Human Resources Committee on June 18th, 2026

[Sarah Vandal, Executive Director, Zone Libre Memphrémagog]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today as part of your study on homelessness in Canada.

I am the executive director of Zone Libre Memphrémagog, a community-based organization located in a very vulnerable neighbourhood in Magog. Although our primary mission is addiction prevention and harm reduction, we must recognize that our living environment is an important gateway for people living with issues of addiction, mental health, housing insecurity or homelessness.

This proximity enables us to observe, every day, the close ties that exist between these various realities and to develop on-the-ground expertise based on direct support for these people. We can also foster partnerships with community, institutional and municipal partners, as well as with police forces, all while contributing to better coordination of interventions in our area.

In the Memphrémagog RCM, we have no organization whose specific mission is homelessness intervention. However, over the past several years, we have seen a significant increase in housing insecurity and homelessness, both visible and hidden. Like many rural communities, our area faces the same challenges as major urban centres: the housing crisis, addictions, mental health issues and poverty. However, we have to address them with fewer specialized resources over a larger area and often with a more limited range of services.

It was in this context that we adapted our mobile community response unit into a mobile warming centre to provide a response tailored to our more rural region. This project, supported by the federal government's unsheltered homelessness and encampments initiative, enabled us to reach out directly to the most vulnerable people in the Memphrémagog RCM.

During the period from November 2025 to March 2026, we recorded 462 visits and carried out more than 2,310 interventions with people in vulnerable situations. These interventions focused mainly on psychosocial support, as well as raising awareness about addiction and harm reduction. We have also been able to support people with their administrative, government and legal procedures, as well as with their access to health care and public programs. That has also enabled us to direct them toward specialized resources and to support them in managing complex issues related to addictions, mental health and socio-economic precarity.

Beyond the service itself, this initiative has enabled us to see first-hand the lived realities of people experiencing homelessness or those at risk of becoming homeless. It has enabled us to understand the factors that contribute to rural homelessness and the barriers that some people may face in their efforts toward housing stability.

One of the key insights we gained from this experience is that addiction, mental health, housing and homelessness are interconnected. The people we have supported were not just looking for housing or a place to warm up. Instead, they needed support to regularize their administrative situation, take legal action, secure an income, maintain housing or get support in their recovery journey.

This approach has proven particularly relevant for an area like ours, where there are fewer specialized resources and many people remain far away from traditional services. These people have little access to transportation.

However, changes to the management of funding under Canada's homelessness strategy, Reaching Home, have posed a significant challenge for our area. We have found that the realities and many needs of rural communities would have benefited from getting more consideration in the discussions surrounding these changes. Organizations that work every day with the people affected have knowledge of local challenges, and they can make significant contributions when it comes to setting priorities.

We have also observed certain situations related to the flow of information around calls for proposals and new directions for funding. In our case, we were unable to take part in the call for proposals process as we would have liked. That limited our ability to present the expertise developed over the years and the needs observed in our area.

This situation had a real impact. The end of funding led to the closure of local services that helped support people experiencing issues of addiction and vulnerability. Beyond the funding itself, it's a capacity to intervene, the trust built with people and the locally developed expertise that have been affected.

Our experience leads us to believe that increased participation of rural communities in consultation and planning mechanisms would provide a better understanding of the diversity of lived realities across the country.

Investments in infrastructure are really essential, but they benefit from being paired with local services and support that make it possible to reach people, prevent situations from deteriorating and promote access to existing resources.

In light of our experience, we have identified several promising areas for improvement.

First, it's important to better recognize rural communities' expertise in identifying needs and developing homelessness strategies.

Second, it's important to provide stable and predictable support for local services, which are instrumental in preventing homelessness, maintaining housing and supporting people with complex needs.

Third, it's important to foster regional consultation spaces that bring together urban and rural stakeholders. This makes it possible to share knowledge, gain a better understanding of everyone's specific realities and guide investments in a complementary way.

Fourth, it's important to support rural communities in developing solutions tailored to their reality, whether that means local support, supervised emergency housing, transportation to resources or local coordination of homelessness measures.

Our lived experience in the Memphrémagog RCM shows us that when a community has the necessary resources and is recognized as a full-fledged partner, it can design responses that are effective, humane and tailored to the reality on the ground.

Rural communities don't just want to be supported; they also want to actively help develop the solutions. We believe this co-operation is an opportunity to strengthen the efforts to prevent homelessness in Canada.

Thank you for listening. I am ready to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Vandal.

