HANSARD
NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
STANDING COMMITTEE
ON
HEALTH
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
COMMITTEE ROOM
Links Between Health Outcomes and Lack of Safe Affordable Housing
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
HEALTH COMMITTEE
John A. MacDonald (Chair)
Danielle Barkhouse (Vice Chair)
Chris Palmer
John White
Nolan Young
Hon. Kelly Regan
Rafah DiCostanzo
Gary Burrill
Susan Leblanc
[Danielle Barkhouse was replaced by Marco MacLeod.]
[Hon. Kelly Regan was replaced by Braedon Clark.]
In Attendance:
Judy Kavanagh
Legislative Committee Clerk
Gordon Hebb
Chief Legislative Counsel
WITNESSES
Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Tatiana Morren-Fraser
Executive Director, Housing Strategy and Analytics
Department of Community Services
Suzanne Ley
Executive Director, Employment Support and Income Assistance
Department of Health and Wellness
Joy Knight
Senior Executive Director, System Integration
North End Community Health Centre
Marie-France LeBlanc
President and CEO
Adsum for Women and Children
Sheri Lecker
Executive Director
HALIFAX, TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2024
STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH
1:00 P.M.
CHAIR
John A. MacDonald
VICE CHAIR
Danielle Barkhouse
THE CHAIR: Order. I call this meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Health. I’m John A. MacDonald, the MLA for Hants East and the Chair of the committee. Today we will hear from witnesses regarding Links Between Health Outcomes and Lack of Safe Affordable Housing.
As a reminder, please ensure all your phones are on silent. I’ll now ask the committee members to introduce themselves for the record by stating their name and constituency. I will start to my left for his first-ever committee meeting since being elected as an MLA, Mr. MacLeod.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
THE CHAIR: For the purposes of Hansard, I’d like to recognize the presence of Chief Legislative Counsel Gordon Hebb to my left, and Legislative Committee Clerk Judy Kavanagh on my right.
We’ll start at first with having the witnesses introduce themselves and who they are, and then I’ll come back for opening remarks. I’ll start with Ms. Knight.
[The witnesses introduced themselves.]
THE CHAIR: We’ll start with opening remarks. I believe I’m going to start with Ms. Knight first.
JOY KNIGHT: Thank you, everyone, for the invitation to be here today. I am really looking forward to discussing this important topic with you. As I’ve said, I’m the Senior Executive Director of the System Integration team. I think that’s really important to highlight because what I want to focus on in my brief opening remarks is the importance of system integration, and one of the reasons I’m happy to be here with all of my colleagues across departments, as well as within community. I want to quickly thank Ms. Lecker and Ms. LeBlanc for the incredible work that they do every single day, and the valuable partnerships that we hold with them.
As you are aware, the health care system is complex and interconnected, and issues in one area often have a root cause in another. In my role in the department, I work with partners at the health authorities, across government departments, and with community to look at the system as a whole. Our work has to be integrated in order to advance improvements across the social determinants of health.
Action for Health isn’t just focused on modernizing our facilities and recruiting health care workers that we need; it also includes improving equitable access to care in ways that are trauma-informed, empathetic, and meet people where they are. A great example of this is our partnership with: the Department of Community Services at the Bridge, led by Adsum for Women and Children and Welcome Housing & Support Services, which we’ll talk more about today, I’m sure; the North End Community Health Centre, delivering clinical services to vulnerable populations; and outreach through the Mobile Outreach Street Health team.
Another example of how we are thinking differently and about how care is accessed within Nova Scotia is through the health home and health neighbourhood model. Health homes are made up of teams of health care professionals like doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners who work together collaboratively to help bring the expertise and knowledge to the table to provide the care that patients need. They connect with other health services in the community, like pharmacies and occupational therapy, to link patients to the full scope of services they require.
Down the road, we look forward to implementing health neighbourhoods that will eventually encompass the network of health care allies and providers that exist within community. The neighbourhood model recognizes that we must consider all aspects of a person’s life, including housing, income, food security, and culture in order to meaningfully address a person’s well-being.
Heath homes and health neighbourhoods will take the burden of system navigation off the patient so that they are directed to and supported with the right services they need. This is a critical part of Action for Health work because, as I mentioned previously, issues in one area often impact another. If people are not receiving the right care in the right place, we can see delays across the system.
