Human Resources Committee on June 1st, 2026

[Maxime Rainville]

To my knowledge, that is not the case. However, as you said, there are times when we have to react quickly. When money is available and the deadlines are fairly short, organizations have to act quickly to make requests. However, I don't believe any services have had to be interrupted because of a funding delay.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

How do you feel that the current funding mechanisms could be improved to better support rural areas? This should be my last question.

[Cédric Champagne]

As I mentioned in my remarks, the money should really be allocated directly to the various RCMs and rural communities. That requires an agreement with Quebec in connection with Bill M‑30.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

I still have a little time left. We have leeway.

Do you see different realities in rural areas compared to large urban centres?

[Cédric Champagne]

Absolutely. There's a lack of funding, and urban centres are already well organized, whereas we still need to build everything.

[Louis Villeneuve, Liberal, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, gentlemen. I would have had enough questions for 20 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. You had three seconds left.

Mrs. Larouche, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to thank Mr. Pollett for being with us today.

This study obviously reminds us of the urgent needs of people experiencing homelessness, but my questions are for both of you, Mr. Rainville from the CDCBM and Mr. Champagne from Entrée chez soi. You are both involved with the Corporation de développement communautaire, which recently celebrated its 35th anniversary in Brome‑Missisquoi. You wear two hats, and perhaps even more, knowing you.

First off, congratulations on the work you do every day. I know, we say it and we say it again: You change lives, and you welcome people in all their humanity through your humanity. Thank you so much.

I'm the member for Shefford, so we have a region and even some organizations in common. I, too, clearly have a lot of questions. I agree with Mr. Villeneuve that there are a lot of questions to ask.

You raised the issue of the rural aspect, but I have trouble with that because, when we talk about designated communities, it has a clear impact on the Reaching Home program and in the Eastern Townships, where Sherbrooke gets money. As a result, Granby and Cowansville don't get enough money. As you rightly said, urban communities are much more organized. As you said about the warming centres and drop-in centres that you've opened, we obviously still need to build everything.

Tell us about the importance of expanding the Reaching Home program to other designated communities.

[Maxime Rainville]

I think that the definition of a rural community refers to around 10,000 people. As you know, Granby has a much larger population than that. As I said, Cowansville and Farnham are also small municipalities, but the fact remains that something happened to increase the population of both cities enormously over the past 10 years. All of this means that living together can be a challenge when there are people who may be having trouble and who are more visible and others who see and run into them. It also raises more questions and, in some cases, makes people more closed-minded.

However, once again, I think we have a lovely community.

[Cédric Champagne]

Let me mention that it's important to respect the natural communities that already exist. For example, in Brome‑Missisquoi, 21 municipalities form a community, whereas for Granby, the reality is different with the rest of the Haute‑Yamaska regional county municipality. The communities that are designated and the way in which they are divided really have to respect the natural communities.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Champagne, you did a good job of explaining how Reaching Home is making a difference for people experiencing homelessness. Early in the year, I met with organizations in the riding of Shefford that had concerns. You mentioned that we sometimes wait for funding. Early in the year, no one knew whether the encampment program would be renewed. There were consequences for some organizations in Granby.

Could you tell me whether, to your knowledge, there were also consequences from the delay in announcing the renewal of the program in Brome‑Missisquoi?

[Cédric Champagne]

We were forced to shut down our warming centres, as we did not know if the program was being renewed. However, on April 1, it was still very cold. The fact that the funding date had just passed didn't make it any less cold.

We also know that, because Reaching Home had been overhauled and we didn't know whether there were other funds to cover non-encampment initiatives, some organizations lost their outreach workers, who are the link between the population and other organizations.

We are currently taking steps to find out.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Rainville, do you have anything to add on your end?

[Maxime Rainville]

I would note, as Mr. Pollett mentioned, that there's also the homelessness prevention component. Allow me to put on my other hat: I also represent a community organization for young people. In that regard, I think prevention is also important. The faucet keeps flowing and people keep ending up on the street, so I think we also need measures to try to reduce the number of people affected. Prevention is also important.

As for the Reaching Home program, the different aspects of this type of funding can also meet other needs and prevent young people and others from ending up in precarious situations of homelessness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Larouche.

Mr. Reynolds, you have five minutes.

[Colin Reynolds, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for coming here today to discuss this important topic. Thank you so much for all of your hard work to address this important issue, which is a growing problem in our communities.

My first question is for you, Mr. Pollett. You mentioned in your opening statement that prevention is where the money is going to be best spent. What is the number one thing the government can do to prevent homelessness?

[Sheldon Pollett]

It's easy to think about prevention when you think about young people, but let's be clear, it is an opportunity for all populations. It's about that moment in time when someone is about to become homeless and, if you cannot prevent it, then intervening as quickly as you can to get them out of that circumstance as quickly as possible.

The Observatory on Homelessness, for example, created a graphic many years ago now that talked about how the largest part of our money right now is going into a crisis system, with very little going into prevention and very little going into interventions that are better options than a crisis-driven intervention. The model really talked about shrinking the crisis response. It will always be necessary: The example I use is always that someone is going to break their leg in the middle of the night and you will need a crisis response, similar to health care, but most of your money should be going into prevention and/or getting people out of that situation as quickly as possible.

Like Michael Lethby from Raft—I've known Michael for a long time—I ran a youth organization for 24 years. Twenty-odd years ago, we created a shelter, and then we made a decision that we would never apply for funding for another shelter bed again. We pivoted our attention to building housing, as much of it as possible supportive.

