44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 20, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/20/23 10:02:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to acknowledge that I am speaking from the traditional territory of the Algonquin and Anishinabe peoples.
Safe and affordable housing provides the safety and security that families need to learn, live and play. Indigenous peoples are more likely to experience poor housing conditions and overcrowding than the general population. This is unacceptable.
Over the past year and a half, I have visited communities throughout the country, especially in the north and Nunavut, and met with families who are struggling to find decent and affordable housing, but there are success stories too in communities that are using new investments to build housing that matches the needs of their communities.
Our government has been hard at work to ensure that indigenous peoples have the same access to safe and secure housing as other Canadians. Since 2015, the government has committed more than $7 billion in funding for first nations, Inuit and Métis housing. We have now built or renovated nine houses for every one house built under the Stephen Harper Conservative government and we have fixed the gap left by the previous government by investing in off-reserve urban, rural and northern housing, which received zero funding from the Conservatives.
In budget 2023, we provided investments to improve housing for indigenous peoples living in urban, rural and northern areas. We are investing $4 billion over seven years, starting in 2024-25, to implement a co-developed urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy.
In last year's budget, the government invested an additional $4.3 billion to support housing in first nations, Inuit and Métis Nation communities. The funding includes $2.4 billion over five years to support first nations housing on reserve, $565 million over five years to support housing in self-governing and modern treaty holder first nations communities, $845 million over seven years to support housing in Inuit communities and $190 million over seven years for housing in Métis communities. The 2022 budget also included $300 million for urban, rural and northern housing.
Earlier this month, the member for Nunavut joined the Minister of Indigenous Services Canada and others to announce the transfer of $287.1 million for an indigenous, by indigenous approach to fund housing projects in urban, rural and northern settings, a historic change driven by a commitment to self-determination. We are starting to see some results. Census 2021 data shows that, since 2016, the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous populations living in crowded housing declined by 1.7%.
As members can see, the government has been taking concrete action to work with partners and improve the housing situation for indigenous people across this great nation.
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- Jun/20/23 10:07:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think I did answer the question. I was very explicit about the numbers that we have invested over the past few years and will be investing in the upcoming years.
I do agree with the hon. member that for far too long indigenous peoples in Canada have suffered from inadequate housing. That is why, as I mentioned earlier, the government has been working with first nations, Inuit and Métis to come up with practical solutions to meet their needs. We have co-developed strategies as well as policies and we have worked together to implement them.
We are working with indigenous partners to understand what will work best for communities. We have not imposed a top-down, made-in-Ottawa solution to go with indigenous housing problems. It is the opposite, from the bottom up. We are seeing results. We are seeing improvements that are being made across the country.
We know there is much more work to do and that work is under way. Having safe housing is the foundation for everyone and we are committed to making this a reality for indigenous peoples across this country.
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- Jun/20/23 10:12:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Spadina—Fort York for raising this important issue.
The IRCC takes the integrity of Canada's immigration system and the experiences of clients extremely seriously. Our government continues to work diligently on our anti-racism strategy as well as the action plan, both at home as well as abroad, and remains steadfast in its commitment to a fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration procedures.
Since the hon. member referenced South Africa in his claim, I would like to point out that the IRCC investigated selection practices at its offices in Pretoria, South Africa. It was determined that filtering applications by race could not happen, given all the protocols that are currently in place.
To start with, IRCC does not collect information on the race of applicants. Next, South Africa's immigration caseload goes through the same global triage intake process as all of the caseloads from all of the countries in order to assess eligibility as well as risk. The department also shifted to electronic submissions during the pandemic, and as such, there are no active paper files within the IRCC offices abroad, other than a small number of applications pending from before the pandemic.
Finally, South Africa's caseload is reviewed by a team of locally engaged staff from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, who work on a rotation system. They are assigned different tasks and applications every week. The teams are also rotated every three months.
Decisions on applications are not made solely by locally engaged staff, but rather by a diverse team made up of local staff from all backgrounds, officials in Canada and temporary-duty decision-makers. Team members also rotate in and out on a system managed by a Canada-based official. These protocols are in place to ensure a work environment that promotes not only continuous learning and engagement but also maximum oversight and minimal risk of systemic discrimination.
IRCC offices abroad take anti-racism very seriously. The IRCC staff in Pretoria complete a training program on inclusion and diversity, with a specific focus on their clientele. It was completed in April of this year, and we are going to continue to do the same.
I want to assure Canadians that while we acknowledge the difficult reality that systemic racism exists around the world, IRCC has made every effort to confront and overcome it in its procedures and its staffing. IRCC has an obligation to clients, to employees and to everyone it serves globally to ensure that it is doing all it can to prevent discrimination and promote equity. As a government committed to combatting racism both at home and abroad, we will always look for opportunities to do more.
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- Jun/20/23 10:16:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, once again I want to thank the member for bringing up this issue. I respect his comments very much and I thank him for that.
The IRCC thoroughly investigated its South Africa office and determined that filtering applications by race could not happen, given the protocols, as I said earlier, that are in place. First, the IRCC does not collect information on the race of applicants. South Africa's caseload goes through our standard global intake process to assess eligibility and risk. We shifted to electronic submissions during the pandemic, so, as I said earlier, there are no new paper applications coming in and the offices have no means by which to filter out digital applications.
As in every other processing office abroad, South Africa's caseload is reviewed by local staff from different racial and ethnic backgrounds who work on a rotation system. Their decisions are made in tandem with Canada-based officials.
Finally, the work to ensure that processes are fair for all is something that we as a government—
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