Dr. Boozary, go ahead for five minutes or less.

[Andrew Boozary, Executive Director, Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for this opportunity to be able to present today. I want to commend the committee for centring the voices of lived experience in the expertise of designing some of the solutions in responding to the housing crisis.

I approach this testimony as a physician who has predominantly worked with unhoused patients over the past 10 years. I'm the executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine and a researcher at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

My thesis, and the thesis that I believe we have all shared and heard today, is that we need to have a more expansive view of the housing crisis as an economic, social and health crisis.

In making the argument for housing as a health crisis, I would like to point to some of the data that I believe is incredibly damning for us as a country, one of the leading OECD countries. We know that people who are chronically unhoused live half as long as the general public. That is 20, 30 or 40 birthdays and birth years that are lost. If any drug could restore 10 to 20 life years, you would think that all funders would be tripping over themselves to ensure that these solutions and treatments could reach more people.

We know that people who are unhoused are likely to be in hospital twice as long, for 15 to 16 days on average. We also know that health care costs for people who are chronically unhoused are sevenfold to eightfold higher, according to CIHI data that was just released last year.

The moral failure, though, which was just recently published by Toronto Public Health, is that the average life expectancy of women who are chronically unhoused in the city of Toronto is 36 years. This is why I and colleagues, as health workers and frontline workers, have been calling homelessness the most powerful social determinant of health, or really a thief of life years, productivity, health and well-being in this country.

I do not believe there is more powerful testimony than what we heard from Mr. Miles, but I think it underscores the view that this is not about individual failures: These have been policy decisions. As we've seen more recently, there has been a real reduction over the last 20 to 30 years in the availability of social housing, now at less than 4%. I urge the committee to read the Scotiabank report entitled “The Public Housing Dividend”, which calls for a doubling of the social housing supply in Canada.

We've heard that the wait-list to access social housing in Toronto, where I work, is eight to 10 years, so it is not sensationalist when colleagues and I call homelessness a terminal condition. Many of the patients we serve will pass away before their number is called to get into social housing.

This was the impetus for us to launch a social medicine housing model at the University Health Network, which was able to leverage a parking lot—in partnership with the federal, provincial and municipal governments and with Fred Victor as a supportive housing agency—to establish Dunn House. We really appreciate that Parliamentary Secretary Desrochers was able to visit earlier this year and was able to visit with Mr. Miles and many of the staff who have been working to provide a more comprehensive model that has health care right on site.

I am privileged to work there as a primary care physician. We have mental health and addictions treatment, psychiatry, indigenous health programming, peer workers and community health workers all wrapped around the patient and tenant in their journey.

Many of these patients have been high utilizers of the health care system. We know from some of the local data that in downtown Toronto, 234 patients can make up over 15,000 emergency department visits in one year. The preliminary results we've been able to see for 51 individuals who've been living at Dunn House over the last 12 months show a 79% reduction in hospital bed days and a 62% reduction in emergency department visits.

We're grateful that this has led to an expansion, with 54 more housing units supported by the federal government, the Province of Ontario and the city government, to ensure that more people can receive these life-saving interventions and to interrupt doom loops and what I would argue have been deaths of indifference, which have been occurring across the country.

When we look at some of the other jurisdictions across the country, we see extremely notable examples of supportive housing working, reaching people and helping people re-establish their own trajectories. Sometimes we can look at countries like Finland, which has been the poster child for a progressive way of addressing homelessness. Their rates of homelessness in the 1980s were higher than what we have seen in Canada, but over the last 10 to 20 years, they have been trying to eradicate homelessness.

Sometimes when I reference Finland, people dismiss the example by saying that it's too progressive or too socialist of a country to have as an example for us in Canada. Then I turn to another city, Houston, Texas. In the last five to 10 years, it has housed 25,000 individuals. We've seen in Toronto a complete reversal in this tale of two cities, where homelessness has doubled over the last four years.

I believe that the urgency for us to act has never been more dire. We know what the solutions are. I'd like to commend the Crown agency Build Canada Homes, which has tried to be a vehicle to see more supportive housing reach people. I believe it's an effective avenue, and we need to see more investment there to see many of the housing options reach people, as Mr. Miles spoke to, and we obviously need to see a cross-partisan, every-level-of-government approach to trying to end homelessness as a health care crisis.

When we look at Houston and some of the examples that were laid out earlier today, a large part of their success was about having the focus and political will across political parties to end homelessness and about the removal of some of the silos and barriers to try to bring the private sector, the public sector and various community health organizations all together in one room to be focused.

