Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 4th, 2022

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

It applies to northern and remote communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Gill and Ms. Hajdu.

We'll now go to our last speaker in this first panel, Ms. Idlout.

Ms. Idlout, you have two and a half minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

I'd like to ask you about elder care and the housing needs that indigenous seniors and elders have.

I've spoken many times about the complete absence of long-term care spaces and facilities, and the fact that elders in Nunavut have to leave their communities and support networks to receive care in other cities. One significant barrier to Inuit seniors fully receiving medical care is the fact that they will lose their home, or they won't have a home that they can return to, if they leave their home.

What is your department doing to provide assurances to seniors and elders that they'll be able to receive care without losing their homes?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Is that for me or Patty?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Go ahead.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Yes. Maybe you can complete my thoughts, Patty.

First of all, it's unacceptable that we have to have elders flown outside their communities. It's very disorienting. Ottawa is a prime example of that. Many, including the premier's grandfather, are here.

People should be able, at various stages of their elder years, to be in their homes. That's clear. The flexibility of the funding we've provided to the north is a partial answer to that, but there needs to be a more comprehensive approach as to how people can age in their communities. Especially since they're the carriers of the language, they have a lot to teach their kids and they should be surrounded by their own.

We're not getting it right. We've taken a few steps to start to get it right. However, there are a number of factors that are aligned right now that allow us to take a more profound step on how care is given and provided closer to where people live.

As to keeping their houses, I wouldn't have an answer to that. Perhaps Minister Hajdu would like to add something.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you very much.

There are a couple of parts to this, and one would be the investment in renovations. They need to be flexible enough to consider accessibility, something that an unrelated but related minister, Minister Qualtrough, speaks about all the time. We should be making things accessible from the get-go, because we know that it will serve us well in terms of the needs of a population.

The other piece is a model of care that is codeveloped and that has a reflection of the needs, from a cultural perspective, of communities to stay intact and to provide care to the degree that's possible at home, in the community.

I agree with Minister Miller. We are a long way away from where we need to be in this regard. It is extremely difficult for families that are separated because of a lack of care in their home community, whether in a first nation or another remote community, like the ones you are speaking about, MP Idlout.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Idlout.

That brings our panel to a conclusion.

On behalf of the committee members, I'd like to thank Minister Hajdu and Minister Miller, and from the CMHC, Ms. Roset-Zuppa and Mr. Williams, her associate. Thank you very much for coming today and answering our questions.

Madam Clerk, if our guests for the second panel are ready, we can proceed immediately.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Vanessa Davies]

We'll do a brief sound check first here, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Very good. Thank you.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I call the meeting back to order.

Thank you to our panellists who are joining us today. We have Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse from the Assembly of First Nations.

We also welcome Chief Lance Haymond, from the Assembly of First Nations Quebec- Labrador. He is accompanied by Guy Latouche.

We also have Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami with us today.

It's the same procedure as usual, panellists and committee members.

We'll start off with a five-minute presentation from Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse.

Chief, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse, Manitoba Region, Assembly of First Nations]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Welcome to each and every one of you, first and foremost.

I am coming to you live from the Treaty 1 territory here in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I am from a small first nations community where I was raised with my parents and my four brothers. It's called Pinaymootang First Nation. It's a small community in central Manitoba.

I'm coming to you from the Assembly of First Nations. I am responsible for the housing portfolio.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, meegwetch for inviting the Assembly of First Nations to address the focus of your current study, which is the effects of the housing shortage on indigenous peoples across Canada.

First nations have been living with the impacts of a housing shortage for generations. First nations housing suffers from decades of federal underfunding and neglect, which has led to a host of negative outcomes in health, education and economic progress. There are regular news media reports of first nations trying to manage COVID-19 outbreaks amid overcrowded houses with no space for isolation. I suspect that you would want to focus, as the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations have been doing jointly over the last few years, on how to fix the problem.

First nations are moving toward the control of our own housing as part of the solution to the housing crisis. Now the Minister of Finance must do her part, which is to fulfill Canada's treaty fiduciary and other obligations by making the needed guaranteed investment of $44 billion to meet the current first nations housing needs, plus an additional $16 billion to accommodate the population growth projected to 2040, for a total of $60 billion.

