The Canada Mortage and Housing Corporation has cut the number of houses it will sponsor in Cree Territory by almost half.
Last year, 73 housing units were built in east coast Cree communities. This year, that number falls to 40. This, despite a need for 900 to 1,200 new homes to clear up the existing backlog. And 100 more a year to meet new demand.
Similar cuts are being felt across the country as the CMHC cuts construction of new homes in First Nations communities from 1,200 to 600.
“It’s disgraceful,” said Bill Namagoose, executive director of the Grand Council of the Crees.
“Native people have the most deplorable living conditions in the country. They live in Third World conditions, have the highest suicide rate and a lot of the social breakdown is caused by overcrowding. Nobody is doing anything about it.”
The House of Commons committee on aboriginal affairs said in 1993 that 40,000 housing units need to be built or renovated to bring the situation to acceptable levels. The estimated cost was $3.3 billion.
The housing cuts were triggered by the expiry of the C-31 housing program instituted in 1986 to provide homes to Native women and their children regaining Indian status.
East coast Crees didn’t benefit directly from the C-31 program because Ottawa said the James Bay Agreement already gave beneficiary status to all those who would have been covered under Bill C-31.
The Grand Council has a claim against Ottawa for $6 million, the Cree But now thatthe C-31 program has been canned, Crees are losing out too as the pie shrinks for housing funds. “We got penalized twice,” said Namagoose.
Deborah Taylor, manager of program finance at the CMHC, said the cabinet is being asked to restore funding for the C-31 program. The request has gone to cabinet as part of a new Aboriginal housing policy.
Taylor said the policy will be announced “sometime before the summer,” but refused to say if all 600 units would be restored. “As everyone knows, the government has fiscal restraints,” she said.
Namagoose was skeptical about the new Aboriginal housing policy. He noted thatthe policy has been winding its way through the Ottawa bureaucracy for eight years.
“Every year it’s been going to cabinet and nothing’s been coming out,” he said. “People on the ground don’t care if it’s C-31 or a normal CMHC program. Half the houses are gone.”
Namagoose also chastized the Assembly of First Nations for not fighting aggressively for more housing as the crisis worsens.
He criticized the AFN for agreeing in a meeting with two cabinet ministers in March to lobby politicians for the new housing policy now before cabinet, even though the AFN doesn’t even know what’s in the policy.
Charlie Hill, AFN housing program coordinator, said the AFN agreed only to lobby for more funds, not any federal policy.
Hill denounced the cut of C-31 houses as “unacceptable,” but added, “However, we don’t know what to do to bring this unacceptability into the open. How far can you go except beat people on the head with a stick? All they do is bring bigger sticks.”