Moving people through the system as smoothly as possible helps everyone. It keeps ambulances on the road by reducing off-load times; it frees up emergency departments for those who need the most urgent and acute care; and it moves people out of hospital beds back into community, with the services they need tailored to match their needs within their community.
Further, as we look collectively beyond the traditional borders of the health care system, we identify other areas where access and flow barriers are keeping people from accessing the care they deserve. That is why it is so important for us to continue to work closely with our colleagues in other departments to ensure a holistic approach to health care in Nova Scotia.
Again, I’m very pleased to be here today, and I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
THE CHAIR: Next, Ms. Ley.
SUZANNE LEY: Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity for me to join you today to talk about this really important topic.
I’m here, as I mentioned earlier, on behalf of the Department of Community Services. While my government colleagues at the table here from the Department of Health and Wellness, and the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing work more directly on the topics of affordable housing and health outcomes - which is the topic on which we’re gathering today - my team at DCS works with a range of partners, including all of those at the table today, in community, and across government and beyond, to address homelessness in our province. We work together to ensure that our response is comprehensive; that our solutions are thoughtful and sustainable; that we evolve as the context changes and we learn new things; and that people, families, and communities remain at the centre of all of the work that we do.
We know we need many hands to do this work - not necessarily as a way to lighten the load; I think all of my friends at this table would agree that there is nothing light about this work - but we need everybody at the table working on solutions with us. It really is the only way.
While I’m here representing DCS, we have a small but very mighty team back at the office who are working away. Some of them may be watching. They work around the clock many days with our partners. They’re passionate and driven, and really are a true testament of what I value in the public service. A little thank you to them while I’m representing their work.
I’d also like to recognize the work of our service providers. We have two fabulous examples here with us today: the North End Community Health Centre and Adsum for Women and Children. At DCS, we know we’re not on the front lines. We’re not the experts. Our colleagues at the table here are, and we really couldn’t do any of the work that we do without their support. They have the experience, they have the expertise, and most importantly, they have the trust and confidence of the community that we serve.
With people like Sheri and Marie-France and a range of many other service providers on the ground, government has been able to increase the budget for homelessness by 360 per cent over the last three years and create more than 600 supportive-housing units. We’ve added 195 shelter beds. We’ve opened 19 new shelter village units in Lower Sackville, with another 96 open in three more locations in the next few weeks, and 85 more coming online later this Fall, and creating space for 70 people in 60 new tiny homes. We’ve also been able to - again, with the support of our partners - provide $2 million to support Nova Scotians with diversion funding; $1.6 million for street outreach teams in HRM, CBRM, and Truro; and the addition of 24 housing support workers in our province.
I’ll end by saying that we learn more every day that we do this work, especially from our partners on the front line, and that’s a really key tenet in the work that we do and making sure that we evolve for the context.
I’m looking forward to the conversation and looking forward to hearing from them as we answer your questions today.
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: Thank you for inviting the North End Community Health Centre here today. At NECHC, we believe homelessness is not merely a housing issue. It’s fundamentally a health issue. The absence of stable housing affects every aspect of a person’s life, from physical and mental health to social and economic well-being. At the North End Community Health Centre, we witness that first-hand - how homelessness exacerbates challenges like chronic illness, mental health disorders, and addiction. This is why we approach all of our supportive housing through the lens of health, not simply as a shelter, but as a foundation for recovery, stability, and hope.
For over 50 years - 53 to be exact - the North End Community Health Centre has been providing a wide range of supports to those experiencing deep poverty and homelessness. We began as a collaborative primary health care clinic in 1972. Over the years, we’ve expanded our offerings to include a free dental clinic, a Mobile Outreach Street Health team - which most people know as MOSH - a Housing First program, a Managed Alcohol Program, a PAUSE mental health walk-in clinic, and now 16 supportive-housing buildings across HRM that permanently house and support over 200 individuals who were previously experiencing chronic homelessness. I’m going to repeat “permanently.” These people have leases. This is their home. They are there until they choose to leave.
This is what NECHC and not-for-profits do. We identify gaps in services within our community and figure out how best to fill them. NECHC is more than just a health care provider; we’re a cornerstone of support for HRM’s most vulnerable. Our services are comprehensive, addressing not only physical health but also the social determinants of health that so profoundly impact people’s lives. We provide housing and health care within an integrated model that meets people where they are with compassion and without judgement.