First nations reasonably expect the full amount of that investment now as the federal government has, since 2016, repeatedly told first nations that it is committed to fully addressing the housing shortage.

The Assembly of First Nations submitted to you the 2021 research report that we commissioned, which provides the breakdown of estimated costs to address overcrowding, replacement of units, repairs, renovations, servicing of lots and other costs. With the data now on hand on the real cost of the unmet first nations housing needs, there is no excuse for delay. Anything short of full funding will not result in first nations raising the standard of our housing to a level comparable to that of mainstream Canadians.

The control by first nations of our own housing is a key pillar in the national first nations housing and related infrastructure strategy, a copy of which the AFN office made available to you and upon which I can expand during the question and answer period.

The solution has several additional requirements of the federal government. One is to conclude as soon as possible agreements with those first nations that are willing to assume care, control and management of their housing. This process has already started. Another is to codevelop and design, with the Assembly of First Nations, sufficiently funded and first nations-exclusive federal housing programs for first nations that choose not to assume control of their housing in the short or medium term. Also needed is an additional federal investment of $21.37 billion in community infrastructure, without which additional housing is not possible in many cases.

The Assembly of First Nations has requested an additional $2.6 billion of federal investments over the next five years for programs and services aimed at preventing and eliminating homelessness. The Assembly of First Nations is developing a national action plan on first nations homelessness that is based on first nations administering our own homelessness programs.

The Assembly of First Nations is working with Infrastructure Canada to provide recommendations based on research and engagement of first nations on priorities for the first nations distinction-based funding stream of the federal Reaching Home program. The current budgets of the federal government homelessness programs for the first nations are insufficient compared to the immense needs. They must be adequately funded to be successful.

In closing, Canada's obligation under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples includes full financial support for first nations to manage and control our own housing.

I want to thank you for your time today. Meegwetch and I'm ready to take questions that you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Chief Woodhouse.

We'll have our second speaker now.

Chief Lance Haymond, you have five minutes.

[Chief Lance Haymond, Housing Portfolio, Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the members of the committee for the invitation.

My name is Lance Haymond and I'm the chief of the Algonquin community of Kebaowek. I am the housing portfolio holder for the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, and I also sit as the representative for Quebec on the AFN’s chiefs committee on housing and infrastructure.

I'm coming to you from the unceded Algonquin territory of my community, which is located about 400 kilometres north of Ottawa.

The effects of housing shortages on first nations peoples are numerous. The reason is quite simple. Housing has ramifications in all spheres of our society, including health and education, not to mention the efficient functioning of the economy. Links can be made with other aspects of society such as employment and community development.

I don't need to tell you that housing is an important determinant of health. I would go even further and say that it is an important factor in the academic success of our children. It's very difficult for our children to study and do homework when they live in overcrowded conditions with multiple generations of their families living in the same house, vying for space, time and opportunity.

It also contributes to economic activity in many of our communities. It provides much-needed employment. In short, affordable and adequate housing does more than reduce poverty and improve public health. It is a basic condition for personal and social development.

The state of the housing situation in first nations in Quebec is something that has been well documented for over 20 years, since we started to gather our statistics in 2000. We have reliable data that indicates that 10,000 housing units should be added in Quebec to make up for the accumulated backlog, owing in particular to overcrowding, population growth, migration of members who, potentially, wish to live in the community, and the need to replace condemned housing.

Our figures also indicate that 8,000 housing units require renovations or repairs, and that 9,500 residential lots must be serviced to build the new housing units. As Regional Chief Woodhouse indicated, the number nationally is staggering. For the Quebec region, the investment needed is $3.9 billion.

It should be noted that we build on average around 225 housing units per year within our communities with regular funding levels. Instead, between 1,000 and 2,000 units per year should be built to eliminate the accumulated backlog, and we're projecting this over a period of five to 10 years.

This portrait confirms the housing shortage that is experienced in many of our communities. I come back to the fundamental role that housing plays in society. This role is not currently being fulfilled due to the magnitude of the needs facing our communities.

