Human Resources Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number nine of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of September 23. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

So that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee. To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules.

Members and witnesses, you may speak in the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available at this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either the floor, English of French. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you're on video conference, please click the microphone icon to unmute yourself, and please be sure to close your mike when you don't have the floor. I'll remind you that all comments by members should be addressed through the chair.

Because of the delay due to the votes in the House, we've asked the witnesses to be prepared to appear as one large panel. I want to thank them for their accommodation in that regard.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses: Grand Chief Serge Simon of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake; Chief Ralph Leon Jr. of the Sts'ailes First Nation; from Homeward Trust Edmonton, Susan McGee, CEO, and Matthew Ward, manager, planning and engagement; and from Lu'ma Native Housing Society, Marcel Lawson-Swain, chief executive officer.

Grand Chief Simon, you have five minutes for your opening remarks. Welcome to the committee. You have the floor.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Andrew Wilson]

I'm sorry, Mr. Casey, but Grand Chief Simon isn't here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Okay. We're going to move to Ms. McGee.

You have five minutes. Go ahead.

[Susan McGee, Chief Executive Officer, Homeward Trust Edmonton]

Thank you very much, and good afternoon. It's great to be invited back as a witness for this committee and its important role. My name is Susan McGee. I am the chief executive officer of Homeward Trust Edmonton. We are a community-based organization using a system-planning approach to end homelessness in Edmonton. We are a local entity reporting on and supporting the implementation of Reaching Home, and we have actively supported the evolution of our national housing strategy and homelessness strategies through a variety of ways.

I am also the regional representative for Alberta on the board of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, and have been a member of CHRA's indigenous caucus since its inception. I'm joined by Matthew Ward, the manager of planning and engagement at Homeward Trust. Matt's role includes supporting the indigenous advisory council in our current consultation to inform the next phase of our pandemic response to indigenous community members in Edmonton.

Homeward Trust brings together funding from all orders of government to support service providers, indigenous communities, and government partners in Edmonton to collectively plan, action and monitor solutions to end homelessness. We have served as the local entity since 1999. In 2008 we restructured, merging two other organizations under one comprehensive structure, with a minimum of four of our nine board members identifying as indigenous and with a separate indigenous advisory council serving as the indigenous community advisory board.

We're grateful for the opportunity to speak today about the Government of Canada's examination of urban, rural and northern indigenous housing solutions to end homelessness for indigenous people. As is the case across Canada, indigenous people are greatly overrepresented amongst those experiencing homelessness in Edmonton, with indigenous people currently representing 58% of our by-names list, while indigenous people make up roughly 5% of our city's total population, and this is growing.

Homeward Trust works in partnership with and directly funds 14 local indigenous organizations, using Reaching Home indigenous funding but also our Reaching Home designated communities funding and our provincial and municipal resources as well. This is done to maximize the use of this funding while reducing the administrative work for front-line agencies to support the outcomes for multiple funders, and to support the coordinated sector response.

This committee has heard from indigenous leaders and organizations on the critical importance of increased investment directly targeting the housing and support needs of indigenous community members. There are multiple sources that document the reality that indigenous people living in urban, rural and northern communities face specific challenges in having their needs met, wherever they are, through indigenous-led efforts that are best positioned to understand and address local community needs.

Homeward Trust supports the “for indigenous, by indigenous” approach before the committee and recognizes that a specific national strategy that is indigenous-led is required. Such a strategy should leverage the experience and knowledge of local organizations and leaders, and support local priorities that reflect the specific needs of their communities as well as the diversity of indigenous culture across our country.

The need for affordable housing has so outpaced existing resources for so long and the projects that meet real affordability requirements and provide sufficient supports to enable individuals and families the opportunity to improve their circumstances are so challenging to develop and deliver with current application requirements that we are in a deep hole. The overrepresentation of indigenous people among those requiring housing is well known. Without a specific national indigenous housing strategy to drive outcomes, we will perpetuate these circumstances for generations to come.

Many studies have come to the same conclusion. They may vary in their amounts or in where costs are incurred, but we know that homelessness costs more than its solutions. We know what those solutions are. We understand the importance of clear plans, and relying on evidence and targets drives much of our work at Homeward Trust. However, we also understand that perfection is the enemy of the good. We strongly encourage members of the committee and all members of Parliament to prioritize action and move forward with the well-earned confidence in indigenous organizations and leaders as partners in this effort.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Matt and I will be available for questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Ms. McGee.

Next is Chief Leon.

Go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Chief Ralph Leon Jr., Sts'ailes First Nation]

Thank you.

First of all, thank you for the invite to be here today. I didn't know what kind of meeting I was coming to. Brad pretty much just “voluntold” me where I was going to be, what I was going to be doing and what kinds of choices I was going to help make. I'm always honoured to put in my two cents or my hundred dollars, whatever it may be. Sometimes you have to put your hand up and tell me to be quiet, because I turn into a politician and start talking and talking.