Our harm reduction services are a key part of our approach, including the provision of safe supplies for those struggling with addiction. The most obvious example of a comprehensive approach is the Overlook, a supportive-housing initiative that you’ve probably heard about that has provided a lifeline for many who have experienced chronic homelessness. The Overlook doesn’t just offer a roof over someone’s head. It provides a comprehensive support system that includes mental health care, addiction services, a dispensary, which is sort of like a pharmacy, managed alcohol, safe supply, primary care, cultural supports, which are key, and other essential health supports. It’s a model that recognizes that housing is health, and that without stable housing, other interventions cannot succeed.
The success stories emerging from the Overlook are as varied as the residents themselves. For some, success means remaining housed and receiving the supports we offer - an achievement that is no small feat in and of itself. For another resident over the last few months, success has meant stabilization in their addiction, graduating from our peer support program, which we run at the Overlook, and moving out of the Overlook and into one of our other houses, which has fewer supports, as a live-in peer support worker. He is now the support for other individuals.
Yet for another tenant in the last couple of months, success has meant working through their addiction, becoming sober, and independently moving into their own apartment outside of the Overlook. They’re still attached to us through our clinic and through MOSH, but they are now living independently.
Without the supportive housing, none of this would have been possible. These are the words of one of our residents:
The Overlook has given me the opportunity to think and redirect my future. It’s keeping me safe and physically housed. Basically, they treat me like a human. That’s pretty awesome. I’ve got a sense of pride now. I can choose to get help, and I didn’t have any choice before. Having choices is important. My eyes have been opened. If I wasn’t at the Overlook, I wouldn’t remember what it feels like to have hopes and dreams again.
Choices - that’s really key. That’s what everybody needs and deserves.
At NECHC we provide supportive housing that ranges from minimal supports to 24/7 care. All are needed when looking at providing housing for those experiencing homelessness, as no two people are the same, and neither are their needs. As health and housing service providers, it’s our mandate to provide the appropriate services to our community. To continue this vital work, we need cohesive, reliable funding that allows us to expand and sustain our programs. Our funding for all of our NECHC programs comes from 30 different contracts from a variety of government departments, both federal and provincial, as well as private grants.
This lack of cohesiveness in funding forces us as a not-for-profit organization to constantly fill financial gaps. Instead of focusing solely on delivering and expanding services to meet the growing needs of our community, we are often caught up in the struggles to piece together the necessary funds to keep our programs and organizations running. This fragmented approach to funding not only threatens the sustainability of our programs but also limits our ability to scale up initiatives that are clearly working.
Five years ago, NECHC had 28 employees. Today we have close to 180 staff. I still do not have any core funding. Managing this on project funding that never quite covers costs is not sustainable. We are the solution. We’ve been doing health home and health neighbourhoods for 50 years. This is not new. We’ve been doing it. We are a very real solution to a real problem in our city and province, and in order to continue our work, we need our government partners to invest in us and the communities we serve appropriately.
[1:15 p.m.]
THE CHAIR: Ms. Lecker.
SHERI LECKER: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. For more than 20 years, I have served as the executive director of Adsum for Women and Children.
Currently, Adsum is supporting approximately 200 people with emergency shelter. More than 100 people have safe, affordable, permanent housing in properties owned by Adsum throughout the Halifax Regional Municipality. With shelters and housing full, we are supporting another 315 people in hotels, campsites, couchsurfing, or emergency units, including 197 children. This program is at capacity, and we are forced to turn away people - individuals and families with children - multiple times every day.
We know that secure housing leads to improved health incomes. We have witnessed this time and time again with the people we meet. Just last week, I ran into a tenant who had been living in our building that we have owned for almost 13 years. She gave me permission to share this story.
Prior to being housed with Adsum, her health was extremely unstable at times. At times, she was using emergency health services multiple times a month. Since signing a lease and settling into her place, she has not called upon emergency services for her mental health in almost 13 years. In her words, housing coupled with appropriate support created a miracle in her life.
We have other tenants who, once they are housed, may continue to struggle for a while, but ultimately achieve improved health because of the stability of their housing. I recall someone - it took us five years. She and I think back on it now. It took five years to attain the level of stability that we talk about, so that people can feel that sense of permanence.
