Human Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Kelly Gillis]

Perhaps I'll start and then I'll turn it to my colleague, Ms. Bowers.

There's very close collaboration between Infrastructure Canada and CMHC on the work of the national housing strategy and some of the work from the co-investment fund that funds shelters.

In the case of encampments, Infrastructure Canada just did a survey of 72 communities across the country to better understand what the issues are. Why are people using encampments? Are there particular barriers within shelters? Is it capacity? Is it because of barriers regarding family, allowing pets or measures regarding addiction and support services? As we look at programs going forward, we can be better informed and work in closer collaboration with our communities.

Certainly one concern right now is shelter capacity. Over COVID, there were permanent reductions of shelter capacity, They are just coming back. Temporary shelters were used.

As we look at different programs, I think that close collaboration between the community entities that are delivering Reaching Home and the opportunities from programming—whether it's from CMHC with the bricks and mortar or from Reaching Home, which provides the wraparound services—really requires that alignment.

That's why we've also created a federal-provincial-territorial working group on supportive housing and homelessness to not just work closely among ourselves but work closely with provinces and municipalities to make sure that all of our levers are being aligned to be most effective.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Bowers, can I ask you about innovation?

You talked about the number of homes that are required, not just in the affordable sector but also in the market sector, to satisfy demand.

Many of the construction methods we use today we've been using for 100 years. My friend and colleague and I had an opportunity to visit the Element5 facility in St. Thomas to see some of the innovative methods they're using to build mass timber projects. I also had the opportunity to tour NRB, which is another modular company that is providing some innovative things. However, they certainly aren't prepared or don't have the capacity to build the number of homes that are required by 2030 or even by 2050.

Can you talk about what CMHC is doing to drive innovation within the sector to ensure that we are able to build, domestically, the amount of supply that's required for Canadians?

[Romy Bowers]

This is a critical issue in addressing our housing supply gap. We build 200,000 today and we built 200,000 units in the 1970s when our population was much smaller. Clearly our construction sector is very fragmented, and I think there's room for innovation in this area.

We have a $750-million innovation fund that has been used to support some of the construction techniques that you mentioned. I think there's more that we can do there. Even through the rapid housing initiative, we provided support to modular housing companies. I think there are more opportunities for scaling up there. There are also areas like panelization and other factory-built techniques.

I do understand that because housing is a very cyclical industry, smaller construction companies do not want to invest the capital needed for the innovation, but I think this is an area where government can play a role in providing some of those incentives to create that innovation. I think this is an area where private sector and government partnerships are absolutely essential.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

We'll go to Madame Ferreri for five minutes.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Bowers, could I get you to table—I don't know if I asked you to do this in the last round—how many mortgages CMHC manages and the default that you projected? I think you said it was 2%, or 6,000 of the mortgages you manage.

[Romy Bowers]

Yes. I'm not predicting that 2% will default; I'm just saying that those are the highest-risk mortgages and that we monitor them very closely for default.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I will move on to Ms. Gillis.

In 2017, the Liberal government promised to reduce chronic homelessness by 50%. It's obviously been six years. How much has chronic homelessness been reduced?

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you for the question.

Since that period of time, as we've been talking about the housing crisis, the context in Canada has changed significantly. At this point, chronic homelessness for the last number of years has remained steady at approximately 30,000 people.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

It hasn't been reduced.

[Kelly Gillis]

As I mentioned, it's remained steady, given the context of the country right now with the housing crisis and the affordability issues within the country.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

In 2022, the Auditor General's report on chronic homelessness said that your ministry did not know whether your efforts were improving homelessness, despite spending $1.36 billion between 2019 and 2021 through the Reaching Home program.

You have a new Minister of Housing. What direction has the minister given you directly since that Auditor General's report? What specifically has the minister given you?

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you very much for the question.

That particular audit report was done mainly during COVID times. The homeless-serving sector, during that time, did not have the capacity to report results. They were dedicated to saving lives and keeping people safe.

Since that time, all of our reporting has caught up, and the metrics that I gave before for the first three years of the program have been showing tremendous results from the money that has been spent on that particular program.

Of the $1.3 billion that you mentioned, $708 million went to dedicated health services to keep people alive, such as nursing, vaccines, masks, social distancing and temporary housing.

That information wasn't available when the Auditor General wrote the report, because we were still in COVID times. Since then, it has all been caught up on and we are publishing the information—

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thanks, Ms. Gillis. I'm sorry.

For people watching, we have such limited time, which is why we often have to cut people short.

I would respectfully push back on that response. As somebody who lives in a community whose homelessness has skyrocketed, it feels a bit insulting, to be honest with you, Ms. Gillis, to say that things have had tremendous success.

I'm not finished yet.

