Evidence of meeting #8 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 métis.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Bindu Bonneau  Senior Director, Operations, Métis Urban Housing Corporation of Alberta Inc.
Robert Byers  President and Chief Executive Officer, Namerind Housing Corporation
Damon Johnston  President, Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg
Julia Christensen  Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Northern Governance and Public Policy, Memorial University, As an Individual

7:50 p.m.

President, Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg

Damon Johnston

Thank you.

Well, being the city with the highest per capita population of indigenous persons in the country—often Winnipeg is referred to as the largest urban reserve in Canada by many of our indigenous persons living here—we would expect, from a common-sense perspective, that there would be some level of correlation between supply and demand—in other words, between the need identified here in numbers, the waiting list for safe and affordable supportive housing in Winnipeg, and the size of the population. To me, that makes sense.

That's the first statement I'll make in that regard.

7:50 p.m.

Conservative

Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON

What sorts of numbers are we talking about today, in terms of waiting lists, in terms of appropriate non-crowded accommodation of those who need housing?

7:50 p.m.

President, Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg

Damon Johnston

I think the last number I saw from Manitoba Housing for people on the waiting list was around 5,500. A good percentage of those would be indigenous, because we have some of the highest need. We're working with the governments here now, municipal and provincial, to get better numbers. We need better data, in terms of the indigenous situation here in Winnipeg.

Through the WIEC collective I talked about earlier, we have a plan. In creating a community plan going forward, we want to work with the governments and other institutions to create the necessary database that will enable us to do some really comprehensive planning for that population of 114,000 I talked about earlier.

7:50 p.m.

Conservative

Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON

In the rapid housing initiative, half a billion dollars provides for applications from, among others, non-profit organizations and indigenous governing bodies. Are you aware of this program? Are applications in the works to see whether an appropriate amount of that $500 million might be targeted to Winnipeg's indigenous housing needs?

7:50 p.m.

President, Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg

Damon Johnston

I can update you. The City of Winnipeg was granted $12.5 million by the rapid housing initiative. They announced very recently that they've approved five projects for that total amount of money. Unfortunately, our village project didn't get consideration, because at that time we didn't have the land to build this village on. That changed just in the last couple of weeks. Now we're going to appeal directly to working with the city, and appeal back to the larger federal pot to see if there are any monies we can access that way for this project.

7:50 p.m.

Conservative

Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON

Among your solutions, are you looking for new neighbourhood space so that you could build, rather than 10, 15, 20 or 24 units, as in the case of the Thunderbird project, perhaps several times that number over a larger urban space acquired from the city?

7:50 p.m.

President, Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg

Damon Johnston

Yes, that's exactly right. We see this as a demonstration project, because we have 3,000 hard-core homeless persons in Winnipeg, and 70% of those are indigenous. As I said earlier, many of those individuals come to us with multiple challenges in terms of their health and addictions.

This demonstration project will be able to go ahead now if we get the rapid housing support. Thunderbird is allowing the project to be put up on a section of our property at the corner of Main Street and Higgins Avenue in Winnipeg. We have been told by the person who used to run CentreVenture, a city initiative organization, that there are minimum zoning issues with this particular site. We should be able to.... If we can find the resources, we plan to get this up and running prior to March 31, 2021.

7:55 p.m.

Conservative

Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON

Thank you.

7:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

Thank you, Mr. Johnston.

Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Next is Ms. Young, please, for six minutes.

7:55 p.m.

Liberal

Kate Young Liberal London West, ON

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both of our witnesses today.

Dr. Christensen, I was very interested in one of your reports, which I briefly read, called Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I often think, whenever we have a problem, that we should look to other centres to see how they compare.

Could you reflect on that and give us some insight into what you found?

7:55 p.m.

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Northern Governance and Public Policy, Memorial University, As an Individual

Dr. Julia Christensen

From the Australian context, the idea of spiritual homelessness, also known as “Koori homesickness”, was very profound for both Dr. Peters—she was the co-editor with me on that volume—and me. It was a concept we talked a lot about, as chapter contributors in that book.

It articulates the experiences of homelessness as needing to be situated within a colonial context, in the sense that dispossession, displacement and the role of intergenerational trauma, for example, really frame the social determinants of health that ultimately impact access to housing and the sustainability of housing. They also underline the need for indigenous-led and community-led housing strategies to address the very context-specific and culturally specific needs and wants that exist across indigenous communities.

As Mr. Johnston highlighted as well, when we're talking about indigenous housing, we're talking about diverse cultures and communities, not just in terms of rural versus urban, but also in the spectrum from Inuit to first nations to Métis. Within each of those groups, there are very different housing needs and priorities. We really had a lot to discuss on this, across the Canadian and Australian context in particular.

There's also a lot of innovative indigenous-led housing research that takes place in Australia and New Zealand. I would say this is something we also see in Canada. There's a need, however, for more housing researchers who are indigenous and who can have the kinds of conversations around indigenous housing priorities that are inaccessible for a settler scholar like me, which also allow for new forms of collaboration between university-based research and indigenous communities.