We're talking about housing today. We're in a rural setting. Our community is up to an hour's drive either way to a city setting. To go out and shop for groceries, you really have to plan. When you go grocery shopping, you fill up your gas tank, feed your family on the way out, go shopping and then come back.

Only about half our membership lives in our community. We have a long waiting list for housing, but we've been pretty creative with our micro homes, the one-bedroom homes and the two-bedroom homes. We've been building quite a few of those. Our young people can utilize those homes, proving themselves or building their families. Before that, if anybody got a house, it would have been the big families. They had the big families and they'd get the house regardless, so that was a problem.

A lot of our homes were built in the eighties by CMHC and Indian Affairs. The contractors would come in to build a house and take as many shortcuts as they could in order to make a quick buck in our communities. That is a problem today. We're applying for funds for renovations. Why? Because we have mould in our attics. We have mould in our homes because of poor ventilation, or we're having to restore the outside of our homes because the slope of our homes and our yards isn't very well done. We have to be pretty creative here in Sts'ailes.

We're an independent band. We're an independent tribe. We're not in treaty. We're not in a treaty process, and we don't believe in a treaty process. We believe in a reconciliation agreement that we will be working on some day soon, hopefully, as soon as the pandemic allows us to.

We're going to put the invitation out to our MP Brad Vis, who has already come here a couple of times and has viewed our community, which is a good thing. You can't work with a community unless you know who you're working with. We're going to build that relationship our way. We'll set the table and invite him here. Then we'll talk about business in a good way.

We need to make it [Inaudible--Editor]. In our language, [Inaudible--Editor] means the interconnectedness that we all have together. We all have interconnectedness one way or another, because we're from only one Mother Earth, each and every one of us. We're from one mother. That's what our elders tell us, and that's always our teaching.

I'm glad and I look forward to Brad coming here and working with us. The housing is really important to us. We need a place to call home.

[Inaudible--Editor].

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Chief Leon.

Next we will go to Mr. Lawson-Swain, please, for five minutes.

[Marcel Lawson-Swain, Chief Executive Officer, Lu'ma Native Housing Society]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm joining you today from Delta, British Columbia, on the traditional territory of the Tsawwassen First Nation. I am the CEO of Lu'ma Native Housing Society, First Funds Society, Lu'ma Medical Centre society, the Aboriginal Land Trust, and Lu'ma Development Management Ltd. I am also co-chair of the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council, a committee member of the national indigenous homes innovation initiative, and a committee member of the national indigenous urban, rural and remote homelessness caucus. I'm also a lawyer by profession.

It is a pleasure to appear before this committee on behalf of the Lu'ma group of companies. I want to thank the committee for listening to indigenous Canadians and hearing the concerns and fiscal challenges of the indigenous housing and homelessness service providers from across the country.

Lu'ma began 40 years ago with the simple dream of providing affordable housing to indigenous peoples. Since then our society has morphed into a broad-based community organization that provides a wide range of services. These include social housing, affordable housing, modular housing, homelessness services, youth programming, the Aboriginal Patients' Lodge, medical services, community voice mail, and project development services for social-purpose real estate.

We are also the community entity on behalf of the indigenous and non-indigenous communities in the GVRD and throughout other parts of the province of British Columbia pursuant to the federal government's Reaching Home program. Our aspiration is to see a day when urban and rural and remote indigenous peoples experience the same level of access to housing and services that are afforded to all other Canadians and the distinction-based nations—namely, first nations, Métis and Inuit. To achieve this goal, it will take political will and bold and courageous actions on the part of the government and Canadians alike.

It should be noted that urban, rural and remote indigenous peoples are the have-nots in this country, and for the most part are landless and distinctionless as a peoples. We are experiencing gross and systemic violations of the right to housing. In Canada approximately 80% of indigenous peoples live in urban, rural and remote communities. Although we comprise approximately 4% of the total population, we are overrepresented in the homeless population across this country. The range of homelessness across Canada for indigenous peoples is between 30% and 80%. The data made available through the national homelessness point-in-time counts indicate that indigenous peoples comprise 30% of the homeless population across 61 Reaching Home communities. These figures are more than just numbers. They represent the members of our communities, our nations and in many instances our families.

In urban, rural and remote communities, we come from diverse backgrounds, indigenous nations and life experiences. Service providers such as Lu'ma and the many others that form part of the national indigenous urban, rural and remote homelessness caucus share a long-standing commitment to serving our communities in accordance with our cultural knowledge, practice and teachings.