One of the challenges right now in the country—I'll talk about housing specifically, and housing development—is that we all want to house the most vulnerable in our communities. We often want to do it with very challenging and sometimes limited capital resources, which means that the depth of affordability is affected and so on and so forth, but the other side of it is that we often want to house people with some pretty high needs with the lowest possible investment in support. I think one of the other panellists also talked about it.

We know very clearly after 30 years how to set people up to fail. It's not because the people in those systems want to set people up to fail, but as systems, we are so addicted to crisis that the only investment we ever think about making is, “What do we do tonight?” The federal government shifting to prevention means that we have a longer view of what we're trying to solve for, and the prevention work and intervention work follow.

[Colin Reynolds, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

I have another question for you. You mentioned that homelessness is obviously very complex. It's a very complex issue. In your opinion and in your experience, what would be the number one reason for homelessness, the number one cause?

[Sheldon Pollett]

The number one cause is obviously something going sideways in someone's life that causes their housing to break down. In the case of youth, obviously something is going on in the family unit that doesn't work for either the family or the youth, or both, and therefore you have youth homelessness. For older adults, it could be a combination of a serious workplace injury, addictions or mental health, all of the.... The list is long.

I work from the perspective that, across all these systems I mentioned earlier, if you solve for what's getting in the way of someone thriving and succeeding, the outcomes will follow that. For example, if you have an employment or labour market strategy that targets to some degree people who are at risk of homelessness, your intervention cannot simply be, okay, let's get them a résumé, let's do X, or let's only do employment-related interventions.

If you have interventions that are more broad around housing, employment and education, they will hit what you want to see them do from an employment and labour market attachment perspective. It's being more holistic in terms of how it's not about the activities as defined by individual departmental mandates. It's about the outcomes. Hopefully, that answers your question.

[Colin Reynolds, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

There's been a lot of discussion about wraparound supports that are needed for individuals. Can you explain the phrase “wraparound supports” and what that means to you?

[Sheldon Pollett]

What that means to me is—again, I go back to my previous comment—whatever is getting in the way or causing someone to experience housing instability or homelessness. Again, I will go back to my youth homelessness days, when I've often said to our staff that they could be working from a housing perspective. Some staff are working from an employment perspective and some from a mental health or addictions perspective. Those are just variations on the theme. Your job is to support that young person about whatever is not going well for them in their life and address that, and then the outcomes will follow.

Wraparound support is that you show up to work one day, and whatever's not going right for the people you're trying to support, that's your job: helping them navigate those challenges and then some of the other outcomes that you would like to see them achieve. In 25 years of work, I've never met a young person who didn't want a better life: their life was just in a very different place right then. It's being realistic about what the challenges are and making sure the support is there.

We did a lot of work with pregnant and parenting young moms. It wasn't about offering them parenting skills—important skills; don't get me wrong—but if you support that young woman as a human being first, give her what she needs by way of support and access to decent, safe, affordable housing, the first thing she wants to do is go to school and create a better life for her and her kids—that's the first thing—and then she wants to go to work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Pollett.

You may be able to capture that.

Ms. Desrochers, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be sharing my time with my colleague Mr. Joseph.

Mr. Rainville, Mr. Champagne and Mr. Pollett, thank you very much for your comments today. They are really helpful. We are developing an action plan and the national housing strategy. I just want to reassure you about the difference in our approach for rural communities. We clearly heard what you said, and it's really our top concern. I just wanted to reassure you a bit on that, because we're really looking into it.

My question is for Mr. Pollett.

You talked about workforce development. I'm assuming that means that, on site, we're helping residents with training that they can take into the workforce after.

What are some of the lessons learned that you can share? Is there any targeted federal training program that you are able to access or that we should consider putting in place? Also, what else can we do to be helpful, specifically with workforce development?

[Sheldon Pollett]

When I think about it.... I'll give you some examples, as well, from my past, such as developing five units of affordable housing. That's fantastic. The benefits to the community start when you give the keys to individuals who desperately need that affordable housing. However, 18 months earlier, there was training and employing 45, I think, young people over the course of that period to build it in the first place, so there were skills and opportunities that were created as a part of that.

It was real-time costs that.... A lot of the time, on the return on investment, the criticism is that it's hard to calculate what is going to save you 20 years from now. However, this was savings today, savings to the income support systems, income taxes paid—and the list goes on and on.

What we talked about.... Guess where these young people weren't when they were working for us full-time, creating that housing? They weren't in jail or in hospital, and the list goes on there as well.

A really simple but yet somehow—in systems—complex goal to achieve is answering this: What are the benefits of taking an employment strategy approach to developing affordable housing?

One of the things we recommended to the federal government a number of years ago now was to take a percentage—3% or 5%—of the national housing strategy and say, “We want to see social enterprise engagement as part of that spend.” What that would have done to the social enterprise ecosystem across the country, for one.... Also, there's the meaningful training and employment that would have been driven for people who also need affordable housing.

It's thinking that way in terms of how we squeeze every ounce of value out of every dollar we're going to spend. That's a much better use of money for better outcomes, quite frankly.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much.

If there's anything else you want to add on this, please do, absolutely, send it our way. I'll be in touch separately, as well, to follow up as part of the national housing strategy renewal.

Mr. Joseph, I'll give you the rest of my time.