Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 22nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I call this meeting to order.

First of all, I want to apologize to our witnesses for the delayed start. We had a delayed vote in the House of Commons and then the committee members made their way over to the committee room.

Welcome. This is the ninth meeting of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. We are gathered here on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation.

Today, we are continuing our second study on the effects of the housing shortage on indigenous peoples across Canada.

To start the discussion today, we have three witnesses.

We have the Honourable Paulie Chinna, Minister Responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. We have Raigili Amaaq, chairperson, Igloolik Housing Association, and Eiryn Devereaux, president and CEO of the Nunavut Housing Corporation.

I don't need to remind everybody about the health measures that we are following in this period of COVID, so I won't dwell on that.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services in English, French and Inuktitut are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately and we will ensure interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings. The “raise hand” feature at the bottom of the screen can be used at any time if you wish to speak or alert the chair.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute. Please stick to the allotted time. We have one hour for this first panel. I remind everyone that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Without further ado, I would invite our first guest, the Honourable Paulie Chinna, to speak.

Minister, you have five minutes.

[Paulie Chinna, Minister, Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, Government of the Northwest Territories]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear before the committee on the important subject of the effects of the housing shortage on indigenous peoples across Canada.

First, I should make it very clear that I'm not appearing in a representative capacity for indigenous peoples but as a minister of the Government of the Northwest Territories, a government representing a population in which over 50% of our residents are indigenous.

I can also speak from my personal experience and observations as an indigenous person who grew up in Fort Good Hope in the Northwest Territories, a Dene community of about 600 people located near the Arctic Circle.

In my role as the minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation and also minister responsible for homelessness, I see the effects of the housing shortage on indigenous people in the north every day. Whether this is looking at the long waiting list for public housing in most small communities or meeting under-housed people on the streets of Yellowknife, by far the majority of these people are indigenous.

Our population distribution alone does not fully explain this. The impact of the residential school system, including intergenerational trauma, is one good reason. The Northwest Territories as a jurisdiction had the highest participation rate in residential schools of any Canadian province or territory. We continue to work with indigenous governments, communities and other partners to address these impacts through actions such as the implementation of the truth and reconciliation calls to action, but there is no quick fix.

Distribution of economic opportunities is another reason many Northwest Territories communities suffer from the lack of economic opportunities, which increases reliance on public housing. This is especially true in many of our smaller communities where the population is almost entirely indigenous.

As a territory, our reliance on public housing is greater than that of any other Canadian jurisdiction, other than Nunavut. While important progress is being made in adding new public housing units with the help of the federal government in recent years, the need is vast and requires a sustained effort.

Yet another reason is the cost to build, maintain and heat housing in Canada's north. These costs can be multiple times the cost of a unit in southern Canada. Over the life of the unit, these issues are not easily fixed either. They are the result of a combination of the remoteness of communities, harsh weather conditions and limited reliable transportation infrastructure.

What can be done to address these impacts and their impacts on the public of the Northwest Territories and, in particular, the indigenous population? I will offer a few suggestions specific to housing.

The federal government needs to continue to be our partner in addressing the Northwest Territories housing gap. This means sustained multi-year capital funding to increase the stock of new public housing in our territory.

The federal government needs to revisit its policy choice to wind down operating funding for public housing. This decision, made in the 1990s, had a disproportionate effect on northern jurisdictions because of the much higher costs of operations and maintenance in the north and the territory's much heavier relative reliance on public housing.

Work with the indigenous partner governments. We welcome Canada's recent efforts to ensure distinctions-based funding flows to the Northwest Territories indigenous governments for their housing priorities, as it does in the south. This can help the overall situation in the Northwest Territories. The Government of the Northwest Territories is taking steps to ensure that we support collaboration with indigenous governments for the best combined positive effect.

Finally, federal government housing funding to the GNWT needs to be flexible enough for the GNWT to determine its own priorities, which may be different from those of southern jurisdictions. We are seeing some encouraging signs that it is understood by federal partners, and we would like that to continue.

I look forward to hearing the committee's questions. I wish you well with your work, as the context of this study is very important.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Minister.

We'll now go to our second guest, Ms. Amaaq.

Ms. Amaaq, you have five minutes.

[Raigili Amaaq, Chairperson, Igloolik Housing Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm Raigili Amaaq, chairperson for Igloolik Housing Association. Currently we have 284 public housing units, including the new constructions and leased units. We recently allocated 20 new units. We have a population of 2,014.

I will speak about the community. When colonialism started by the federal government, they picked up families from their camps, brought them to Igloolik with next to nothing with them, and placed them in matchboxes and promised them two dollars a month. Today, families of these people are overcrowded, our grandchildren being some of them. Having lost his father to a sudden death, our grandson is grieving alone at our house without the love and support of his mother, because the other grandparents' house is also overcrowded.

