Thank you so much.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to participate as a witness in your study of affordability challenges in northern Canada.
I'm an associate professor in geography and planning at Queen's University. I'm also project director of a pan-northern housing research partnership called “At Home in the North”. Funded through the collaborative housing research network, our partnership brings together indigenous and public governments, NGOs and community-led organizations from across the territorial and provincial norths with northern housing researchers and advocates, all working towards northern-led, sustainable housing solutions.
My research, teaching and advocacy over the whole of my career has focused on northern and indigenous housing and home. Housing and home lie at the cornerstone of northern well-being. By limiting our understanding of home to the material structures and market-oriented policy frameworks, we see the biggest obstacles to northern affordability manifest themselves persistently over time. Without a sustainable, robust and self-determined northern housing ecosystem, challenges to the affordability of northern life perpetuate and contribute to the diminishing social determinants of northern and indigenous health, well-being and prosperity.
Since the first federal northern housing programs were introduced across the territorial norths in the mid-20th century, a northern housing crisis has ensued. That is to say that the present-day northern housing crisis is not a recent phenomenon. Rather, it's a reality that northerners have lived for decades, driven by design and administrative approaches to northern housing that are ill-suited to northern cultures and contexts as well as the chronic underfunding that has characterized northern housing policy since its inception.
Remoteness was in effect manufactured by settlement policy of the day. Northern settlements and their functions were situated at far range from southern-based planning and design, administration, building materials and labour. In recent years, the negative impact that such remoteness has on northern affordability has been made even clearer through the effects of climate change. Wildfires and wildfire evacuations, for example, have shown that it's not only housing infrastructure that's threatened by a warming climate, but it's the entire northern housing ecosystem. Fragile northern housing industry is undermined by highway closures, barge cancellations due to low water levels or unpredictable sea ice patterns, the evacuation of major hubs like Yellowknife during a very narrow construction season, and the destruction of modular housing units and other building supplies held in storage in communities overcome by wildfire.
Most communities across the territorial north are considered non-market, meaning the majority of housing is public or staff housing. Little housing can be bought or sold, yet the housing continuum long promoted by CMHC is market-based and situates home ownership as the end goal of the continuum and the ultimate realization of the Canadian dream. This ideology continues to underpin northern housing policy, despite the reality that home ownership is unattainable and in many cases undesirable, at least in its conventional application, across many northern communities. That's certainly what we've heard through the work of At Home in the North. Even in communities where territorial governments are providing mortgages through home ownership programs, the cost of heating and repair makes home ownership unaffordable. As a result, default rates are high.
Addressing northern affordability challenges requires addressing the failures of the northern housing system. Northern housing is at the foundation of northern well-being and must be at the foundation of northern economies. For too long, we have viewed the north as a frontier for resource extraction, which has led to boom-bust cycles and steep income and geographical inequalities that have driven northern affordability challenges. There are no boom-bust cycles when it comes to housing.
We need housing. We need new builds. We need labour to repair and maintain existing stock. We need building and maintenance supplies that are readily accessible to northerners. We need housing design and technology built for the north. We need northern labour trained in construction, inspection, maintenance and repair. We need housing governance and administration that comes from the north, and in particular from indigenous communities and other community-based housing providers who know best the needs, priorities and innovations of northern peoples. We need a northern housing economy that is, to the fullest extent possible, based in the north, not one that continues to rely entirely on supply chains and labour markets that are far from the communities they are intended to serve.
Thank you so much for this opportunity.