Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on March 22nd, 2022

[Eiryn Devereaux]

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the member for the question.

I do think the federal government plays a key strategic centralized role, but I'd probably articulate the need for the local jurisdictions. Especially, we're very unique, in that the three northern territories can share a lot of similar conditions and challenges across the housing spectrum, so I think it's vital, even with a central federal housing ministry in terms of CMHC, that they work very closely with the three northern territories.

I think what we'd advocate for [Technical difficulty—Editor] from a federal strategic perspective [Technical difficulty—Editor] national housing strategies. We've seen with the national housing strategy and the recent rapid housing initiative the importance of ensuring that they don't lump us in with the rest of southern Canada, because our conditions, our challenges and our needs are just so different from what the centralized federal government would have to address in the major cities in Canada or the major provinces.

I think it's important, but I think it is just as critical for the territories to have a voice and have special consideration when programs and investment strategies are undertaken by the central government.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you.

My question may have been misunderstood by Mr. Devereaux, but he taught me something else. I asked my question about decentralization in order to find out how to respond more adequately to each of the needs of the various communities.

I have other questions about some kind of change of direction that should be taken. We never mention that. We say that there are a lot of solutions that should be provided and that obviously everyone wants to work together. My colleague Ms. Stubbs said that everyone agrees that more housing is needed. It makes no sense to have 20 people living in the same dwelling.

I don't know if this can be said, I'm asking all of you, but I think that funding is already a step in the right direction. It isn't the only solution. At some point, I imagine that all communities want to take charge of housing but, of course, there has to be a radical change. When a unit with 20 people living in it needs to be renovated, what happens to those people while the work is being done, when there is a severe lack of housing?

We'll see how we proceed from there, but I'd like to know if you think, basically, that the first of the solutions is massive funding to fill the current housing shortage and to build even more, because there is also a population explosion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

There's about 20 seconds left.

You could direct the question to one of the witnesses.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I want to address Minister Chinna, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

You have the floor, Ms. Chinna.

[Paulie Chinna]

Thank you.

Absolutely, and I'm really thinking about how we do need funding to address the housing crisis in the north and all provinces and territories, but the other need is capacity. We need employment and training as well in looking at the operational and maintenance funding for addressing the housing needs, and also in looking at the living conditions and addressing the social impacts that homelessness and the lack of housing create. I want to describe it as a branch: Housing is the solution, but we also need to understand the operation and maintenance of that and the education and training on how we maintain and operate those units.

First of all, I would really like to highlight the partnerships between the federal government and the territories and provinces and the indigenous groups. We need to come together at one table and look at housing solutions for each of our communities and our provinces and territories.

Mahsi.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mrs. Gill.

We'll now go to Ms. Idlout.

Ms. Idlout, you have six minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

Firstly, I want to welcome the delegation here.

I have two questions for you, Raigili, if you could reply. If you wish to reply in Inuktitut, go ahead.

For Raigili I ask, how can you describe how it happened that there are 16 to 20 people in one unit, in one house? How did this happen?

[Raigili Amaaq]

[Witness spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you, Lori.

Families increase. They may end up with one child, but as they have more children and end up having grandchildren, they have never vacated or moved into another house that's bigger, so there are a lot of people on a wait-list for housing. As the children grow to be teenagers and young adults, they will find partners and increase a household. It's very difficult. In no time, you can end up being in an overcrowded house, and there are a lot of social problems in overcrowded housing. Many people live in overcrowded housing.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Can you describe how a person ends up couch surfing?

I'd like the members to understand our situation better in the north, so could you describe couch surfing to them?

[Raigili Amaaq]

[Witness spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Yes.

It's more common. There are people who are transient, moving into other communities, or they become orphans or they lose their marriage, if there's a marriage breakup. Orphans who end up without parents end up with completely nothing, no housing. They look for people who will welcome them into the warmth of a house. It's very difficult when you're homeless.

If we go out on a travel trip and we end up without a hotel room, we're devastated because we don't have a place to stay. However, this is how people live day to day. We have no homeless shelters in Igloolik, so couch surfing and looking for kind people to let you in and sleep on the couch is the only way to survive the winter.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you very much for your wonderful reply.

I have a question for Mr. Devereaux.

I know that many people go through a hard time because of lack of housing. A couple of weeks ago when the Government of Canada made an announcement of 101 affordable housing units for Nunavut, the Nunavut government minister, Lorne Kusugak, identified that Nunavut has a housing need of approximately 3,000 houses.

Can you help us to understand why such a large gap exists between what is being asked for and what is being given? What rationale is the government giving you as to why only 101 houses can be built when the need is so high?

[Eiryn Devereaux]

I thank the member for the excellent question.

Certainly over the last 20 years, since Nunavut became a territory, we've seen that growing housing supply gap. As I had mentioned, in our portfolio we have 5,800 public housing units to serve the population, yet the wait-list has grown to over 3,000. It's staggering. The reality is that we just don't see enough investment to meet that demand.

Over the last number of years, with the housing corporation building 75 to 100 units a year, it's like one step ahead and two steps back every single year. It just highlights the reality of the need for increased investment across the various levels of government.

As well, one of the members brought up the importance of leveraging other key stakeholder groups, including the private sector. Certainly we have to figure out how to do that. I'm hopeful that in the coming years we can leverage relationships with the Inuit orgs and other key stakeholders in the industry to find more investment, but it has to start with escalating the housing crisis to the point where we see increased investments coming from the federal government, as well as the territorial government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Idlout and Mr. Devereaux.

