Public Accounts Committee on March 19th, 2024

[Karen Hogan]

Given my mandate, I don't comment on government policies and decisions. I can only look at the public service and how it does things. The approach to supporting self‑determination and reconciliation by taking a step back so as not to impose itself on communities doesn't help communities in need, meaning those that are smaller, that don't have the capacity or that may not be aware of programs.

Changing the approach without changing the way things are done won't help the communities. It will depend on the policies that need to be updated based on the recent commitments made by the government.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

We see in your report that Quebec is doing a little better. There's still progress to be made, obviously, but when it comes to the proportion of housing that needs to be changed or repaired, Quebec is doing better. Why?

[Karen Hogan]

I think it's a difficult subject. It depends. There are some programs where the funding is decided in conjunction with the provinces and territories. Often when it comes to policing programs, the government respects the wishes of the province or territory. There's also a limited amount of money allocated to the provinces, and it goes back to the communities that have the ability to put their hands up to try to receive money. In Quebec and British Columbia, the communities are often larger and have more capacity to submit applications.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay, but there's also the issue of building the capacity of indigenous communities. If they are to organize themselves and be able to ask the federal government for money, their capacities must first be strengthened.

A financial ecosystem has developed in Quebec, particularly through the NCCC, or the Native Commercial Credit Corporation, and the NACCA, the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association. We see that there are organizations that are present, that can help communities and that, like caisses populaires, are taking action to help certain communities to develop.

I know that's not the focus of the audit, but it would still be interesting to look at the impact of the various organizations, which would help to explain why there are so many differences across Canada, and why some provinces are doing better than others.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Do you have a question, Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné? Time is short.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

In light of your audit, Madam Auditor General, do you think the housing finance network could be a possible solution for certain first nations groups?

[Karen Hogan]

Obviously, if there are more organizations willing to support indigenous communities, they will have better chances and greater success. We didn't look at all the other agencies, since we can only look at the federal government. I can tell you that the Quebec City regional office within Indigenous Services Canada has made capacity‑building a priority, and has received increased funding for it. I think this is a long‑term approach because building a community's capacity fosters its self‑determination, which is better than simply giving money to fund some project. It's the long‑term vision that's best.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Next is Mr. Desjarlais. You have the floor for six minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the Auditor General for this important report.

We're experiencing the consequences of systemic racism. It's clear. Decades of irresponsible consecutive governments have led to the Auditor General's comments this morning. How irresponsible can consecutive governments be to lead to the deaths of individuals because they're first nations? That is ultimately the discussion we're having today.

The consequence of not having houses in northern Alberta and living outside in minus 50-degree weather is death. There are the numbers coming out of Alberta. For instance, in just the city of Edmonton, over 3,000 were houseless, an increase that was larger than and paled in comparison to every year prior.

This continuous lack of care, lack of responsibility and lack of trust continues to plague Canadian society. I'm disturbed by the findings of the Auditor General. I want to thank her team for conducting such a report and for the decades-long work of the Auditor General's office to continuously raise the alarm.

I've been here for just over two years, and we've seen a number of reports with a failure of Indigenous Services Canada to provide the kind of quality homes and quality living that Canadians expect. It's just not there.

There is a huge systemic problem, and the Auditor General, in just a few months from now, will come back to this table to speak about another atrocity that continues with this government's endless ignorance of systemic racism within Indigenous Services Canada. What we'll see is perhaps another decade of policy that results in the deaths of my relatives. It's simply unacceptable. We need accountability. We need change.

I need my colleagues to be serious about this, to understand this. It is the most fundamental issue in our society. If we can't help those who we've come into treaty with, what kind of country is Canada? We are not honourable partners. We're failing, and we've been failing for generations. It's just not acceptable.

For Alberta, if we turn our attention to the report, under “Inequitable funding for the communities with the poorest housing conditions”, paragraph 2.34 says:

According to an analysis by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 2023, the impact of not updating its formulas resulted in First Nations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba being significantly underfunded and therefore not receiving their equitable share of funding. For example, in 2022, the Alberta region received about $19 million in funding.

This is pennies. It goes on:

Had the formula been updated to use recent census data, this region would have received about $35 million. The corporation determined that this region had been underfunded by more than $140 million from 2008–09 to 2022–23.

How can a cabinet minister sit around a table and approve a budget without even asking a question about how the condition of their number one partner is supposed to be? What kind of government do we have? It's a government that doesn't care, is benefiting from the systemic racism they've inherited and is complicit in the deaths of my relatives. It's not acceptable.

I know that as soon as I'm done here today in this discussion, this topic will continue to not be discussed. It will continue to be pushed under the rug. Ministers will continue to say that they did a really good job. The opposition will continue to move on their schedules, and indigenous people will be left without a home at the end of all this.

Who benefits and who loses from these continuous decisions that hurt communities? It's a fact that since 2001, we've been using a 2001 census for the formula for indigenous communities. How unfair is that?

Someone has to be held responsible for this. Someone has to apologize. Someone has to take accountability for such gross neglect.

Neglect has resulted in a major catastrophe. The fact is, we couldn't even update a formula to provide equity for my region in Alberta, and in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. One of the simplest things you can do—just look at the formula and make sure it's updated—wasn't done. What gross neglect this is.

In addition to this, we have a lack of knowledge in smaller communities of these programs. How are they expected to provide co-operation to the government when the government is the one sitting on its hands waiting for someone to put their hand up to say that an issue they told the government about in the 1980s, or even stemming further back, is still going on? The mould, the collapsed houses and the lack of clean water are still happening. Why do they have to continually say that every fiscal year...to get to the same fact? Communities are running out of time, running out of resources and running out of hope.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Desjarlais, you're almost out of time. Do you have a question for the Auditor General? I don't want to cut you off, but....

