Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 29th, 2022

[Herb Lehr]

I think it was the best deal that our people could cut at that point in time.

Now, with the 2016 decision through Powley and through the Supreme Court of Canada decision on Daniels, there isn't money available in Alberta for us and we have to move federally. In fact, we're in a very precarious position if we don't get access in this current fiscal year.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Herb.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Desjarlais.

Committee members, we're squeezed for time because we have to be out of here by quarter to six at the latest, but I would like to try to squeeze in a quick second round.

Mr. Vidal, you have three minutes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have three minutes and so many questions. I'm going to be really brief.

Sometimes I think people in the Ottawa bubble can lose the perspective of what I call people on the ground, so I really appreciate all of the witnesses being here today because I think you offer that perspective of people who are dealing with it on the ground every day. Thank you for being here.

My first question is going to be for Vice-Chief Derocher.

In your role you talk about representing nine first nations in the northwest region of Saskatchewan. You talked about some of the differences of the conditions of the states of housing, even in the nine first nations that you represent.

Just on a fundamental level, can you talk about what, in your opinion, is driving some of the differences? What are some of the key drivers to some of those differences?

[Vice-Chief Richard Derocher]

Definitely, economy, Mr. Vidal.

For instance, Flying Dust First Nation, which butts up against Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, the biggest centre in our territory, has opportunity for an economy there. That first nation has a little brighter chance of challenging the housing issues that we have.

As I indicated, we have young people paying $1,200 a month in Flying Dust First Nation for rent, although they're making only $16 to $18 an hour, which takes up about 45% of their income just for rent to live on the reserve, in comparison to the city of Meadow Lake.

The further north you go the economic opportunities aren't as great. They're remote communities. The only employment is through the first nation or else through people going across to northern Alberta and living away from home for two weeks at a time and then being home for a week. Those are the opportunities that are available in northern Saskatchewan.

It's based on economy, of course, and I always speak of building our own economy.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

I don't want to cut you off, but again, time is limited.

One of the solutions I'm hearing from you is to create more opportunity in some of the northern and remote areas and take advantage of some of those opportunities to create the ability for people to participate in a prosperous economy, which you've seen in your own local first nation of Flying Dust. Is that a fair conclusion from what I am hearing from you?

[Vice-Chief Richard Derocher]

That's very fair, as well as the ability to have more CMHC housing.

Now I have caught on to the lady's question from before. We did get an increase of 10% from CMHC for all the first nations in our riding, but we do need an economy in order to make affordable housing work in northern Saskatchewan.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I have one really brief question if the chair will let me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I'm sorry. We're tight, but that was a good try.

Mr. McLeod, you have three minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the presenters today for a very interesting discussion.

I understand that the Metis Settlements General Council currently has a budget request for emergency interim funding.

I want to know what will happen to the Metis Settlements General Council and to the settlements if they don't receive any of the emergency interim funding?

Maybe we could get the Metis Settlements to describe the emergency and how serious this issue is.

[Herb Lehr]

Thank you very much, Mr. McLeod.

We do have a request for $50 million per year as a stopgap measure in front of the federal government. We have had it there for a couple of years. We know the LTA is expiring. Bill 57 just got implemented.

Currently, the Metis Settlements General Council that I work at last year had a [Technical difficulty—Editor] budget of [Technical difficulty—Editor] million dollars. Going into this next fiscal year I have $850,000. Two hundred thousand of that is required to keep the lights and gas on in the buildings we own.

At a central level, we are just decimated. At the community level, some of our communities have a little bit of money put away to be able to provide essential services. Some communities are very limited, and for some, perhaps by the end of this next fiscal year, we will not be able to deliver water, and we will not be able to keep the roads graded or anything unless we move forward with the federal government.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I have a quick question. This government has announced many different programs for indigenous people and indigenous governments. Why are some of the current funding programs that are out there now are not working for the settlements?

[Herb Lehr]

Our settlements get housing programs [Technical difficulty—Editor] quickly, so their expectations of being able to build a house in our communities doesn't happen. We end up having to buy trailers and modular homes and bring them into the communities. We lose all economic opportunity from doing construction, and from getting our people to feel as though they are part of it, and all we are doing is stimulating the economies of the municipalities around us and not truly helping the people in the community with a mechanism that could do two things, two for the price of one—you get an economy and you get a home.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. McLeod.

Go ahead, Mrs. Gill. You have two minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I had a chance to speak with Vice‑Chief Derocher earlier, so now, I'd like to hear from Mr. Delorme and Mr. Lehr on the same topic. I want to know whether you have seen an adjustment and increase to your funding to reflect your needs. I am putting the word “increase” in quotation marks.

For instance, would you say your funding covers the rising costs of materials and transportation?

Go ahead, Mr. Lehr and Mr. Delorme.

[Stan Delorme]

Sure. Thank you very much for the question.

The experience that we have had here for the last couple of years for sure is that there is a high cost of materials, high cost of delivery, high cost of everything, and high cost of fuel, which basically factors in there as well.

One of the things we have experienced with the transitional housing program we have, for example, is that we had to go to smaller units to accommodate, among other things, the amount of money that was provided to us by way of this grant. There were other costs that factored into that as well, for the water and sewer part of it and the utilities. Those are costly to install as is putting the driveways into the sites.