There is also an overrepresentation of first nations members in unenviable statistics. I am thinking, for example, of the overrepresentation of our people in the legal system, in homelessness, particularly in urban areas, and in cases of respiratory and other health-related illnesses and problems. All of this is certainly related, at least in part, to the gloomy portrait of housing that I have drawn for you.

It is therefore not surprising that, in the report of the Public Inquiry Commission on relations between Indigenous Peoples and certain public services in Québec, in 2019, Commissioner Viens sets out this striking observation. He said that from the outset of the commission's work, the major housing crisis affecting aboriginal peoples has indeed “emerged as the epicentre” of many problems experienced by first nations and Inuit.

There is not only a need for new investment. We need to tackle the root cause.

It has been recognized that aboriginal communities face significant housing issues. We do not see, in the short term, that there will be a radical change in the housing situation of our communities. We face great challenges, some of which are as follows. Our population is young. It is increasing rapidly—in fact, four times faster than that of the province over a 10-year period, despite the fact that the housing shortage is slowing down growth in many of our communities. Another revealing figure is that the median age of our members in Quebec is 28, compared to 43 for the non-indigenous population. In some communities, the median age barely exceeds 20 years.

The increase in our housing needs is supported by the growing demographics. The increase in construction costs is felt by everyone, but that particularly affects us because the capital budgets of our communities are not adjusted accordingly. Housing is a sector that is chronically underfunded.

There would be so much more I'd like to tell you, but I'll stop here. It will be my pleasure to answer your questions and to tell you more about the particular challenges in remote regions, about our vision of the future and, more particularly, in relation to a way out of the crisis.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Chief Haymond.

I'll now turn to President Obed. You have five minutes.

[Natan Obed, President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami]

Nakurmiik.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to all the members of the committee.

ITK is the national representational organization for Inuit in Canada, the majority of whom live in Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit homeland encompassing 51 communities across the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories, the entirety of Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador.

There are three things I hope you'll take from my brief presentation.

First, the Inuit Nunangat housing crisis is decades long. It has persisted to the detriment of Inuit health, educational attainment and economic development. Decades' worth of data show that Inuit experience worse housing outcomes and attendant social and economic challenges than non-indigenous Canadians. This crisis has existed since the Government of Canada coerced Inuit into communities, in many cases after World War II, and has not abated since the advent of Inuit living in fixed communities in the way in which the Government of Canada had hoped that they would.

Second, we need to continue the work of overturning colonial housing policies that systemically marginalize Inuit, who estimate that the cost of ending the Nunangat housing crisis is almost 10 times more than what the federal government is currently providing to Inuit.

Third, we need legislative and policy changes that respect Inuit rights, including the implementation of comprehensive land claim and self-governing agreements and the enforcement of our human right to housing.

Inuit and the Government of Canada jointly recognize that the lack of appropriate and affordable housing is a national crisis. This is the first statement contained in the Inuit Nunangat housing strategy, which was jointly developed through the Inuit-Crown partnership committee and released in 2019.

In the early 1990s, the first aboriginal peoples' survey found that 40% of Inuit households were in core housing need. In 2016, little had changed. That year, 40% of Inuit were in core housing need compared with about 11% of non-indigenous Canadians. We need legislative and policy changes that respect Inuit rights, including the implementation of our land claim agreements, as I've said earlier.

The federal housing policy has changed significantly since 2019 with the passage of the National Housing Strategy Act that recognizes the right to housing as a fundamental human right affirmed in international law, including by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ratified by Canada.

While Inuit applaud this change, we were disappointed by the absence of recognition and commitment to enforce implementation of our human right to housing. Our right to housing must be recognized in Canadian law and given expression through meaningful distinctions-based policies and enforcement mechanisms that advance our right to self-determination.

We must reinvest also in Inuit Nunangat housing delivery. Until quite recently the federal government's inadequate response to the perennial housing shortage in Inuit Nunangat was to build on its relationship with provinces and territories. That relationship changed in 2016 when the Government of Canada began directing distinctions-based housing investments towards Inuit through federal budgets. This was an important move, but $40 million per year over 10 years is not enough. Inuit estimate that it will cost almost 10 times more than this to meet the Government of Canada's housing commitment.