Conversely, and tragically, we know too well the catastrophic health incomes of not having housing security. Without a secure place to call home, a person’s health suffers. Their life is shorter, and in too many cases, is not afforded the dignity we all deserve. We have lost so many clients and community members prematurely.
In addition to the negative health outcomes of those experiencing housing insecurity, what isn’t often talked about is the indirect impact of homelessness on the health of support workers and service providers. As an employer of almost 200 staff, I am seeing the toll this crisis is having on my employees. The moral injury inflicted on a person is indescribable when the best that we can offer a mom calling or an individual at the door is a tent. The negative impacts of the housing crisis are far reaching, and we are doing the best we can to fill the gaps until everyone’s rights to housing and dignity are realized.
I’m pleased to take any questions you have about what we are witnessing and what our clients have shared with us.
THE CHAIR: This committee goes 20 minutes/20 minutes/20 minutes, and then we’ll wrap it up - I’ll split it up at the end. At 20 minutes, I’ll have to say “Order.” Sorry.
Very first will be MLA DiCostanzo for the Liberal Party.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Thank you, Marie-France LeBlanc and Sheri Lecker. I had my own questions, but honestly, what you just said has changed where I’m starting. I just want to commend the North End Community Health Centre. I knew about it when I was a medical interpreter and worked with the Halifax Refugee Clinic. A lot of the doctors worked in both, and they would know so much about the social aspects and help the patient with housing issues. She would say: Oh, we got this from the North End, because you’re dealing with it day in and day out. It wasn’t just the medical - the health. I remember thinking they need a social worker at the Halifax Refugee Clinic just to look after that. I know that your model has been successful, as you said, and it’s known. The only other one that I know of is in Clare. There’s another what I call collaborative care. Now they’re calling it home care or they’re moving it to neighbourhood care.
You have proven that your services are the best way to handle health care. How many more health cares like yours have opened in the last three years? Have we moved? Have you helped other organizations or groups of doctors to establish what you have established? Have we seen any movement towards the success that you have been doing?
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: I happen to be the chair of the board of the Nova Scotia Association of Community Health Centres as well. There are eight of us. We are as different as we can be. I appreciate that you mentioned Clare. Clare is completely funded by the city. The city owns the building. The city pays for all of their core funding, and now they also have core funding through NSHA.
We are incredibly unique in that we’re not like that. We receive different pots of money from different - but we are managed by a board of directors, and we employ all of our employees. This is what allows us to pivot. This is what allows us to be able to figure out what the gaps are and to move quickly, which is something that’s very difficult to do in a big establishment. When you have people experiencing homelessness and the crises that they have, they don’t have time to wait four months for us to go find them housing. We get a lot of calls for empty buildings, and we can move on it quickly, or we could move on it quickly. It’s getting more and more difficult.
To answer your question, I don’t believe there’s anyone else like us. The Ally Centre of Cape Breton is moving towards that, but they’re having all the same growing pains that we had 50 years ago and that we still continue to have. There is no core funding. They started as a shelter and are moving towards health care. We started as health care. We do not do shelter. We moved to housing. It is a model that works. It’s a model that works across the country. It is not a model that has been adopted here yet.
I understand that there are the health neighbourhoods that are being contemplated. Those will be NSHA-run organizations that will not allow for the pivoting that is necessary when you’re dealing with the most vulnerable. It’s very good in a lot of areas, but when you’re dealing with the most vulnerable, as we’ve seen, it’s a lot of work. It can take five, 10 years to help a particular family or a particular patient. The hospital system, public sector does not have time to do that. That’s why we do it, but we’re not appropriately funded for it.
If we’re going to be a solution to a problem - which we’ve been counted on for the last three years - we really need to step up and allow these organizations to be properly funded for me to not have $800,000 of fundraised money from last year in my budget just to make ends meet and still tell my staff that I don’t have enough money to help more people. We need to be able to provide the appropriate services and have a system and a consolidated way that I don’t have to go to the Department of Health and Wellness because I need a nurse for something that’s happening in housing. It just doesn’t make any sense.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Thank you for explaining that. I also want to know: How are you keeping statistics of the increase in the number? Honestly, I remember when I was first elected in 2017, I had a young guy - that was the first time I had heard about homelessness, because in Halifax we would see one or two, if that. I never remember seeing tents in 2017 at that time. This young guy who was in university came to me, and apparently, he and two other university students would go and make sandwiches out of their own money and go sit with the homeless, treat them like human beings, and connect with them. I helped him. I said: This is fantastic. It’s a beautiful thing.