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I don't have any questions—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Okay, that's fine.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

—Mr. Chair, because it's very clear to me that the Auditor General understands the systemic issue that's present to Canadians.

I want to see accountability. I need to see our colleagues join together across party lines to get to the bottom of this. We need to have accountability, and we need clarity as to what we should tell folks who have no home, have lost their home or have no hope of ever getting one. When we don't supply support for first nations communities at home in their communities, they end up in urban centres and they end up in a tragedy.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Desjarlais. We will come back to you shortly.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Chair, I'll continue my responses, but I want you to know that I hope we have support on this committee to investigate this issue seriously to get to the bottom of it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

We're beginning our second round.

Mr. Viersen, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Most of my questions will be about the national trade corridors fund report from the Auditor General. I want to thank the Auditor General for being here today.

The report is generally okay. You say they're doing a reasonable job in assessing the need and making good decisions on where to go with it, but we're not getting a follow-up at the end. One of my criticisms of this government is that they generally make their measure of success how much money they spend on a project, or on anything, not on whether we get any results. This seems to be another one of those cases.

Would you agree with that, or would you say they are getting the results but are not managing to measure them, essentially?

[Karen Hogan]

Well, I would offer up that this program has committed almost $4 billion to infrastructure projects to help the fluidity and resiliency of transportation corridors, but very little has been spent so far—only around $700 million or so, or about 20%. There are very few projects—I think only 30—that have been completed out of the 181 that have been approved so far, so it is still early days.

What we did find when it came to results measurement was that Transport Canada did not include good measures to look at outcomes. They were measuring what I'll say are outputs, like the number of roads or an extra port added. They recognized that and have designed new measures for the outcome. They're using them now in some of the newer agreements that are signed—the most recent nine agreements include those new ones—but it's not too late to go back to make sure that going forward, Transport Canada gathers the information to know whether or not the funds invested will improve the fluidity of the corridors.

These projects are lengthy, and it will take time to show results, so you need to track trends over many years. It's time to make sure recipients of funding understand their commitment back to the government to demonstrate there's been improvement in the corridors.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Were you satisfied that when they started the program, the government had a reasonable baseline? I noticed that what they were trying to achieve was to “improve the flow of goods and people in Canada”, “increase the flow of trade in and out of Canada” and “help the transportation system to...withstand the effects of climate change”.

To improve and increase these numbers, we need an understanding of what the baseline is. If we're just adding a new airport, is that increasing...? Did they have a good baseline when they started?

[Karen Hogan]

We found that they used a lot of data over many sources and were well informed as they designed the calls.

This program so far has been rolled out with seven different calls, and each call targeted a specific need, whether it was seen as a bottleneck in transportation corridors or a gap when it comes to making sure that infrastructure is climate-resilient. They did a good job of having evidence to support the calls, and then even having open and transparent criteria to select the recipients who would be eligible for the program. It was well designed and well informed by data, which is different from what we're seeing in our indigenous reports, where data is often not gathered and decisions aren't well informed. However, in the corridors it was a great example of well-informed decision-making.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

I'll jump to the policing report for one minute. I don't remember exactly which paragraph it was in, but you said the RCMP did not collect enough information to make a reasonable assessment as to the impact of the program.

Were you able to reach out to communities and get their assessment? The RCMP could come back and say they didn't collect the information, but communities are generally satisfied with what's happening. Were you able to collect enough information to get an assessment as to whether this program was working?

[Karen Hogan]

I can point to a couple of findings in our report.

The RCMP wasn't tracking, and one of the main requirements of the agreement is to dedicate a police officer a hundred per cent of the time to a community. The first nations and Inuit policing program is meant to supplement core policing services that are already available in the province or territory. It is supposed to be proactive and community-based, so respecting the culture and traditions of the community. They could not show us, or very few of the detachments could show us—I think it was 38%—that they were tracking that a resource was spending a hundred per cent of their time in the community.

I think one of the more important things is that many of the positions that are funded were going unstaffed. In the last year it was 61, so even if we had reached out to those communities, 61 police officers were expected to be in communities across the country but are not there because of a staffing shortage. The issue isn't just about not gathering the data. While that's important, it's about also having the resources to meet the needs under the agreements that have already been signed between the federal government, the province or territory and the communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is your time, I'm afraid.

I'll turn now to Ms. Yip. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the Office of the Auditor General for coming so early this morning and tabling the report, and also for your work on these spring reports.

I'm perplexed that there's so little progress on improving housing conditions for first nations. Why is it the fourth time we are looking at the same issue?

[Karen Hogan]

I echo your sentiments. I'm rather discouraged that it's been 20 years and there is little progress despite the amount of money that has been invested.

I will point to some of my predecessors. I can tell you that Sheila Fraser, at the end of her mandate, said that the failures of the government in meeting the needs of first nations communities were unacceptable. My predecessor, about five years later, said that they were beyond unacceptable. In my view, these strong words are not driving the change that is needed.

I'd like to see a fundamentally different approach taken by the government to address the issues, whether they're around safe drinking water, emergency preparedness, housing or policing. The approach of being passive and siloed and having communities apply doesn't appear to be working. We have two decades' worth of information to show you that it isn't working on the housing front.

The other thing I would offer up is that there was an estimate of how much money and effort it would take to close the housing gap in communities. Indigenous Services Canada and CMHC didn't have a plan on how to fund that long term. You don't need to fund it all in one year, but you need to have a plan to fund it long term to support communities in creating the capacity to build and repair. The absence of that plan means that some progress is being made, but it's just not keeping pace when 80% of the needs remain unaddressed.