Chabot, could you please adjust your microphone?

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

I have a little bit of a delinquent side, and I'm often set straight. I'm sorry.

Ms. Nicolet, you're right that there can't be a uniform policy from one province to another because the realities are different. For example, in Ontario, 85% of indigenous communities live in urban areas, while the opposite is true in Quebec, where the majority still live on reserves.

How could the real need for quality and affordable housing be estimated? I won't ask you to put a number on it, since you said that the solution must be sustainable, that a long-term vision is needed, and that piecemeal financing is not appropriate. The solution must take into account the realities of indigenous peoples and the fact that management, in every sense of the word, must be done by these communities.

How could we really estimate this need if we had to quantify it? I'm talking about quality and affordable housing. It would give us a better perspective to get to work to really meet the needs rather than doing it piecemeal. Could we get this data?