He opened an organization called Greater Love, and I helped him establish a non-profit so we could get him some funding. That blew up within two years into 70 university students. They would go and help the homeless. That’s when I started getting interested to hear from him. At the time I remember asking him: How many people are you seeing? He said, 17 to 20. How did we go from 17 to 20 - this is just HRM, or maybe just downtown with all these tents - to over 1,000 or 1,200? In the last three years, in particular, it has tripled.
How are you keeping track of statistics, and how much cost has that been to the health system and what you’re trying to do?
THE CHAIR: MLA DiCostanzo, who are you directing that to? I just want to make sure.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: I believe Marie-France and maybe . . .
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Ms. LeBlanc. I’m sorry.
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: Well, I think actually Sheri and Joy might be better served to this. What I’ll say from our perspective is that it was never 17. We’ve been around for 52 years. If it was only 17 people, we wouldn’t have survived 52 years. It’s been hundreds, and it’s been hundreds for a long time.
It’s been a variety of different ways to track homelessness. It’s been couchsurfing. It’s been insecurely housed. It’s been people living outdoors. It’s been people living in shelters. I would respectfully say that the numbers that are being touted through the By-Name List don’t represent half of what we’re seeing.
In terms of statistics, we keep our statistics through the patients we see, through the people our MOSH team sees, through the people our housing support team sees. We work with all of our community partners and with the Department of Community Services to keep track of it, but as I would say, it’s an overwhelming problem that statistics are not doing justice.
I don’t know if, Sheri, you want to add to that?
THE CHAIR: MLA DiCostanzo, you want Ms. Lecker and then . . .
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Yes, I would like that, and I apologize.
May I just add one thing?
THE CHAIR: MLA DiCostanzo.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: I apologize for the 17 or 18. They were on the street, not all - that’s what I - that he was dealing with. Sorry.
THE CHAIR: I’m going to go to Ms. Lecker.
SHERI LECKER: As Marie-France mentioned, there have always been much larger numbers, and I appreciate that you’re referring to 17 related to this one student who you came in contact with. But similarly, we have been operating, for more than 40 years, an emergency shelter. We built housing 37 years ago that is affordable as an alternative to people who had nowhere to live. We have built multiple other locations and purchased and so on, and we’re not the only organization in town. There have always been large numbers.
I think what people are noticing more, of course, is what is called visible homelessness. You’re noticing that people are tenting. But there has always been, and there continues to be, a very large number of people who are considered hidden homeless or invisible. They are on sofas. They are maybe in someone’s backyard, or they are in somebody’s driveway in a mobile home or in a trailer.
COVID-19, of course, exacerbated things, but so did the economy, so did the cost of renting, and so did the gap between what people are receiving and what they need to pay for rent, food and other things. What you’re seeing is visible homelessness. There is also invisible homelessness. That would include university students who don’t move out. They maybe even graduate, and they’re still living in the basement or in their childhood home because they can’t afford to move out. They are actually hidden homeless. They can’t afford to live somewhere else.
The numbers have always been there. They have absolutely expanded. They’ve really exploded since COVID-19, because there were reasons why people were turfed out if they were staying on someone’s sofa. Family members were coming back from other provinces. People were afraid to have non-family members in the space. There are all of those reasons.
We keep statistics. There is also something called a By-Name List, which is managed by AHANS, the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, and if you cared to look on their website, I think they publish the numbers every Tuesday.
I would caution that those numbers are not the full picture. They don’t represent everyone who is experiencing hidden homelessness or invisible homelessness. They also don’t count children, which we are encouraging them to do. We count children, and we have reached out to other organizations that are working with families to count children. There are 197 children today who are not in stable housing, not counting all the other mothers and all the other families who are calling us today with nowhere to go.
[1:30 p.m.]
Even the By-Name List, which is probably the most robust number we have - as robust as it can be - is not the full picture. I think particularly in Halifax, and certainly I’m hearing this across the province and home in Cape Breton, we are seeing people in tents. We are seeing people staying in places where we’re not used to. There have always been some people tenting. It’s just that now I’m afraid it’s become normalized, to be honest.
