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.