Residential school had a great impact and is still alive and well with the shortage of housing and the mental health and well-being of the families.

If we were to be given funding for housing, I would ask for one bedrooms, also to respect the single people or couples that have no children and are not planning to have children. They couch surf trying to find that kind person who has a couch for them to sleep on.

Although there are 183 people on the waiting list, some still do not bother to apply, because it's next to impossible. Some people end up living with a parent or parents, cousins or siblings until the parent passes away and they can finally have the unit.

Is this only in Nunavut? Why should we still be living like this in 2022? We are in a crisis. We need housing. This is our reality in Igloolik.

Some families are still living in some units that were built in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Some were renovated, but there are still some of the very oldest units there, because there is no other housing available.

The homeowners are also overcrowded due to the lack of housing available. The cost of food is very expensive, and some public housing units house up to 16 to 20 in some families.

I think that's about it. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Ms. Amaaq.

We'll now go to our third speaker, Mr. Eiryn Devereaux.

Mr. Devereaux, you have five minutes.

[Eiryn Devereaux, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nunavut Housing Corporation]

I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak here today and for the warm welcome.

The ongoing affordable housing shortage poses a substantial burden for indigenous people across our country. Nunavut is one of the hardest hit jurisdictions in Canada. My invitation to speak here today is a positive sign that the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs is taking this crisis seriously.

I'm the newly appointed president of the Nunavut Housing Corporation, although my career in northern housing and infrastructure began in 1994 when I got my first job in the community of Arviat with the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. I spent 13 years with that organization and then later served as assistant deputy minister of infrastructure with the Nunavut government as well as deputy minister of infrastructure and housing with the Province of Nova Scotia.

In the 20 years since Nunavut was founded, the housing shortage has only grown. Overcrowding is becoming the norm. Although both the Government of Nunavut and our federal partners have invested and continue to invest in maintenance and construction, the situation is not getting better. It's getting worse.

Ask Nunavummiut what their biggest worry is for the future of our territory and most will answer housing. Against a backdrop of chronic underinvestments in affordable housing, not a single person is untouched by this crisis.

Within the government we constantly ask ourselves how we will address the increasing pressures on supportive housing options for vulnerable segments of the population. That includes our elders, women, young victims of family violence and people without homes.

About 70% of the housing available in Nunavut is public housing. There are few alternatives to government-subsidized housing. In many communities the markets for private rentals or home ownership simply do not exist. In a territory of almost 39,000, there are more than 3,000 families on our public housing wait-lists. We estimate that the real need for additional new housing is closer to 5,000 units.

The Nunavut Housing Corporation maintains approximately 5,800 public housing units. We build about 75 to 100 new units every year. This comes nowhere near meeting the demand. We need to start building 250 to 300 homes each year over the next five to eight years to make a reasonable dent in the current housing supply gap.

Around 35% of all homes are overcrowded in Nunavut. For Inuit households, that number rises to approximately 56%. We know that unsuitable housing is a significant risk factor for tuberculosis, which is another crisis we are fighting in Nunavut, and of course for COVID-19.

Overcrowding is also a driver of many of the social problems in the territory, such as family abuse and the suicide crisis. This stresses our health care, justice and social services institutions. It poses an obstacle to employment, education and training opportunities for our residents. Earlier this year, the Nunavut community of Pangnirtung held the rare distinction of fighting outbreaks of COVID-19 and tuberculosis at the same time. You can imagine how this limits efforts to prevent the spread of either disease.

In addition to overcrowding, the poor condition of existing homes across Nunavut continues to be a driver of negative social outcomes. The number of homes requiring major repairs doubled from 20% in 2006 to approximately 40% in 2018. This compares to the national average of approximately 7%.

Mould continues to be a significant issue across our portfolio of existing public housing units. The Nunavut Housing Corporation has completed remediation work on approximately 150 public housing units over the past five years. Hundreds more units need to be remediated. We anticipate spending approximately $30 million over the next five years to address the units in greatest need of remedial action. We will still have many more units requiring action, but limited funding impacts our schedule.

In Nunavut, as in the rest of the country, public housing remains the least costly way to address homelessness. The Nunavut Housing Corporation could put someone in a public housing unit for $16 a day. By contrast, it costs $74 a day to house somebody in an emergency shelter service. That's about five times the cost. A family violence shelter operating a 24-hour, full-service shelter can house someone at $135 a day. That's eight times the cost. Putting somebody in a jail cell in Nunavut is equivalent to $306 a day. It is almost 20 times the cost.

