Public Accounts committee  I'm sitting here, after 20 years of findings from my office across four different reports, and showing you that the housing gap persists. It's clear to me that in those 20 years, which is really an entire generation of indigenous people, the improvement in housing hasn't been concrete.

Public Accounts committee  The change was made during the period under audit.

Public Accounts committee  The changes are being incorporated into new contribution agreements, so the most recent nine agreements we saw included those new requirements. However, the recommendation still stands that they need to figure out how to do this for all of their projects. There is a clause in all of the agreements saying that recipients need to provide performance and outcome measurements.

Public Accounts committee  They at least changed their performance measurements and made them consistent across projects. I'll see if David wants to add to that.

Public Accounts committee  That will come down to whether we decide to follow up on this as a full audit. As this committee is well aware, we have an online database where we do follow-up on past audit measures and recommendations. We might put that in there to follow up on it, but it will be years before projects are completed.

Public Accounts committee  It came from a few things. I will start off by offering up that poor-quality housing is a contributor to the growth of mould. Hence, making sure that repairs and new builds meet at least the national building codes, or the stricter requirement of communities that have those, is important.

Public Accounts committee  To me, it's always concerning when we hear that something happened and there's no proof that it happened, but what's more concerning is that it hasn't happened since. Public Safety Canada is managing the first nations and Inuit policing program, and part of good governance would be to ensure that the funds you provide to a service provider, even if it is your federal partner in the RCMP, are used as intended.

Public Accounts committee  We decided to look at the smaller communities that had less than 100 housing units. We divided them between those that had self-assessed that 75% or more of their homes needed major repairs or replacement.... We found that, on average, those communities received less funding than the other communities that had self-assessed they had lesser housing need.

Public Accounts committee  Just speaking to your comment about bread and making the analogy to funding, we did look to see whether there was an equitable allocation of funding. You've previously asked questions about the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation using outdated data, which was missing 20 years of demographic changes.

Public Accounts committee  Sure. The first nations and Inuit policing program was designed in 1991 and amended slightly in 1996. The program has mainly two funding mechanisms. In tripartite agreements, the federal government will come together with the province or territory and an indigenous community to provide supplemental services to core policing services that might already be provided in the province or territory.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  I think it really would depend on the community, but what we looked at was capacity and whether communities had a dedicated housing manager. A housing manager in a community would help the community manage all their housing, identify issues and have an understanding of the needs for rebuilds, repairs or mould.

Public Accounts committee  We talked about the fact that the department and the Crown partially agreed with one of our recommendations, and it was stemming from the approach they're taking. In my view, the approach has not kept pace with the commitments of the current government. In order to support reconciliation and self-determination, it isn't just about funding programs and providing resources.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  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.