Good afternoon.
My name is Joseph Quesnel. I'm a Métis research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Adequate housing, especially in remote and northern locations, is an intractable problem facing first nation communities. The high cost of housing in these locations and the never-ending cycle of backlogs plague reserve communities across Canada. The federal government must pledge to make housing a commitment on the same level as safe drinking water for reserves or the availability of broadband Internet.
The government's emphasis on indigenous housing seems to be on the amount of housing pledged and spent, or the number of housing units built. It's obviously good that the federal government is rolling out specific targets, however, the real focus should be on working with indigenous communities to deal with the policy and governance problems that prevent access to mass levels of market housing on reserves.
Until the government removes restrictive landownership policies on reserves, first nations and governments must find clever ways to roll out market housing. Only the private sector can deliver the high quality housing that reserves need. Government waiting lists will simply never catch up to need, especially with burgeoning populations in many communities.
One of the main difficulties is that the consensus within government circles is to transfer the management of housing, rather than fix it. First nations should lead this transformation and challenge the conviction held by many in government and many first nation leaders that the government should provide, fund and manage reserve housing. There's nothing wrong with social housing to ensure affordable access on reserves, but the answer is to move toward a shared responsibility model that brings in local governments and private lenders. Governments have a role to play in ensuring that this happens. This includes creating the legal and regulatory framework for housing markets to operate in.
Many indigenous communities have also found an optimal balance between private and public involvement in housing, such as Westbank, with its innovative lease-to-purchase housing program. These cases need to be studied.
In 2008, the Institute on Governance, a non-profit think tank—and I can provide the link—released a paper on how to improve first nation housing. Many of its insights still hold true and I believe the committee should re-evaluate those.
The first area is ensuring that housing is treated like a business. This means that day-to-day housing decisions are divorced from community politics, and it means instituting a variety of housing tenure from quasi-home ownership, to rental regimes, to rent-to-purchase, to rent subsidies. Well run indigenous housing policies also correctly view housing as a problem of governance.
In the report, which I mentioned before, the authors concluded that for housing to work on first nations, they need political will, community support and managerial and technical capacity. Indigenous communities need to accept housing as a local issue. However, housing is often the responsibility of other entities. The vast array of federal programs and policies surrounding housing on reserves means it's still viewed mainly as a government responsibility. This needs to fundamentally change.
The government must stop smothering bands with controlling policies and its “we know best” mentality. The best run indigenous housing programs have firewall policies separating elected politicians from independent housing authorities. The federal government must also reopen the conversation about market housing and private ownership on reserves. This doesn't have to be a scary conversation, like it was when the previous government opened it up, but one in which the government will help bands every step of the way. There are first nation entities and the first nation tax commission.
The IOG report, which I mentioned earlier, proposes an outside accreditation system for first nation housing in which bands would have to adopt certain governance and managerial standards to enter a housing regime. The key is that indigenous bodies run these entities and the federal government simply gets out of the way.
Governments should make way for a much more prominent, private role in housing on reserves and should encourage first nation bands to seriously address the governance problem that is at the heart of the housing issue.
Thank you for your attention.