It's not only from a humanitarian perspective, but also a financial perspective that we can say that public housing represents a sound investment. The longer we take to reasonably address the housing crisis, the more it will ultimately cost to pay for it.

In 2019, the federal and territorial governments struck an agreement to provide nearly $316 million over 10 years to repair and build affordable homes across our territory. We estimate it will take approximately $3 billion to build the 5,000 housing units we need over the next five to eight years. That price tag is only going to get steeper with each passing year, as the cost of construction escalates. We all need to work together to close this staggering housing supply gap.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Qujannamiik.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Devereaux.

We'll proceed to the first round of questions, beginning with Mrs. Stubbs from the Conservative Party.

Mrs. Stubbs, you have six minutes.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that.

Thank you to all the witnesses who have given their time to be with us today.

I couldn't agree more and I know that all of us, regardless of what party we come from or what region we represent, agree completely that safe, secure, affordable homes are critical to quality of life, to standard of living and to health outcomes.

I have to confess that I sit here as a Conservative who's a proponent for limited government and responsible spending, but I am shocked and disturbed by what is clearly a colossal humanitarian failure to ensure sufficient housing for fellow Canadians in northern and remote communities. What I'm grappling with here is that governments of all stripes and over the years have failed to provide this very core necessity for human beings. I really am interested if we can get to learning about whatever other options or partnerships might be available through private sector partnerships or community partnerships to help be part of the solution.

Before we get there, I invite each of you to boil down the specifics in any way you wish on the existing challenges to your public housing programs and for your residents. If there are key barriers you could identify and a number of key solutions, I would welcome each of you to start off by talking about those.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mrs. Stubbs.

I'll suggest that Minister Chinna get us going.

[Paulie Chinna]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here as well. Housing is quite significant throughout the country, but I really want to press the importance of housing and the effects in the northern communities as well, and also of looking at the delivery and the funding that we do receive. I would like to look at direct funding to the Northwest Territories. We have been working with the indigenous groups too, as well as with their lobbying efforts.

For the Northwest Territories, we do have 2,600 public housing units throughout all 33 communities, but we haven't had a new housing delivery in decades. We have a delivery this year of 90 public housing units that are under construction right now through that delivery. We're trying to be very innovative with that approach and trying to create employment in smaller communities, trying to work with the indigenous groups as well. We are looking at the operation and maintenance of these units. The price to operate them is drastically increasing.

Throughout the territory, we have several different climate effects as well. We have coastline communities where erosion is affecting our builds. I had the opportunity to travel to Sachs Harbour last year shortly after we were out of session to look at the condition of those units. I was quite surprised to see the amount of mould issues in the housing units in the coastline communities and not being able to replace them and repair them. As the minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, one of the questions I'd ask is how much money we are going to continuously invest into these 50-year-old assets, looking at the timeline when they were built and the evolving of the Northwest Territories and looking at the significant impacts of residential schools and people returning to the smaller communities.

I know we have a time limit here, but I really want to emphasize looking at the funding that is available on housing delivery. I would like to see direct funding to the Northwest Territories. We have increased our partnership with the indigenous groups too. One of the things the territories has done is we've created a council of leaders working group where we have every indigenous group at that table trying to come up with housing solutions, but with the 2,600 units that we have in the Northwest Territories with no increase in the past 50 years, our assets are deteriorated. We are trying to invest in them and they are just going to be beyond economic repair. We need to replenish that stock.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Minister.

Ms. Amaaq, do you want to add anything? Please be concise.

[Raigili Amaaq]

Yes. We are still researching funding opportunities for community housing projects that could probably be funded by the federal government. Although we allocated 20 new units, it has created more conflicts because families want to get their own units.

One of the issues is having seasonal construction. We get our housing supplies during the summer and fall, and they come in by barge. The construction contractors are usually seasonal. They leave the construction for months, and then they come back when it gets warmer to finish the units. That's one of our issues here in Igloolik.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Amaaq.

We have gone way over the six minutes, so I am going to go to our next speaker.

Mr. McLeod, you have six minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to say how much I appreciate hearing our colleague MP Stubbs speak about the issue of homelessness. It strikes a chord with me as the member for the Northwest Territories where our situation is at a crisis level.

I really appreciate the minister of housing, Paulie Chinna, joining us. Paulie has done a lot of work as an advocate for the issue of housing.

We all know it's not going to be an easy solution. We all know there is no silver bullet that's going to fix it. We have 33 communities and every one of them is facing challenges. There is no one-size-fits-all.

