Thank you.
Good afternoon to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
It gives me great pleasure to appear before you today to provide some context to the issues of housing shortages in indigenous communities. By way of background, I'm here as the president of Nisga'a Lisims Government, representing the Nisga'a Nation.
Indeed, adequate housing has always been an issue since the arrival of newcomers. Prior to contact, the nation lived communally and lived on the land and the waters, where we gathered our clothing, food, fish, berries and other staples that ensured our survival. After contact, the Indian Act was imposed, and we were placed on postage-stamp reserves and were given the bare minimum to work with to create housing. Over the generations, it certainly has been a challenge.
Prior to the Nisga'a Treaty, each Nisga'a village operated its own housing programs directly with Indian and Northern Affairs. Some of the issues that we are still faced with today include overcrowded housing with multiple families, the lack of land to develop further housing, families living in dilapidated houses, and mould and other serious matters that cause great concern for the health of our people. That is to name just a few. Post-treaty, we have been working with the tools in our treaty and, indeed, with our treaty partners, to address the serious issue of housing shortages.
Our housing management program has evolved over time and, more recently, we have made significant progress with our treaty partners. We recognize the importance of the issues, and the Nisga'a government has established a new directorate of housing, capital and facilities operations to create a unified approach to housing in the Nisga'a villages of New Aiyansh, Gitwinksihlkw, Laxgalts'ap and Gingolx.
We also established a relationship with B.C. Housing through a memorandum of understanding. The intent of the MOU was to share and develop best practices in residential asset management. The Nisga'a Nation recognizes that asset management is more than a report or plan; it is an approach to managing our housing infrastructure in a more sustainable way. To ensure this, our approach builds the capacity within our nation to deliver a significant amount of hands-on training to our current housing staff in the following areas, which are listed in my presentation: asset condition assessments, data management and capital planning, to name a few.
In December of 2020, I had the opportunity to meet with former MP Adam Vaughan. At that time, I shared with Mr. Vaughan that the Nisga'a Nation, through our administration, routinely calculates and assesses our crowding rates through different methods. We estimate that between 15% to 30% of households on Nisga'a lands are overcrowded, and the pandemic has increased overcrowding. We know that our women and children are disproportionately impacted by poor-quality housing and by this pandemic.
The overcrowding and the inability to manage major repairs lead to increased mould in houses and increased asthma and other health issues. Through our work with our fellow self-governing indigenous groups, we have a technical team that has been working on pillars to address funding requirements with Canada as our treaty partner.
In order to protect our most vulnerable, the self-governing indigenous governments, SGIGs, asked Canada to make a targeted investment of $426 million in safe, affordable housing and to support infrastructure for citizens living below the poverty line. The SGIG proposal aligns with our government-to-government relationship and with policy commitments that Canada has made to support SGIGs' access to affordable and adequate housing.
Our legislature, Wilp Si'ayuukhl Nisga'a, met in the last three days, and they were so very happy when we announced the good news about the housing funding. They were jubilant about making sure that we address the housing shortages.