THE CHAIR: I’m going to allow Ms. LeBlanc to do the quick comment she wanted, and then I’ll get to Ms. Joyce.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: Sorry. I think Sheri mentioned that I was just going to explain the By-Name List, so I think we’re good.
THE CHAIR: Ms. Joyce. Sorry, Ms. Knight. See what you made me do? (Laughs)
JOY KNIGHT: I’ll acknowledge as well that access to data is a real problem. It’s something that we have to be much more focused on - and will be more focused on. The need to have partnerships with other departments is critical in that because we have shared services, shared programming, shared outcomes, and if we work better together, we’ll have stronger, more meaningful data to help inform the decisions we want to bring forward for government consideration. There’s a gap there. We recognize it, call it out, and we know we have to do better in that space.
I’ll also mention, though, that it’s important that we look beyond our traditional idea of where we access and pull data, and we have conversations with community around the data they’re pulling. Some good examples would be great conversations we’re having with Tajikeimɨk around what their health care needs look like and the data that they’re able to provide - thinking about it both quantitatively and qualitatively - and then some great conversations we’re having with the Nova Scotia Brotherhood Initiative and the Nova Scotia Sisterhood around the impacts, particularly of homelessness on the African Nova Scotian community. We need to make sure we understand that equity lens when we’re looking at our data and where those gaps still exist in our data systems and how we access that.
We do have some statistics from an emergency department perspective. We are required to collect that data. That is information I’d be happy to share with the committee. It helps us to start to see patterns and to be able to respond more meaningfully. While we need more, particularly in the primary health care space - and maybe I’ll let Ms. Lecker speak a little bit more about the Bridge outcomes when the time is right - it helps us to see who’s showing up at the emergency department, that they have a longer length of stay there and that their costs are higher than an average emergency department visit. We can start to see what those impacts are.
There’s the moral imperative that Ms. Lecker spoke about. Then of course there’s the system imperative - you want to make sure you have the right services for people, because the emergency department is not the right place for a lot of people experiencing homelessness, and they’re not getting the right care that they need there. There’s already information in the data, but we know we have a lot more to do to get the data we need.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: I’m glad you mentioned the data. Those were two other questions that I was hoping: What is the cost of the homeless? I assume when you said data, you ask the person for their home address, and they say, I don’t have an address, and you have a list of those who are showing up at emergency who are homeless. Is that correct? Is that what I understood when you said you have that data from emergency departments? Do you know how many homeless people are showing up at emergency, and what is the cost? If you could give us those figures, that would be great.
JOY KNIGHT: There’s standardized reporting across the country related to that. I do know that - excuse me as I look at my notes - from 2018 to 2023, an increase from 73 people to 147. Annually, it’s doubled. Then we have an average cost of roughly double the cost from an average Nova Scotian to someone who’s experiencing homelessness - roughly $10,000 to $20,000.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: I just want to understand what you just gave me. There are only 147 people who showed up at emergency who are saying they’re homeless, and the cost is because they’ve been sick for a while. The double - what does that mean? Is it because they’re more severe or because they’re staying longer? How do you say double? What does that mean?
JOY KNIGHT: There would be a number of circumstances that would make the cost higher: likely they haven’t accessed health care in some time; more complicated; more tri- and comorbidities involved; and likely need a longer length of stay to support them to fully address their needs. The data that I have says that they tend to have three times the length of stay than the average Nova Scotian, and the costs are double with respect to the care that patient requires.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: If I may ask as well: How many of them have no family doctor - of the homeless people?
JOY KNIGHT: Unfortunately, I don’t know how many are unattached to a family physician. I’ve heard - anecdotally from service providers - that a large proportion are not attached, but I also recognize that typically, a family practice is not always the most supportive environment for people experiencing homelessness, or the most accessible type of environment. That’s why it’s so important that we have services that are meeting people where they are.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Maybe this is the last question for this round. How many of those people who are without a family doctor, whom you have on the list, are - sorry, I lost my thought. How many of the homeless who have no family doctors - what are the consequences of that, and how do they receive their medical information? How are you dealing with that? If they have no family doctor when they are released, how do you send the information if there is a follow-up?