Could the minister tell the committee what some of the barriers are that she sees for the northern communities and governments to access some of the programs and the funding dollars that are available? What can be done to make it easier to access these dollars? I hear quite a few indigenous governments and organizations speak of this challenge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Go ahead, Minister.

[Paulie Chinna]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much to MP McLeod as well.

We see the significant barriers in the Northwest Territories in trying to access the funding that is available from the federal government and looking at the criteria that is expected, as well as the lengthy process for that.

I really want to bring this to the grassroots. We have indigenous organizations and representatives that are trying to access this funding. They don't have the capacity to be submitting these proposals going forward with the amount of information that is required for these bills and for the type of housing they need. They don't have the capacity to try to address these strong concerns leading right to mental health, to overcrowding and to addiction.

Looking at those barriers, and working with the indigenous groups, I want to look at understanding those barriers for the smaller communities and isolated communities.

We're looking at one of the concerns that was brought up, which was pursuing and looking for consultants throughout the territory to submit these applications going forward. That is not just time-consuming, but to understand [Technical difficulty—Editor]. The housing corporation has done that. We've hired an employee to work directly with CMHC here in the Northwest Territories to further explain what those criteria are like for the indigenous groups to access the funding.

The other thing is the operation and maintenance. The timing of the CMHC funding has put the Northwest Territories in a panic. We are looking at the year of 2038 and what that looks like for the Northwest Territories, and we're looking at our operation and maintenance funding for that as well.

There's also direct funding that can be available to the territories, so that we can work directly with our indigenous groups and the 33 communities, and start replenishing the 2,600 units that we've been operating and maintaining for the past 50 years.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Could you tell us what the Government of Canada can do to help reduce the cost of building new homes in the Northwest Territories?

Do you think there are ways to build local capacity in the communities to make construction and repairs of units more affordable?

[Paulie Chinna]

Looking at cost savings for the Northwest Territories, we're going to see an influx of material coming in. We're already building duplexes. They're coming in at $1.2 million, and that is throughout the territory. Depending which area we're constructing in, not all communities are accessible by highway. We have some communities that are only fly-in. We've got the winter road season, and due to climate change, every year we're shortened by a week and days. That's crucial to our communities.

Looking at cost savings on how we can deliver the partnerships with the indigenous groups right now is crucial. It's something that we really need to emphasize. Working collaboratively with them helps us to understand the crisis they are experiencing in the smaller communities. In terms of the cost savings right now, the material flying into the communities has pretty much quadrupled in price.

We're also working with the smaller communities in developing community housing plans. We're working with them to forecast the types of builds they want. We're also trying to financially forecast options for them. Right now, we're recovering from COVID. We have overcrowding. COVID has highlighted a lot of crises for us in the territories. Housing is the number one concern, and it needs to be addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Madam Minister.

The next person to take the floor is Mrs. Gill.

Mrs. Gill, you have six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd first like to thank all the witnesses, including Minister Chinna, Ms. Amaaq and Mr. Devereaux, for their speeches.

This is one of our first meetings, and once again we see that housing is the cornerstone of many of the difficulties and challenges that first nations people face.

When we hear Minister Chinna tell us that, in her region, many of the difficulties stem from the fact that some communities aren't connected by road and can only be reached in winter, we have a good idea of the difficulties posed by the territory. The difficulties may have the same consequences, but the solutions must be different depending on where you are in the territory. My riding can also identify with these same realities.

In some of the solutions that should be adopted, there is a lot of talk about centralization. I'd like to hear your views on the issue of centralization. Could there be, for example, a national strategy where everything would be deployed from the same place and from the same group of people, even though there must obviously be consultation? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.

Would you prefer solutions to be adapted to the territories and to each community? In my riding, there are about 10 communities, and none of them have exactly the same needs.

My question is for the three witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

Could Minister Chinna start?

[Paulie Chinna]

I absolutely agree with that, and I'm looking at solutions for the Northwest Territories.

You are correct in that we deal with different aspects throughout Canada, and throughout each province and territory. It's quite unique, but very similar to the conditions in the way that we deliver housing in our smaller remote communities.

Transportation is one of the biggest hurdles and how we address that. I want to give you an example.

If we were to build in Nunakput, which is one of the higher Arctic communities, we are probably looking at close to $1.5 million for a three bedroom house. If we were to build in the southern part of the territory, such as Hay River, Fort Smith and those areas where we're very close to the Alberta border, you would see a significant decrease.

Throughout the territories, and looking at possible solutions, it is correct that we have to look at all aspects uniquely, and also the delivery, recognizing the isolation of each of our remote communities.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

Ms. Amaaq, would you like to comment?

[Raigili Amaaq]

No, not on this one. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Very good, and, Mr. Devereaux, do you have a comment?