In our view, the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion will need to make substantial renewed investments in Inuit housing in order to meet his government's commitment to close the Inuit Nunangat housing gap by 2030.

Without these legislative and fiscal tools, the Inuit housing and public health crisis will surely endure. We have heard of a shared intent and a level of ambition by the Government of Canada to end infrastructure deficits and housing deficits within indigenous communities by specific, targeted dates. We now call on the Government of Canada to put the framework in place and get the money flowing so as to make good on the shared ambition that we all have to end the Inuit housing crisis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, President Obed.

We will now proceed with the first round of questions, beginning with the Conservatives.

Mr. Schmale, you have six minutes.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses. Thank you for your testimony.

I'll start with you, Chief Haymond. In your testimony, you laid out some pretty challenging conditions and the situation as a whole. You also said we need to get to the root cause.

Can you expand on that a little bit? What are the root causes we have to address in order to help fix some of the challenges you laid out in your testimony?

[Chief Lance Haymond]

By the root cause I mean ensuring that every family who requires it has adequate and suitable housing that meets their needs. It's the foundational piece that's required. It's pretty hard to address the social ills, the addiction issues, the overcrowding and all of the other challenges that exist when families and individuals don't have a place to call home.

The root cause of a lot of the challenges we see with our people, the migration to urban centres and the challenges brought on as people move out of the communities, is really representative of the fact that there's not adequate housing in our communities. They end up migrating out to urban areas and run into a whole host of new challenges. Our principal philosophy is that providing adequate and suitable housing will be one of those main issues where families and individuals don't need to worry. Then we can start tackling other issues, such as job creation and better health services and educational outcomes for our children.

Again, when I talk about the root cause, a lot of the challenges we face as first nations people stem from the fact that we don't have adequate housing.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Okay. I'm very sorry to hear that.

Is some of the problem with the CMHC and the way they do their operations? I think we're hearing it from a number of people. Are you noticing issues, even barriers or blocks, to people accessing a mortgage, proper insurance and even loans for renovations? Are you seeing the CMHC as a potential organization that might need a bit of a redesign?

[Chief Lance Haymond]

The simple answer, quite frankly, is yes. Again, they've managed on-reserve housing programs for a number of years. They've remained static. They have not changed while our realities and our world have changed.

Quebec's vision is not only to have additional investment. We're also looking at building our capacities within our communities and looking at new and innovative ways to meet our housing needs. I don't necessarily view CMHC or Indigenous Services as not doing what they need to do. In fact, in Quebec we have the only tripartite committee that exists across this country where we sit down with CMHC and Indigenous Services and try to find solutions that work for the first nations in Quebec. I view CMHC and ISC as partners in finding ways to move forward.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Chief Haymond. I have more questions for you, but I think I'm running out of time very quickly.

Chief Woodhouse, you talked about negotiations with first nations who want control of their own housing. Can you give us an update on that?

[Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, many first nations have created their own control of their housing. There are many different models out there, and I would encourage you to...or I'll get back to you with some different examples of the many first nations communities who want control and who continue to face many barriers when it comes to different parts: the lack of funding and many other issues.

Thank you.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Maybe I could pick up on that. You talked about barriers. I mentioned CMHC earlier and their lack of movement, I guess, on a changing situation on the ground. Maybe I'll get you to comment on that. Then I'll get to my next question.

[Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse]

I'll say this. When it comes to CMHC, I think having them working more closely with first nations would be helpful. We hear time and time again from many first nations communities that they're trying to work through even the small details of things and they feel like they're going to be left out of the housing process or the allocation of housing, when some things can be fixed, I'll say. One of them could be that maybe sometimes people change reporting, or.... Even communication from CMHC towards our first nations community is very problematic. Sometimes I feel like....

I'll say for Manitoba first nations that requesting CMHC to meet with them is very problematic sometimes. It's very frustrating when our first nations have diverse issues, but many of them are common issues for certain things, like when it comes to things like rapid housing. Some people felt that they were left out of rapid housing when they should have been included, or that because they were isolated, they were left out of it. That's just one example.

I'll leave that there, but I think there's very much room for improvement and very much room to improve the communication between CMHC and first nations communities.