JOY KNIGHT: I know that the MOSH team has records, and they are able to follow the care of a patient they’re working with. Perhaps, Ms. LeBlanc, you want to speak to that?
You are correct in that not everybody does have that access. That’s why it’s critical that we continue to work really closely around how we get that outreach and those services, but also recognizing that the health system has to think differently about what it looks like to do discharge planning for individuals, and be more coordinated and integrated across our department so that when we are discharge planning with an individual, we are connecting them in with services that Ms. Ley is able to offer, or into supportive houses, or ensuring there’s that smooth transition in place.
THE CHAIR: MLA DiCostanzo, do you want to hear from Ms. LeBlanc?
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Sure.
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: We have the Mobile Outreach Street Health program, which supports individuals who are unhoused or living on the street. We have rostered and un-rostered 1,979 people with MOSH. They’re insecurely housed. They might be in a shelter. They might be temporarily housed or coming out, or they might be transitioning to our clinic. Once they get housed - permanently housed - they transition to our clinic.
When you ask about when they get released, more than likely they’re being released to MOSH. Their records are being released to MOSH or to our clinic, and then we try to follow up. A lot of the time there’s no - well, and Sheri will be speaking to the Bridge. Now if they need to be released to somewhere where there are more supports, we do have a location if they qualify for there. But a lot of the time, if they’re being released and they have nowhere to go, we try to keep following up with them as we move along.
So 1,979 are rostered and un-rostered on our MOSH patient list, and we have three physicians, which is really only 1.2 FTE for that number of patients, and a nurse practitioner, and a lot of nurses and social workers and other staff.
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: I will just say thank you, but I think I remembered also that my question is: When we’re taking numbers of people who are without a family doctor, are you asking if they are homeless or not? Do we take that data in? Yes or no.
JOY KNIGHT: If I understand the question correctly - is it when we ask from the Need a Family Practice Registry, if that question is asked?
RAFAH DICOSTANZO: Yes.
JOY KNIGHT: To my knowledge, you have to provide your address, so if you don’t have an address to provide, I’m actually not sure how it is captured in the system. I would have to look into how that’s categorized. But it’s not a category we pull information on, no.
THE CHAIR: Order. Next will be MLA Leblanc.
SUSAN LEBLANC: I’ll just start by saying that I represent a community in which may of your programs and/or your services are deeply embedded. I am very grateful to you and all the people who work for you and with you for the work that’s being done in Dartmouth North. It feels like things are spiralling out of control, and every day people in my office spend a good portion of their day on the phone with people in your offices, assisting people who are walking in or people who are long-term clients of ours. I have never seen it so out of control basically. It’s troubling and upsetting, and I want it to stop. I want things to be better.
When I was elected in 2017, I remember going to meetings about unhoused people living in tents. I remember a big meeting that we had. Out of that came an unfortunate homeless shelter for a while. This was at the beginning of my political time, but anyway, the point is that it’s a lot different now. The By-Name List, which is not accurate, says there’s something like 1,300 people on it, but we’re hearing that it’s not totally accurate because it doesn’t list children and there are a number of people we don’t know about.
The question for Ms. LeBlanc and Ms. Lecker is: In your mind, why is the problem getting worse and worse?
THE CHAIR: It looks like Ms. Lecker. I see Ms. Leblanc point to her, so Ms. Lecker, you’ll get the first one.
SHERI LECKER: I think first of all, we have to look at what some of the pathways are into homelessness or into an experience of not being housed. There are some pathways that could be closed. Until they’re closed, we are going to continue to see people who experience renovictions or evictions, and a great many people are losing their housing due to fixed-term leases. We have to acknowledge that. Those are policies that could be addressed. They’re pathways.
If you are on a fixed income, if you’re a senior, if you’ve never experienced a problem with housing in your past, any housing insecurity, and the building is sold or you’re renting and the landlord says - I’m moving my daughter in, whether that happens or not, and sometimes it does, but many times it does not. If those things happen, you lose your housing. It may be your first experience ever. We are hearing about it from across the province, and we’re certainly hearing about it from people every day. It is their first experience. That’s one thing. That’s one of the reasons: renovictions and fixed-term leases. There are other ways to deal with those policies, and other jurisdictions have chosen other ways to address both of those issues.