7:55 p.m.

Liberal

Kate Young Liberal London West, ON

Also, as Mr. Johnston pointed out, better data is needed.

7:55 p.m.

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Northern Governance and Public Policy, Memorial University, As an Individual

Dr. Julia Christensen

Exactly. The way housing needs are assessed currently is based on models that are typically not designed by indigenous communities. When you look across the territorial north, for example, they come from the level of the territorial government and are defined by territorial government. It becomes very difficult at the community level to articulate exactly what the needs are and where housing needs need to be prioritized.

7:55 p.m.

Liberal

Kate Young Liberal London West, ON

I was also very interested in something that you termed “home journeying”. Can you explain that concept and how it works into our discussion tonight?

7:55 p.m.

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Northern Governance and Public Policy, Memorial University, As an Individual

Dr. Julia Christensen

This began during my Ph.D. research, when I was looking at geographies of homelessness, in the Northwest Territories in particular. I have found, from people I was interviewing and collaborating with, who had lived experience of homelessness, that oftentimes their journeys through homelessness had actually been framed by efforts to attain or maintain a sense of home in moving from a smaller community to an urban centre, whether it was to follow children who had been apprehended by the state, for example, and placed in foster care, or whether it was to be with chosen kin, to be together with friends who were also living in shelter environments.

The significance of those connections with friends and family being very profound was something I felt was an opportunity to look at journeys through homelessness as also journeys towards home, and how those efforts to find, build and sustain home could actually be incorporated into the kinds of programs and services we offer, such as providing long-term housing support, ideally, for parents whose children are in care and providing spaces for them to be able to visit with their children.

The way the housing system is set up currently, if your children are apprehended, you are evicted from your housing, and without housing you can't regain custody of your children. It's this horrible catch-22 and cycle that parents find themselves in. Effectively, they become cut off from access to maintaining long-term meaningful connections with their children.

8 p.m.

Liberal

Kate Young Liberal London West, ON

It really speaks to the notion of “home is where the heart is”.

8 p.m.

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Northern Governance and Public Policy, Memorial University, As an Individual

Dr. Julia Christensen

Exactly. I think, too, it becomes a way for people who are experiencing homelessness to understand, to feel empowered and to see their efforts to maintain connections to family and friends as being something that should be supported through additional programming and wraparound services.

8 p.m.

Liberal

Kate Young Liberal London West, ON

Thank you very much.

8 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

Thank you, Ms. Young and Dr. Christensen.

8 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for six minutes, please.

8 p.m.

Bloc

Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC

Thank you both for your testimony.

Ms. Christensen, in a very recent article, you mentioned that federal funding to address the housing crisis, particularly in the northern territories, has been in decline for two decades and will be at zero by 2037. That's a pretty disturbing finding, and at the same time, it's perhaps not all that surprising. We are talking about the northern territories.

Could you tell us more about this and what the implications of such a decline would be in the short and long term?

8 p.m.

Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Northern Governance and Public Policy, Memorial University, As an Individual

Dr. Julia Christensen

The annual funding for social housing from the federal government has been declining since the early 1990s, as you mentioned. This has been replaced by large packages of funding that are announced on a piecemeal basis. This has been incredibly challenging for northern communities because it means that it becomes very difficult to engage in any long-term planning. There is no certainty from year to year that there will be funding that can be depended on, and it makes it very difficult to see programs evolve and to be flexible and responsive to evolving needs.

What happens is that large packages of funding are announced, and they seem quite significant—millions and billions of dollars. However, in actuality, when you look at, for example, the national housing strategy and the $240 million that was dedicated to Nunavut to address chronic housing need, that actually translates into 48 new units per year under the national housing strategy. It's a drop in the bucket when you look at the number of housing units that are actually required in Nunavut.

It becomes difficult to really address the full scope of the issue. It becomes difficult to engage in long-term planning. It also means that when funding is directed through territorial governments and not directly to communities, communities have to basically respond, bend and reshape their housing needs under the priorities set at the territorial government level.

It just becomes very difficult to engage in long-term planning, ultimately, which I keep coming back to as being a tremendous challenge in addressing and really making a dent in the northern housing crisis.

8 p.m.

Bloc

Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand from your answer that one of the solutions would be for funding to be predictable and sustainable rather than in the form of project grants or envelopes, where you don't know if the money will still be available tomorrow.

Thank you for your answer. By the way, I congratulate you for all your research and studies, it's all very instructive.

Mr. Johnston also spoke a little earlier about the lack of a cultural and historical approach in the government's homelessness policies for Canada's north, and the lack of resources for nation-specific issues.

How can we respond specifically to different nations? Can programs that are distinctive respond adequately?

8:05 p.m.

President, Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg

Damon Johnston

Was I asked a question? I didn't get the translation.

8:05 p.m.

Bloc

Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC

I put the question to Ms. Christensen, but if Mr. Johnston can answer, that would be fine too.