Those are all costly. When you're looking at the costs, they're very high, and, therefore, we're forced to go with smaller units.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mrs. Gill.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have two minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to read an excerpt from the Constitution of Alberta Amendment Act, so that everyone understands an outstanding constitution obligation on behalf of Alberta. It begins:

Whereas the Metis were present when the Province of Alberta was established and they and the land set aside for their use form a unique part of the history and culture of the Province; and

Whereas it is desired that the Metis should continue to have a land base to provide for the preservation and enhancement of Metis culture and identity and...to attain self-governance under the laws of Alberta and, to that end, Her Majesty in right of Alberta is granting title to land to the Metis Settlements General Council; and

Whereas Her Majesty in right of Alberta has proposed the land so granted be protected by the Constitution of Canada—

Dramatic pause.

—but until that happens it is proper that the land be protected by the constitution of the Province...

That is Alberta.

We have an outstanding constitutional obligation on the part of the Province of Alberta. It's massive. When we look at Manitoba, for example, they had an outstanding obligation to the Métis. They went to court in 2013 for over 1.4 million acres of land. The Supreme Court decided that the province must return that to the Métis.

We have a job here as parliamentarians to make sure that Alberta's constitutional amendment under section 43 is adhered to. Albertans have fought hard to recognize the Métis people. Métis people have fought hard so that Canada recognizes them. I'm proud to be the first member of a Métis settlement ever elected to this place. I'd be remiss if I did not ensure that this constitutional imperative was understood by Canada and that we had true action to make sure that this land is protected by our Constitution in the highest law.

To President Herb Lehr, do you have any comments on the Constitution and your desire to see our lands protected by the Canadian Constitution?

[Herb Lehr]

That was the dream of our elders who signed this deal with the province that we're currently under. It was that this deal would be a stepping stone. The way the elders talk about it is they wanted two horses pulling the cart, with the provincial and federal governments working concurrently together for the greater good of [Technical difficulty—Editor] and the continual dream to have our land protected by the Constitution [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Mr. Desjarlais.

On behalf of the committee's members today, I'd like to thank President Herb Lehr, Vice-Chief Richard Derocher and Chairperson Stan Delorme for their presentations, answering our questions and giving us their insights. This will help us a great deal as we work on the study of housing in indigenous communities. Thank you very much for being present today.

To all of the committee members, we're going to suspend for a minute or so, as we move to the second panel. Thank you.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Colleagues, we will resume.

We have only one of the three witnesses so far, but we'll start. Hopefully, the other two witnesses will join us very shortly.

I'd like to welcome Nina Malek, councillor for the Conseil des Innus de Pakua Shipu.

We will start with you, Ms. Malek. You have five minutes for your opening statement.

Please go ahead.

[Nina Malek, Councillor, Conseil des Innus de Pakua Shipu]

[Witness spoke in Innu]

[Translation]

Is someone going to read the brief I sent?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Do you have an opening statement, Ms. Malek?

Yes, okay. Go ahead. We are listening.

[Nina Malek]

Reading my brief in French is going to take a while.

Good afternoon. My name is Nina Malek, and I am a councillor with the Conseil des Innus de Pakua Shipu des Premières Nations.

I am here today on behalf of our chief, Guy Mestenapéo, and my fellow members of the Conseil de Pakua Shipu.

I'd like to thank the members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs for the opportunity to share our community's views on such an important issue: the effects of the housing shortage on our indigenous peoples, the Innu people.

We are a 400‑member Innu community on the Lower North Shore of the St. Lawrence River, in Quebec. Specifically, the community of Pakua Shipu is located in Nitassinan, the unceded territory of the Innu first nations. The vast majority of us, nearly all, live in the community, and we are an especially young population. Nearly half of our members are under 25 years old.

We live in a remote community 500 kilometres east of Sept‑Îles. Our community is isolated because we are not connected to the rest of the province's road network.

Our village does not yet have official reserve status. Administratively speaking, we are an indigenous settlement. The federal government has been slow to move on the matter.

We have initiated processes to create a reserve and expand our village perimeter. We hope to be able to carry out projects in the short term.

Our most recent data indicate that we have 70 housing units in our housing stock. The average occupancy rate of each unit is 5.1 community members, which is significantly higher than the provincial rate, which is approximately 2.3 people per dwelling.

That illustrates the overcrowding problem faced by our community. Many dwellings are occupied by more than one family. Sometimes two, even three, families live in the same unit. In many cases, these are multi-generational households, where grandparents, parents and children all live under the same roof because they have no other option. Most of those dwellings are located inside the community.

As you no doubt realize, if the average occupancy rate in our community is 5.1 people per housing unit, some units have seven, eight, nine or even more people living in them.

The situation affects a variety of problems we face locally. One effect of the housing shortage in our community is that it makes us very vulnerable in exceptional circumstances such as the COVID‑19 pandemic. Lockdown changed people's lives all over the country. In our community, the past two years have been marked by an unusual wave of suicides. I'm not sure whether it's possible to draw a direct link, but it must be recognized that someone has committed suicide in the same space as someone else. After months of lockdown, this is an unusual situation in a community of just 400. Overcrowding leads to challenging family dynamics and sometimes unfortunate events because of the close quarters in which people live.

I won't dwell on the negative impacts. I prefer to come at the issue through a positive lens. In other words, decent housing fosters healthy individuals, a healthy social environment and good academic performance. Our living conditions are not conducive to any of those things.

The housing situation in our community has been well documented for more than two decades. Thanks to the Assembly of First Nations Quebec–Labrador and our people who work in housing, we have reliable data that show at least 50 additional housing units are needed in the next five years to put an end to overcrowding in our homes, replace inadequate housing and meet the needs of the growing population.