Human Resources Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

I agree with that. The situation of not having a fourth direction is really quite offensive to me. We have, over the last 40 to 60 years, built infrastructure in urban centres. We have thousands of board members across the country. We have thousands of volunteers. We have thousands of staff. We have an infrastructure that would take 50 to 100 years for first nations to establish. Unfortunately, they don't have the ability to serve their members when they're situated across the country the way they are.

In our scenario, if my three kids are registered to Norway House First Nation, their chief is not going to come here and meet their education, housing and health needs. It's just not going to happen. They don't have the ability and the infrastructure to do that.

I'm thankful and supportive of the government's recent actions to support first nations, Métis and Inuit people, as distinct people. We all support that. However, we also support the fact that 80% of the population lives in urban centres, and we're not meeting the current needs of those people in the current structure we have, and nor would we with the amount of money that is being allocated to the three distinct nations.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

If we're going to transfer block funding, multi-year funding, which is the recommendation you put forward here, with indigenous-led design and deliver housing programs, what steps have been taken to make sure there is an organization on the other side of the table to actually hand over block funding, to manage that funding, to manage the disbursal of that funding to the different urban, rural, remote areas, and to northern settings?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Currently, under the Reaching Home program, we have an indigenous caucus from across the country that represents the different community entities from across the country. In that scenario, there's a ready opportunity to provide block funding to that type of an agency to meet the needs on the Reaching Home side.

Clearly, there is a distinction between housing programs and homelessness programs. Those who are providing housing don't necessarily deal with the issues of homelessness and the dire needs of homeless populations to be served. The 24 hours a day, 7 days a week care, the hardest to house of the populations, the supportive housing services that they need on an ongoing basis, they're quite different from the family housing projects across the country where you're providing merely a subsidy for someone to survive and function on a daily basis.

I support the fact that there should be a distinction between the two: a Reaching Home pot of resources that continues to go on a national basis to indigenous organizations in urban, rural and remote communities; and a pot of money that goes for a housing strategy for urban, rural and remote indigenous communities.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Would you see a single organization blending those two streams into a continuum, so they work together, but not necessarily at the same time on the same issue? Would you see that as part of a [Inaudible--Editor] structure that would be functional?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Yes, it would.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

Mr. Schmale, you have five minutes.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and our witnesses.

This is a great conversation today, by the way. I'd like to build on what Chief Ralph Leon Jr. was talking about, if I could, and then I'll swing back and forth because I've got a lot of questions here.

I'd like to build on the comments that were made regarding the relationship with the federal government. From what he said—if I interpreted it correctly—the current relationship with the federal government isn't working. The status quo isn't working, so we need a new relationship that also focuses on the economic reconciliation as well. Did I understand what you're saying correctly?

[Chief Ralph Leon Jr.]

I believe so. When we try to do things, communication takes time. Maybe there's changeover or maybe there are elections coming up and everybody has to go like this for a little while till the election is over. Then we get lost in the system. We try to communicate with different ministers to have meetings with them and it's just not happening.

We have resolutions from the AFN that are just not being looked at. They're not being read. We just had an AFN meeting—our BCAFN meeting—with some of our ministers, and the only reply we got was that they were sorry that they didn't have time to look at our resolutions. Those resolutions are very important to us. They affect everybody on reserve, off reserve, in nearby cities and in nearby communities.

A lot of our native housing here in the Fraser Valley.... If I go to native housing nearby, I would never see any of my own people in there. I've never seen my neighbouring communities' people in there. It's all people from every other place and there's no place for our own people to go.

If we had that block funding for housing and infrastructure, we could do it. I know Sts'ailes can do it.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I liked what you said, too—and it's something that's come out in different testimony in this committee and others—about how the federal government has a block of money, then it goes to the province and then it goes to another level. Eventually, as it works its way through the system, that amount you're getting is smaller and smaller, until it comes to your community. Then you're basically looking at the bigger pie and saying that you should be getting that, not this.

[Chief Ralph Leon Jr.]

Holy, man, you just hit it right on the button. That's exactly the way it goes with that three or four-pronged funding. The main funding is from the federal government and it goes to the province in Victoria and then it goes to the municipalities. Then Indian Affairs comes here and dictates what we can build, how we can build it and when we can build it.