Thank you so much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Mr. Thiessen, you gave your opening statement the last time you were in, so if you want to give a quick overview at this moment, that's fine.

[Earl Thiessen, Executive Director, Oxford House Foundation of Canada]

Thank you.

First off, congratulations, Jason, on your healing journey.

Thank you for this opportunity to come back and for welcoming me with the other panellists.

My name is Earl Thiessen. I am the executive director of the Oxford House Foundation. More importantly, I'm also an alumnus of our program. I'm here to provide my experience on homelessness and addiction and the effects of both. For me, this means healing.

My unresolved childhood trauma eventually led me to the streets and to being homeless for seven years. My unwillingness to face my demons and my use of alcohol and drugs as an emotional response to my childhood trauma was so powerful. The shame of being sexually abused is so intense that many men and women lose their lives to addiction or suicide, refusing to speak about it. We gain knowledge when teaching through words and actions. We heal the same way.

The first time I talked about my sexual abuse was while I was in treatment and doing my step five with a female elder. I cried for two and a half hours, telling her about my childhood trauma. I walked out of her room a different man. I had held that trauma in for 25 years.

I only told my dad about it a few years ago. I didn't want to hurt him, because as a parent, you don't want to think you weren't there to protect your child. While I was homeless, my parents said they wanted one thing for me before they left for the spirit world, which was for them to see me change my life. They got their wish. My parents are no longer with us. After starting my recovery journey and healing from my childhood trauma, I reconnected with my heritage. It played and still plays a significant part in my healing journey.

I'm going to speak about a critical gap in what we call the recovery-oriented system of care in Alberta, and that's pre-treatment housing. Through my lived experience, I created a housing model that supports people after their medical detox and while they wait to get into residential treatment. Currently, many individuals completing detox face a waiting period of several weeks to months before a residential treatment bed becomes available. Without a stable, drug-free environment during this transition, the risk of overdose and relapse is at its highest.

The problem is that returning to the street or unstable housing post-detox often results in revolving-door cycles where the progress made in withdrawal management is lost before treatment even begins. The pre-treatment recovery housing model serves as a safety net. It provides immediate stabilization following detox; a professionally supported, substance-free living environment; preparation and readiness programming for intensive residential treatment; and navigational support to ensure an individual's successful transition to their scheduled treatment date.

This model was created from my own experience. After my partner was murdered in 2007 on the streets while we were homeless, I dealt with it the only way I knew how, which was drugs and alcohol. After that, I was just defeated. I came to the conclusion that I needed help. I went into detox. I was ready. This was November 13, 2007. They gave me a treatment date of January. Panic set in, not knowing what was ahead of me, but luckily the stars aligned.

That's where the whole concept of pre-treatment housing came from. Unlike standard recovery beds, the pre-treatment model targets the highly vulnerable window between a person's decision to seek help and the date their treatment program actually begins. We measure our success by treatment retention rates. Historical tracking of structured pre-treatment environments shows that individuals in stable, substance-free housing are significantly more likely to show up for their scheduled intake date, as compared with those navigating the wait-list while unhoused or in chaotic environments.

With regard to reduced attrition, by providing immediate safety, food security and accountability, the model cuts down on the high drop-off rates common during the standard 30- to 90-day treatment wait-list. With early stabilization, residents begin adapting to a structured routine, peer accountability and basic life skills before they ever set foot into a clinical facility. This means they enter primary treatment physically stable and mentally prepared, maximizing the impact of clinical programming.

I can proudly say that the model I created is the only licensed and accredited pre-treatment housing model in North America.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Thiessen, for the very compelling testimony you gave to this committee. Thank you for stepping forward and sharing that.

We'll now begin our sixth round of questioning.

Mr. Aitchison.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank each of the witnesses in this round.

I want to say to Mr. Miles, who's here, thank you for being here. Thank you to Mr. Thiessen as well. You have both shared an incredibly powerful personal experience with us. I think that was important for us to hear. It's important that this information be central to our report to the House of Commons and that, as a federal government, we play our role in working with the other levels of government engaged in this issue.

This is one of my great frustrations with our country. We are in an incredibly decentralized system where there's lots of overlap. Homelessness happens to be one of the most glaring examples of the disconnect that exists between the lived experience of people struggling and the various layers of bureaucracy—government, policy and ideas on how to address the issue.

I want to state very clearly that I don't think this is a partisan issue. I don't think it is a Liberal, a Conservative or an NDP problem. I think there has been a generational evolution in how things have happened in this country. If anything calls for all levels of government and people of all political stripes to come together—and not just pay lip service to the incredibly powerful stories we've heard here today and throughout this study—this is it.