I want to point out to this committee that the homelessness situation for urban, rural and remote indigenous peoples became more acute post-1983, when the federal government ended the social housing program under the National Housing Act. While we suffered significantly prior to this period, our homelessness conditions worsened to the point where we are now today. Since then, and for the past 27 years, Canada has continued to fund the distinction-based nations while urban, rural and remote communities have suffered with a patchwork of programs that have left our communities in desperation.

Last year we were one of many indigenous agencies that authored a letter to the Prime Minister where we demanded that Canada recognize the right to adequately resource a national urban, rural and remote indigenous housing and homelessness strategy developed and implemented by the urban, rural and remote housing and service providers; that Canada recognize urban, rural and remote housing and service providers as expressions of indigenous self-determination, as recognized by the Federal Court of Appeal in the Misquadis case and as per articles 4, 21 and 23 of UNDRIP; and that Canada create legislation mirroring the rights of the accountability framework articulated in the National Housing Strategy Act, which recognizes culturally relevant housing as a human right for indigenous people in urban, rural and remote areas.

I have made the above presentation in the sincere hope that our housing and homelessness conditions will be prioritized in the federal government's implementation of the national housing strategy as a matter of human rights and consistent with UNDRIP so that one day, urban, rural and remote indigenous peoples will experience the same access to housing and services afforded to all other Canadians and distinction-based nations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lawson-Swain.

We're going to begin now with rounds of questions, starting with the Conservatives.

Mr. Kent, go ahead, please. You have six minutes.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I will begin by asking our clerk whether Grand Chief Simon has been able to connect yet.

He has not? Thank you.

Thanks to all of our witnesses for appearing, and for your patience in waiting out our votes in the House this afternoon.

I'll start with Ms. McGee. I'm wondering, given the needs for indigenous affordable housing in the city of Edmonton, whether or not you have been in contact with the City of Edmonton for a share of the $17 million under the major cities stream in the rapid housing project.

[Susan McGee]

We certainly have. We work very closely with the City of Edmonton and have submitted a number of projects already under RHI—certainly exceeding the original and block allotment for the city of Edmonton. Within that context we have targets in all of our projects, and we anticipate that specific projects will be indigenous-specific. As well, all of our agencies have also supported and are supporting indigenous community members with targets exceeding 60%.

At the core of all of that work is the desire to meet the housing needs of indigenous community members.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Could you tell us what your current inventory is and how you see that or how you would hope to see that expanded through the rapid housing initiative?

[Susan McGee]

Interestingly in Alberta, we have independent operators outside of our social housing portfolios and we have a few hundred units within the community, the social housing historical allotment that was originally funded back in the 1970s through the then CMHC program. We have other organizations that have independently developed approximately 100 additional units.

We are very focused in our work at Homeward Trust on supportive housing and specifically on ending homelessness. Within our work we are targeting 900 units of supportive housing within the next five years, of which, again, a minimum of 60% will serve indigenous community members. There's certainly a much higher need for additional social housing and deep subsidy housing beyond that which we fund and operate.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Am I correct in assuming that unlike the case in some of the on-reserve housing situations or more remote situations, these would not be single-family homes as much as multi-unit dwellings?

[Susan McGee]

That's correct. We do have some duplex and fourplex housing, but primarily we're focused on multi-unit housing.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

I will turn now to Mr. Lawson-Swain.

Mr. Lawson-Swain, the Lu'ma Native Housing Society has a long and clearly successful history in terms of the 500 existing units of housing that you now have. When you talk about continuing needs, how many additional units are you talking about?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Apparently we have about 600 units under development right now, but we have a huge need here in the GVRD. We have 6,000 applicants on our wait-list. We often say that it would take you 85 years to get housed at Lu'ma, which is an extremely long time. In order to accommodate the needs of our community over a period of 10 years, we'd have to build 600 units every year for the next 10 years just to meet our current wait-list.

We need to keep in mind that every year, those numbers are added to purely by the fact that indigenous youth are aging out of foster care. There are 700 indigenous youth that age out of foster care every year here, and of those kids, 50% will end up homeless and on the streets.

Generally to meet the needs, we would say that we would need almost 1,000 units a year for the next 10 years to meet our needs.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

You said there are 600 units currently under construction?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

We have 600, yes. We have 350 that are currently committed to with financing and program funding from BC Housing and another 300 or so for which we have bought sites and are in the process of making application to government to have funded.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

How have COVID restrictions and precautions impacted that work?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Amazingly, not very much. Our teams work extensively and we've done quite well, even during the COVID situation.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

And just as a final question, you wouldn't fall, I don't believe, under the major cities stream of rapid housing, but would you see any applications in the project stream given that it does provide for indigenous governing bodies?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Yes, we have made an application and are currently waiting for CMHC to make its decision on that application.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Next we're going to Mr. Turnbull, please, for six minutes.