Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses and the Auditor General for being present with us, and for producing this very important report. There's no question that homelessness and housing across Canada are major concerns, not just to parliamentarians but to folks who are actually living this every single day.
Unfortunately, I represent one the most dramatically under-housed populations in Canada. This is in Edmonton, Alberta. It's an emergency, and has been an emergency for several years now. When I say “emergency”, I really want to put this into context. There are consequences to decisions, and there are consequences to inaction. In Edmonton, in 2021, there were more deaths recorded than in the two years prior combined. The Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness indicated there were 222 identified people who died in Edmonton last year. That represents a huge increase compared to preceding years.
It is also identified in some of the report information. In exhibit 5.4, the report showed that chronic homelessness was 11.3% higher in 2019 than the 2016 baseline. What we're seeing very clearly in Edmonton is what we're seeing right across the country: an increase in the number of folks who are identifying as houseless from city to city, and from coast to coast to coast.
I forget which official mentioned this, but it's also in the report. The target was a 31% decrease by 2023-24, and a 50% decrease in that demand by 2027-28. To have a chance of actually achieving that goal, chronic houselessness would need to fall by 38% between 2020 and 2024, and by 55% by 2027-28. It's going to be an incredible challenge, I see, in just how far behind we actually are in hitting these targets.
In my community, you don't have to look far. I encourage members to come to Boyle Street and McCauley, come to Alberta Avenue, and witness some of the dramatic increases in houselessness across our city in Edmonton.
The programs may not be working. We're here to figure that out. I'm really pleased to see the Auditor General table a report that's going to give us an opportunity to talk about accountability. We are not only facing a crisis in housing; we are also facing a crisis in accountability. We need to understand how these systems are functioning. Canadians deserve to understand how these investments work, and that these investments are actually hitting targets.
I was so disappointed to see in this report that we don't know the targeted information of those vulnerable populations that were served. If we are truly going to have a program that's outcome-based, that talks about and addressees houselessness, these critical factors must be included. We can't simply talk about the number of units. Understanding who is in those units is a critical piece to the Auditor General's report, and one that this committee is tasked with, trying to enforce some accountability and understand why we have a national housing strategy built without the target of ensuring that vulnerable folks actually got placed in housing.
This is strange. We're talking more about units than about the people those units should serve. It's incredibly important that we talk about the programs and the outcomes that we expect and that Canadians expect.
My question would be for CMHC, Infrastructure Canada, and ESDC: Who is ultimately responsible for achieving the national housing strategy targets?
I want to preface this by stating that the Auditor General points out very clearly that each of the three departments mentioned had a failure in trying to interact with one another in a way that was going to produce the best outcomes.
Starting with CMHC, who is responsible for achieving the national housing strategy?