As you spoke about your experience, Mr. Miles—I'll ask the same question of Mr. Thiessen—you also spoke about how lucky you were. With your healing, I couldn't help but think to myself as you spoke that it really wasn't.... It was lucky that you were able to navigate a system that wasn't all that comprehensive and didn't work all that well together.

Could you speak to us a little more about the power of relationship in your healing journey—of not just being a number, getting a bed somewhere or being part of a program? What was the importance of relationship in your healing journey?

[Jason Miles]

Thanks very much for your question and comments.

Relationship plays powerfully in my own journey. In my journey from addiction and homelessness, the starting point for me and the real tipping point was that I continually found myself in and out of hospitals and jail systems. It got to a point where I really hit some low places in life, and I tried to end my own life on more than one occasion. These weren't cries for help; these were well planned out and well thought out, and there was no hesitation.

I really got lucky that my story gets to continue based on other things I couldn't account for. A frontline worker ended up saving my life the first time I tried to end it, and she shouldn't have been there at all. She knew me very well. I went into safe consumption sites all the time, and she knew who I was. The only reason she was around to save my life was that it was a Friday evening, and she'd stayed at work three hours after she was supposed to be done because she was going on vacation on Monday. She shouldn't have been in the building at all. She came out into the alleyway—and that's another thing. She never left out the back door into that alley because it's unsafe. As a young, good-looking woman, she always went out the front exit of the building into the street lights.

That's just one of many incidents. It really took a frontline worker to make me feel valued enough, not just from being put in the position to directly have to save my life but also the countless times they showed up for me. They connected with me.

When you're living in an extended period of homelessness and suffering the kinds of things we do, you really feel outside of society. We get used to people looking at us and telling us, “Get a job. What's wrong with you?” We get used to that judgment. One of the times I ended up in a hospital, I had a frontline worker who would continually come every other day, take time away from her day, bring me cigarettes and wheel me in a wheelchair outside so I could have a smoke, and that was the only person I talked to.

There were a lot of little things like that that added up over time, but without frontline workers, I wouldn't be here to speak to you guys today.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I'm officially out of time, but I'll ask the Chair for the moment to say thank you. Thank you for your resilience, and thank you for your courage to be here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Mr. Villeneuve, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here this morning.

Mr. Miles and Mr. Thiessen, I want to tell you how touched I am by your testimony this morning. I also want to tell you that your contribution is truly very important.

I realize that, deep down, we often think that we're immune to experiencing things like that. We are not. Listening to you speak, when I look at your life story, I tell myself that no one is immune to all this.

Frankly, I don't know if I would have had the courage to do what you're doing this morning. Thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.

If you were legislators, what would be the three priority measures you would put in place to try to end homelessness?

My question is for both of you. Maybe I'll start with you, Mr. Miles.

[Jason Miles]

First and foremost, we need to massively scale housing across this country. Housing needs to be delivered quickly, and it needs to be delivered without reservation. It can't be based on perceived merit, or it can't be a reward dangled at the end of making your transition through recovery.

Housing is the foundation that everything else is built on. You can't ask somebody who has experienced long-term homelessness and addictions.... You can't take away the addiction first, because the addiction is what they're using as the band-aid. Taking somebody's addiction away without them having stability and a home.... You can't fix that without taking away the reason they're using in the first place. That would be my first suggestion.

My second strong suggestion is that we need to really integrate systems together, but we need to make sure everybody is talking and that it's one voice. We have too many people and too many different agencies controlling different parts of housing lists. We have too many people who only work on their component, but the extra needed component is just one more thing out of their reach. They say, “That's not mine. That's that guy's to do.”

We really need to take the red tape out of the way, not just for the clients and the people trying to transition from homelessness but for the housing agencies working with them too. There are a lot of people who work in the field all day who have very little understanding of where they get help from certain points. If somebody like that, who's educated in the system and works within it all day, can't figure it out, then you know the system is not working.

I'm being mindful of time, so I'm going to cut it off there.

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

Thank you for your contribution, Mr. Miles.

Forgive me for not addressing you, Mr. Thiessen. It's because I really want to talk to Ms. Vandal, who is from my area.

Ms. Vandal, thank you for being here with us this morning. I know that Zone Libre Memphrémagog does incredible work in our riding.

Since the pandemic, have you noticed an increase in addiction-related needs in Memphrémagog?

