441-00152 (Social affairs and equality)

Every Canadian has a right to a safe and affordable place to call home. One of the most important roles of our government during this pandemic has been to support vulnerable Canadians, including those experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.

As part of the National Housing Strategy, the Government announced an investment of $2.2 billion over 10 years to prevent and reduce homelessness, and launched Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy in 2019. Since March 2020, the Government has announced a total of $1.3 billion in additional funding for Reaching Home to support communities in addressing the needs of people experiencing or at-risk of homelessness in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2016, an estimated 27,000 individuals experienced chronic homelessness (i.e., those who used a shelter for at least six months in the past year, and/or accessed a shelter at least once in each of the last three years). Under the National Housing Strategy, the Government of Canada set a target to reduce chronic homelessness nationally by 50% by 2027-28 from this 2016 baseline. Since then, the Government has introduced an even more aggressive commitment on this front. As announced in the 2021 Speech from the Throne, the government indicated its commitment to ending chronic homelessness in its entirety.

Funding delivered through Reaching Home will support this critical work. 

Through Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy, the Government of Canada:

• Provides funding directly to specific communities through the Designated Communities, Indigenous Homelessness, Rural and Remote Homelessness and Territorial Homelessness streams. Financial support is provided to 64 Designated Communities (urban centres), the three territorial capitals, 30 Indigenous communities, and rural and remote communities across Canada to support their efforts in preventing and reducing homelessness. It also makes funding available to Indigenous partners to support distinctions-based approaches to homelessness services. Funding is also available to support innovation in the sector;
• Introduced a new outcomes-based approach to give communities greater flexibility to identify, test, and apply innovative solutions and evidence-based practices to achieve results for vulnerable Canadians; and,
• Introduced coordinated access as a program priority. Coordinated access will help communities shift toward a more coordinated and systems-based approach to addressing homelessness.

To inform the development of Reaching Home, the Government initiated consultation and engagement processes:

• The Government of Canada consulted with stakeholders, provinces, territories, Indigenous partners, and people with lived experience of homelessness on how to modernize programming to better prevent and reduce homelessness across Canada. These consultations were guided by the work of an Advisory Committee on Homelessness chaired by Parliamentary Secretary Adam Vaughan (Housing and Urban Affairs) and comprised of 13 experts from across the country representing regional, cultural and linguistic duality as well as those with lived experience of homelessness. The Advisory Committee on Homelessness held 10 roundtables across the country in both official languages. In addition to roundtables, the Advisory Committee participated in site visits with local service providers to talk to frontline workers and their clients on how the Government might better support local efforts to address homelessness.
• The Government also launched an online feedback survey that was open from July 17 to September 15, 2017 seeking input from all Canadians and organizations with ideas and suggestions on how to prevent and reduce homelessness in Canada.
• The findings from these consultations were published in both the Advisory Committee on Homelessness’ Final Report and in the Homelessness Partnering Strategy What We Heard Report, which were publicly released on May 18, 2018. 

We know there is more work to do, and that is why we will continue to make important investments into housing and homelessness. Since the launch of Reaching Home in 2019, we have continued to engage regularly with key stakeholders and partners, including communities and funding recipients, national and regional organizations from the housing and homelessness sector, Indigenous organizations and leaders, provinces and territories, and people with lived experience of homelessness. These engagements inform the development of federal homelessness policy design and programming on an ongoing basis.

The government will never stop working to ensure that individuals experiencing or at-risk of homelessness receive the support they need, and to end chronic homeless in Canada once and for all.

The Government of Canada thanks the petitioners from Courtenay-Alberni for sharing their views on the importance of affordable housing. Every Canadian has a right to a safe and affordable place to call home. That is why our government introduced Canada’s first-ever National Housing Strategy (NHS), a more than $72 billion ten-year plan to help ensure Canadians get the housing they need. Since 2015, we have invested nearly $30 billion to support, create and repair almost 480,000 thousand homes.

In 2019, our government passed the National Housing Strategy Act (NHS Act) into law. This was a landmark initiative because for the first time ever, the federal government legislated the recognition of housing as a human right. The NHS Act binds the government to “develop and maintain a national housing strategy that furthers its housing policy, taking into account key principles of a human rights-based approach to housing”. The NHS Act declares that the housing government’s housing policy will:

• recognize that the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right affirmed in international law;
• recognize that housing is essential to the inherent dignity and well-being of the person and to building sustainable and inclusive communities;
• support improved housing outcomes for the people of Canada; and
• further the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing as recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The NHS Act also requires that the government establish and National Housing Council and appoint a Federal Housing Advocate.

• The National Housing Council  provides advice to the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion, including on the effectiveness of the National Housing Strategy, with the aim of improving housing outcomes. The members of the National Housing Council were appointed on November 22, 2020. For more information on the members and the mandate of the National Housing Council, please visit https://www.placetocallhome.ca/national-housing-council.
• The Federal Housing Advocate monitors the implementation of the government’s housing policy and its progress in meeting goals and timelines set out in the NHS. On February 4, 2022, the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion announced that Marie-Josée Houle will be Canada’s first Federal Housing Advocate for a 3-year term.

The NHS Act provides important opportunities for persons experiencing housing needs or homelessness and communities affected by systemic housing issues to have their voices heard through the Federal Housing Advocate, the National Housing Council.

Our government is committed to working in collaboration with the National Housing Council and the Federal Housing Advocate to ensure the right to a safe and affordable place to call home becomes a reality for all Canadians.