We now have a second round of questions, slightly shorter, and we'll start with Mr. Vidal from the Conservative Party.

Mr. Vidal, you have five minutes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank our witnesses today for their excellent testimony.

I'm going to begin with Mr. Devereaux.

In 2018, during a meeting of the environment committee, a director of infrastructure for your organization at the time, Gary Wong, noted significant cost factors in association with the remoteness and isolation. You referenced many of those today in your comments, and many of them beyond the infrastructure and housing costs.

As someone who represents a northern and remote riding, I understand the increased costs of transporting materials to remote sites, and I understand the value of experts and skilled labour in some of those remote communities. In 2018, Mr. Wong said:

There is a great desire in the north to build capacity, to therefore try to involve and train more local people to become familiar with infrastructure. It's almost for the next generation, because it doesn't exist today, and we're building toward that. It is a cost factor, and those economic development parts of contracting in the north are extra cost factors.

I'm curious as to what measures your organization has taken since 2018, based on Mr. Wong's testimony, to increase local skilled labour and whether you're seeing some success from some of those measures.

[Eiryn Devereaux]

I think we see it as a strategic initiative that's so important because the cost for us to have to import southern trade labour drives up the cost of construction throughout Nunavut. We certainly recognize the opportunity to have more local trade and labour involvement, and I think we do.

In each community, we look at the availability of labour and we put specific targets for local labour and Inuit labour in our construction contracts to try to drive that. I think we've made progress, but in all honesty, there is so much more we need to do.

It really is about small incremental steps. I think we're going in that direction, but we have to continue to figure out ways to drive more opportunity. Some of it is not only increased investment, because that is the primary message, but it's more sustained investment too. If we could have a larger construction program where we had funding in place for five years and 10 years, then I think you could say to those individuals that it's not just a one-year or two-year opportunity—in Igloolik we are building for multiple years—to try to keep them interested in that career opportunity.

More needs to be done, without question, to try to drive increased labour from Nunavummiut and Inuit across the territory.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you. I'm going to comment on the end of that.

I think maybe one of the things I heard from you is on the removal of some of that year-to-year program funding for a longer-term commitment that lets you plan out and do the education and development of the skilled force you talked about.

I apologize, Mr. Devereaux. I'm short of time and I have lots of questions.

I'm going to ask Minister Chinna a question as well, and we'll see where my time goes from there.

Minister, in visiting your government's website, I noticed that you offer education courses on home ownership as well as a home ownership initiative within the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation. Can you talk to me a bit about these programs, maybe what you have found to be successful, and what some of the challenges have been with those initiatives?

[Paulie Chinna]

For the corporation, it's strategic to be investing in the smaller communities to help them to build capacities, and looking at apprenticeship is one of our main goals. So far, the housing corporation has successfully seen 33 apprenticeships throughout our time.

The other thing I want to touch on quickly is rolling out the delivery of the 90 units. We have built it in as a requirement with the contracts coming in that they have to hire local and they have to at least be apprenticing one local individual on site when these units are being delivered in the smaller communities. We manage those numbers, and the contractors come in to provide an update on those apprenticeships as well.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I just want to interject quickly, because I'm going to be out of time and the chair's going to cut me off.

Would you comment briefly on the home ownership program? I'm really curious about the home ownership program that your website talks about.

[Paulie Chinna]

My apologies, but I'd just like to get a lot more information out there.

Those home ownership programs are to work with our clients so they're able to operate and maintain their homes, looking at the furnace bills, levelling and roofing, and they help them to support the long-term sustainability of those units and success of those clients. Those courses are reviewed as well, as we construct more at the ground level.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Vidal and Minister.

We'll now proceed to Ms. Atwin.

You have five minutes.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses and committee members.

I'm speaking to you from the unceded Wolastoqiyik territory here in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Mr. Devereaux, you mentioned a little bit about the cost of not doing something and the forethought of what that looks like. Along the same line, is there room for consideration around what types of housing are being built? [Technical difficulty—Editor], antimicrobial building materials, for example, to deal with some of these challenges that have been identified with the current housing stock? I'm just wondering if any considerations have have been made, or if there is even room to do that, seeing as you are confronting a humanitarian crisis at the same time.

[Eiryn Devereaux]

Do you want me to jump in?

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Yes, please.

[Eiryn Devereaux]

Yes, I think there are great comments and feedback.

In 2022, I would probably say the design of our housing units in Nunavut would be comparable to energy-efficient designs across the country. We've certainly moved into that realm. I think opportunities exist for us to try to drive down the cost of construction by looking at higher-density development in which we look at multiplexes as compared to lower-density housing. I think that's important.

We do have a number of energy efficiency programs, and we certainly look to renewable technologies to help drive down the life cycle and ongoing operating costs of our units. It comes down to that investment equation. We need to be investing more money into a building program.

We need to ensure that we're building modest homes. I can attest that we are. We have a reasonably affordable design. I think that building envelope is a strong one. It has to be, because the environment and conditions up here are so harsh that if we didn't have a good envelope, we'd needlessly be spending an awful lot of money on O and M, operating and maintenance

I think it comes back to our ensuring that we have good, sustainable design and we're investing in additional builds.