[Sarah Vandal]

I couldn't necessarily attribute addiction issues to a specific period, when issues were more a matter of public health. I think those issues have always existed and have not necessarily increased.

However, I think the clientele may have gotten younger. Addiction issues are going to affect a younger clientele, particularly when it comes to vaping, smoking and cannabinoids. Those are really aspects that are affecting a younger clientele.

In relation to the pandemic, I would say that the category of people with substance use disorders may be slightly younger than it was before the pandemic.

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

What are the most vulnerable client profiles right now?

[Sarah Vandal]

I will obviously speak for my organization, since that's the clientele I know.

We're located right in the weavers' district, which is basically a more vulnerable neighbourhood. Our clientele really includes people of all ages. They could be people in high schools, adult schools or post-secondary institutions. We also have an aging clientele.

These days, we've also noticed that the homeless clientele is younger. Normally, a lot of older people have less access to affordable housing as they age, but now we also have a much younger clientele.

We try to work upstream in terms of prevention, but we also have to support people who have been marginalized for many years and whose situation is complex.

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

Thank you.

I have about 45 seconds left.

How could the federal government better support the organizations that intervene before situations escalate to homelessness?

[Sarah Vandal]

Personally, I would say that working locally is really the key element, especially in our region, which is a more rural region. People don't have easy access to services. In fact, there is no public transit in the Memphremagog RCM.

We need to be able to approach people directly instead of bringing them into the resources and taking them out of their comfort zone. You have to reach out to people, offer them support and connect with public services and community organizations.

I think we should focus on people who find themselves in tougher situations.

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

Thank you.

[Sarah Vandal]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve.

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

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for joining us today.

Mr. Miles, you have experienced life on the streets first-hand, and you give a human face to what homelessness is like. The same is true for you, Mr. Thiessen. As you may have noticed, tears were shed when you told your story. Mr. Thiessen, I'm very pleased that you were able to come back and see us again, and that you are adding your voice to the reality of homelessness.

Mr. Boozary, you have dedicated your career to these people. You remind us that homelessness does not discriminate and that anyone is just one misfortune away from ending up on the streets.

For my first round of questions, I'll turn to Ms. Vandal, as we represent neighbouring regions facing similar realities. I am the MP for the riding of Shefford, whose main town is Granby, but which is surrounded by numerous rural communities.

Several points in your testimony caught my attention. You mentioned the call for proposals for the New Horizons program and the new guidelines which meant you were unable to submit an application.

Have I understood correctly?

[Sarah Vandal]

Yes, you're quite right.

In fact, at the end of the financial year ending March 31, we found ourselves in two rather incongruous situations.

Firstly, there was the end of the call for proposals for the encampment and crisis response program, which was a federal initiative. We received little information as to whether or not the funding might be carried over.

We then learnt that the Reaching Home program had been refocused on more urban areas. We were simply not informed about the call for proposals. In fact, I don't think we're the only ones in this situation. Indeed, I sit on a regional committee dealing with rural homelessness, and I know that several organizations had not been informed either. We were therefore unable to submit an application.

Memphremagog is a very large region, but we have absolutely no funding. I could also mention the Haut-Saint-François region and the town of Coaticook, which are facing similar situations.

So some projects are coming to an end, and services that we have been providing for a whole year are being abruptly cut short. There is a bit of uncertainty, if I may put it that way, about the future and the services we will be able to offer as winter approaches.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

We are part of the same region, namely the Eastern Townships. I can confirm that there is one designated community, Sherbrooke, but the surrounding areas, including Granby, are not recognized as designated communities and are therefore unable to receive their share of funding. Yet we regularly hear about rising homelessness in Granby.

We have discussed the criteria, and the minister has spoken about what will happen with the Reaching Home program after 2028.

I imagine you are recommending that the definition of “designated communities” be broadened so that we can ensure everyone in the region can benefit from projects such as those you carry out on a daily basis.

What are your thoughts on this?

[Sarah Vandal]

From what I gather from the testimonies we have heard today, I would say straight away that homelessness has a snowball effect. For example, if someone has addiction problems, this could lead to mental health issues.

We need to focus on prevention and community outreach to stop the problem we are currently facing—which is not on the same scale as that seen in major cities—from becoming increasingly serious.

In my view, we are in a situation where it is possible to put measures in place to prevent the problem from getting worse. I think it is really important to consult with rural and remote areas, given that we face a different reality and that we want to help our clients, even if there are fewer of them. There may be fewer of them, but it is just as important to take them into account.