We Sts'ailes are ready to do all of that on our own. I don't know if we're looked at any differently from those who are in treaty or non-treaty. We're an independent band. We're a successful band. I have full confidence that a lot of our neighbours can probably do the same. Even those who are in treaty could do the same. They could manage their own funds.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

What about the idea of a first nations infrastructure institute where communities can do public-private partnership, manage their own money and kind of take out the middlemen, so to speak, which are the different levels of government? You'd be able to go to this indigenous, first nations, Inuit or Métis-led organization and give your proposal and get on with it, because it's run by people who live in your community or nearby.

[Chief Ralph Leon Jr.]

I think it's an awesome suggestion. When I give out a portfolio, if it's housing, you're in charge of all funds, all infrastructure and so on. If we did that with the federal government and the MP of housing, if he was elected, if he was appointed to be the housing infrastructure MP, then he looks after that money. It follows that this MP, whoever he is, if it was done that way and comes straight to the communities that applied for that money for housing infrastructure.... We never get dollars for those who live off reserve.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

What about potential off-ramps from the Indian Act for the bands that want to get away from it? Would you support something like that if there were the ability to do so, to choose whether or not you wanted to remain or leave?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Make it a very quick answer if you could, Chief. We're out of time.

[Chief Ralph Leon Jr.]

I fully support not utilizing Indian Affairs. As I said before, they take the majority of our funds and by the time our funds get to us, for me to build a new house, what I get from them is very little: $20,000. If I was to go to a nearby city, I would probably need $200,000. There's no balance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Chief, and Mr. Schmale.

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

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

Good evening to our witnesses. Thanks for your presentations tonight. They're very informative and interesting.

I want to follow up a little on Mr. Vaughan's line of questioning.

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

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

There is no interpretation.

It's working now.

Thank you.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

I want to follow up a little on process and I'll give you a quick example. I was an MP first in 2015, and one of the first meetings I had was with a group that wanted to do some housing in my riding of Saint John—Rothesay. No, it wasn't an indigenous group, but it was a group that wanted to do housing, so I was excited to have the meeting. I was excited to go back to Ottawa and advocate for housing, but then I found out very quickly that housing was provincial, and the feds had agreements with the provinces on housing. It led to one frustration after another. Then obviously I know that federally we came forth with the co-investment housing program and the rapid housing initiative.

Mr. Lawson, I read an article or saw something online about you and the headline was “Indigenous-led projects seek housing solutions”. There was a picture of you with the steering committee. I understand your objective and what you want to do, but what can we do federally to make that happen? We can deliver dollars directly to a rapid-housing initiative, or we can do housing agreements with the provinces, but in the end what do you need to make it happen for you on the ground, to go from announcements to housing being built?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

I"m going back to a little history in housing. When the Meech Lake accord was happening and the provinces and the feds were arguing about the division of powers, the provinces wanted the authority over housing and the feds devolved their national housing program and the dollars that went with that to each of the provinces. We ended up in that particular case as short-changed communities—all of us did across the country. What ended up happening was that the provinces decided to take this transfer of housing into their communities, like B.C. for example, did really well with the monies it received. But in other provinces that wasn't the case. Saskatchewan is an example, I think you heard testimony from Robert Byers, indicating that the province doesn't provide any housing. They're not interested in doing homelessness services.

A patchwork of programs across the country causes a shortage of housing for us all across the country. If we had a national housing strategy for the indigenous community, we could avoid part of that.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

I'll just jump in here. A few witnesses in past testimony talked about potentially having an indigenous CMHC-style organization that could oversee that. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

As I think I mentioned earlier, we support the creation of a national indigenous housing coalition or council that would be responsible for delivering resources across the country. Should it be CMHC-like? I'm not so sure. There are good things about CMHC and there are not-so-good things about CMHC. The good things that I recall, because I used to be a CMHC employee years and years ago, was the section 56.1 program I mentioned earlier, which seemed to work really well across the country.

In the current CMHC model, it's not working and functioning quite as well as it used to, because they lack the legislation or the regulations or guidelines to actually have that happen. If we had a national indigenous housing council that had some authority and responsibility and had the resources, it would allow the indigenous community to decide what the priorities are, like we do in the Reaching Home program, where we have community advisory boards that set priorities and set policies and set principles. We need to do that on a national scale for indigenous housing for us to address our needs.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Okay. Thanks for that.

Ms. McGee, thanks for your testimony. I think I read that Homeward Trust had a goal of creating 900 units within five years. I also looked with interest at a proposal you had to build a 50-unit supportive housing complex at McArthur Industrial. Is that correct?

[Susan McGee]

Yes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Is that project built now? Where is that project?