OTTAWA – On Thursday, NDP Critic for Housing, Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East) and NDP Critic for Indigenous Services, MP Lori Idlout (Nunavut) secured $287.1 million for National Indigenous Collaborative Housing Incorporated (NICHI) to address the housing crisis for Urban Rural and Northern Indigenous, Metis and Inuit people leaving away from their home community. Under the Liberal government, Indigenous people are now 11 times more likely to use a shelter or live in inadequate homes than non-Indigenous people.
New Democrats have been relentlessly pushing for the government to close the funding gap. Today's announcement wouldn’t have been possible without New Democrats who forced the government to act by including support for Indigenous housing in their Confidence and Supply agreement with the Liberals.
“In my riding of Vancouver East, we have the third largest urban Indigenous population in the country and we have had multiple homeless encampments. Indigenous peoples are disproportionately represented among the unhoused population, yet this government has dragged its feet in providing a For Indigenous By Indigenous housing,” said Kwan. “While this is the step in the right direction, there’s more work to do.”
This announcement, pushed by New Democrats, delivers on one of the NDP’s key promises on a For-Indigenous, By-Indigenous Housing Strategy. NICHI brings together Indigenous-led housing, homelessness, and housing-related organizations to provide long-term solutions.
The federal government’s immigration levels plan might be working successfully according to a recent analysis, but its long-term impact remains unknown, say an opposition MP and observers.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s immigration critic, told The Hill Times in a March 11 email that a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report offers a demographic snapshot of the government’s immigration levels plan, but does not examine the short or long-term impacts of the Liberals’ “drastic” policy changes.
“Immigration policy cannot be judged by population projections alone. We must look at the real consequences these decisions are having on people, families, communities, and the economy,” she said.