I just don't think that's a very compassionate or realistic approach. It feels a bit like toxic positivity, if I'm going to be honest with you.

Moving on, as of Friday, October 27, 2023, funding streams for Reaching Home.... “Reaching Home has 4 regional funding streams that provide funding to communities to address local homelessness needs.” The designated communities funding stream is closed. The indigenous homelessness funding stream has no way to apply. The rural and remote homelessness funding stream is closed. The territorial homelessness funding stream has no way to apply.

Ms. Gillis, how do you expect to have such a successful program when people who need this the most can't even apply for it?

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you very much for the question.

In the Reaching Home program, what we want to do is have transparency and results. That's why I wanted to mention the Auditor General's report. Now we can report on the results.

We know that more is required, and that's why we're doing research programs. In the particular program, we allocate the funds to community entities over a period of time. They continue to fund these particular programs.

Regarding those particular applications, I will turn to my colleague to talk about those particular closures and what's going on with regard to each of those streams.

[Kris Johnson, Director General, Homelessness Policy Directorate, Office of Infrastructure of Canada]

Because we allocate the money out to community partners, it's really at their discretion when they accept new applications and when they fully allocate all of their funding. Whether there's still funding available in any given area really would vary by community.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again I would push back. Ms. Bowers has talked about this. You have the missing middle right now. You have people who would never have even considered being homeless. The face of homelessness has drastically changed.

You're saying, “These programs are closed right now.” It just doesn't make any sense. If these are programs designated for immediate emergency funding and they're closed, how are you supposed to help the people who, less than a mile from where we're sitting right now, are living in tents?

[Kelly Gillis]

The allocations are forward looking, so in the $562 million that we're allocating for the next two years, although they're closed for new entities, we are allocating further money to those community entities to be able to address the homelessness situation in their communities.

That's why, when the minister was here.... We're doing action research. That's why we're doing a veterans program. It's because we know more is required. It is super-important, and I am certainly very acutely aware of how important it is to address this and how more is required. That's why we did a survey on encampments and continue to work in this area.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Ferreri.

We have Mr. Fragiskatos for five minutes.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Bowers, I'll go back to the issue of supply.

Moving from the general to the specific, I want to ask you about the Canada mortgage bond. What is the Canada mortgage bond? I know it's a very general question, but when people hear things like what recently happened with the changes made to the annual limit, how that relates to housing and what that will do for supply, the pieces might seem a bit fuzzy to them, so could you touch on those things?

[Romy Bowers]

I smiled slightly because the Canada mortgage bond relates to our securitization program, and it's not something that most Canadians are aware of, although it's a very important part of our housing finance infrastructure.

We've had a $40-billion limit in our CMB program for many years—for decades, in fact. This program provides the lowest-cost funding for banks so that they can extend loans to developers for the financing of development projects. Given that there is this huge need for supply, it is very significant for the CMB program limits to be increased by 50%, because it provides much more capacity to our lending institutions that need to provide developers, other private sector actors and non-profits with the lowest-cost funding that is available to support their building needs.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

What's the bottom line in terms of the number of units that we would expect to see built as a result of this change? Do you have an estimate on that?

[Romy Bowers]

This is very difficult to estimate, given that the market is quite turbulent right now, but I believe that the Department of Finance provided an estimate of 200,000 units over 10 years.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Gillis, I want to ask you again about the national housing strategy. You talked about how co-operation is part and parcel of the program and how it's built within it. There are wraparound supports for individuals who have experienced homelessness in a way that's made possible by not-for-profit organizations.

What sort of supports are there that are available? Again, I ask this question from the perspective of constituents in my community and other communities who might be looking and then saying that it's one thing to get someone.... You mentioned that close to 70,000 people who were on the street are no longer living homeless and are housed. Someone might look at that at first blush and say, “It's great; they have a roof over their heads”, but if they're not given the support that they need to make a transition towards something much more positive, then the problem is simply repeated.

Could you talk about the wraparound supports that are made available through, in effect, the national housing strategy? All this is delivered by not-for-profits on the ground.

[Kelly Gillis]

That is a really important area for people in need. Understanding what their needs are is a fundamental part of Reaching Home. There is a mandatory requirement called “coordinated access” that gets down to the individual level of understanding. Is it mental health? Is it addiction services? Are other health services needed? There is administrative support so that the person does not have to go looking within the community to find their support. It's tailor-made for them to be able to get them to medical appointments, addiction services or job training and to help them find a placement in a home. There are regular check-ins. It is very much tailored by the community for the community, so they prioritize based on the needs of the individuals they're serving.

It's an international best practice. It's not just about putting a roof over someone's head; it's about that alignment and integration of the wraparound services that you mentioned that go beyond the person getting somewhere appropriate to live. That gets at the heart of Reaching Home.