Evidence of meeting #39 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was north.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
Thank you very much, Mr. Van Popta.
Next up, we have Ms. Lavack for five minutes.
Liberal
Ginette Lavack Liberal St. Boniface—St. Vital, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to welcome all my colleagues to Ottawa. It's a pleasure to see them again. I would also like to welcome the new committee members. I was delighted to see the teamwork in this committee. I look forward to continuing along the same lines.
I would like to thank all the witnesses for joining us and for sharing their testimonies.
Ms. Christensen, I would like to ask you two questions this morning.
In my role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services, I assist the minister in developing a housing strategy, specifically a national housing strategy for indigenous people. I also work alongside colleagues on a task force on homelessness.
I'm curious to learn a bit more about your work. You argued that some of the tools used to assess housing needs fail to adequately reflect the realities in the north. Could you elaborate on the shortcomings of these tools? Is there a better way for us to assess the actual needs?
Afterwards, I'll have a second question.
Associate Professor, Geography and Planning, Queen's University, As an Individual
Thank you, Ms. Lavack. Sorry, but I'll respond in English since I'll be speaking more quickly.
We have the time limits.
Thank you so much for that question. There is so much that I would love to say.
The core housing need tool that's used in housing needs assessments is an example of where we're looking more particularly at the number of people in a community who need to be housed, the housing that exists and whether that housing—and the number of bedrooms, for example, in each house—best matches the population.
What we hear, particularly from indigenous self-government of housing initiatives, is that there is a need, as a community, to be able to assess whether that measure accurately reflects the housing priorities. For example, in its housing plan, the Tłįchǫ government has prioritized housing for teachers, knowing that there are teachers from the community or from the region, of course, but also that there are teachers coming from outside. It recognizes, though, that every year there's a challenge in terms of beginning school in September because there aren't teachers because there's no housing for teachers.
While that might not address that core housing need metric in terms of matching or prioritizing housing for existing members of the community, it's taking a step back and saying, “Education is important for our community, and we want to ensure that our children are educated and that there's sustainability in education.” I think broadening our assessment of core housing need and how those needs and priorities are assessed is very important.
With respect to homelessness strategies in the north, we know that mobility and migration are such a huge factor in indigenous experiences of homelessness in particular—moving between family members, moving between places. Therefore, when we're looking at an indigenous homelessness strategy, whether it's for Inuit, first nations or Métis, we really need to also be looking outside the north and at some of those centres that are of importance to people who are looking to access support services and housing. We need to recognize that this kind of geography of homelessness and of supports for people who are unhoused has to be expanded beyond the north.
Liberal
Ginette Lavack Liberal St. Boniface—St. Vital, MB
Thank you.
I have one last quick question.
Regarding other current challenges, municipal zoning reform in the north is one of them. Is it keeping pace with the construction of new housing? Could we make any improvements to municipal zoning?
Associate Professor, Geography and Planning, Queen's University, As an Individual
You can look at the city of Yellowknife for an example of challenges with respect to municipal zoning. Some of that has to do with ongoing land claim negotiations in the Akaitcho, but it also has to do with red tape and bureaucracy in terms of land transfer from the territorial government to the municipal government.
Zoning and the ability to expand are absolutely central to addressing housing needs in a regional centre like Yellowknife, for example, but we also need to be looking at, again, this dependency on home ownership and also on single detached housing, and really considering if there are ways of increasing the densification of housing—both in large centres as well as in smaller communities—that respond to local context, local needs and priorities, and cultural needs as well.
There's a lot more that I could say, but I know we're limited on time.
September 24th, 2026 / 9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Jamie Schmale
That's excellent.
Thank you very much to all our witnesses. That concludes the period of time we have available. We appreciate that you've made time to be here. Thank you for answering our questions.
We will suspend momentarily and go into a closed session to discuss some committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]