We have to also look at other reasons why more and more people are struggling under the weight of a very small amount of money and their growing needs to cover the cost of food, the cost of their housing, the cost of raising their children if they have any, and the cost of paying their power bills, which continue to rise. At some point, they’re bent and bent and then it breaks. Or there are people who are living together and they’ve tried and tried and they cannot maintain a peaceful situation. They’re not all intimate partners, but there are people who co-house and one person’s not on the lease, so they lose their housing.
We have to look at the pathways, but we also have to understand that there is less and less what we call affordable housing that is available to people. We own and we have built, and we have purchased, and we have remodeled, and we have added to our stock of affordable housing. When I talk about that, I mean rent geared to someone’s income - 30 per cent of their pre-tax household income. Our rents in our latest housing location range from $285 to maybe $350. That includes utilities. That kind of housing is not being created, and we have lost so much housing that was even $535 a month or $625 in your constituency, for example. So when people lose their housing, there’s nowhere to go, certainly not at the price point that I’m mentioning. You also have housing, I believe, that’s in that range.
If people don’t have somewhere to go, and more and more people are being forced into this experience, then the numbers explode.
[1:45 p.m.]
Of course, we’ve talked about COVID-19, and we know that people are having to make really tough choices. When they lose their housing, grandma might take the child or children, but Mom has to sleep outside in the driveway in a car, or maybe go to a cousin’s house, or maybe go to a tent. This is what is happening in our communities.
I think I forget your question, but if it’s, “Why are we seeing so much?”, it’s because there’s nowhere to turn. Until we turn off those flows, the numbers are only going to increase. I’ve been at it for more than 20 years in this community, and I don’t want to say I have given up hope, but I do not see enough avenues of real hope to address this until we start to talk about permanent housing that people can afford. That’s not what we see being built. That’s not what we see being created or supported.
THE CHAIR: MLA Leblanc, do you want to hear from Ms. LeBlanc?
SUSAN LEBLANC: Sure.
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: The people we house tend to be the highest-acuity people in the community. High acuity means people with the biggest mental health and addictions issue. They have to have supportive housing in order to remain housed. When we started our Housing First program eight years ago, we had private developers as our partners, and all of them were housed by these private developers. However, the cranes got into the street and everything’s been renovated, and there’s no longer any housing for us.
We have slowly been purchasing houses ourselves in order to be able to house our individuals. It’s a very expensive proposition. Not only is real estate in Halifax very expensive, but the maintenance of these properties is very expensive. People whom we support might leave the tap on and flood a unit just because they forgot. The damages on a monthly basis are quite significant. But they are remaining housed, and when you look at the cost of not having them housed, it’s not significant. It’s just a different way of dealing with it.
So for us, there are more people, for all of the various reasons that we’re hearing across the country - mental health, addictions issues. But there are also fewer places for us to be able to house these people that are not our own spaces, because landlords don’t want to be the people - they’re not equipped to be the people to do that. We are equipped to be able to do that.
We’ve got some partners who allow us to master lease, so probably six of our buildings are master leased, where we take control of the building and house the people. We’re responsible for making sure that the building remains in a space. Most of those buildings are earmarked for development down the road, but these developers have been kind enough. There aren’t many of them, but there are a couple that are still willing to do that. So that’s why we’re seeing more and more.
We have right now the opportunity to add 62 units, if we have the funding for it. We have private people coming to us and saying, “We’ll sell it to you,” but it takes so long that by the time we can turn ourselves around, we’re not able to. There are a lot of good reasons for why it takes long, but that’s just the reality of the situation. If we were able to figure out a strategy, if we were able to stick to our strategy and move forward and say, “We can predict that we’re going to need X number of units for what we do.” We project that we need X number of units for what Sheri does, for what all the others - and just stick to our plan, that would be a great first step.
SUSAN LEBLANC: There was a lot in both of those answers. I could just speak to this - keep going on this track for a long time.
I have so many questions, but basically they’ve all been addressed already. We know that the situation is bad. We know that it’s getting worse, unless we turn off those pathways or close off those pathways to homelessness. We know that an organization like the North End Community Health Centre is doing such incredible work on a shoestring. The idea that you have 30 different sources that make up your revenue is just beyond. I just cannot believe it. I just can’t even imagine how you do it.
I remember having meetings with you, and you were like, “Well, we could use this pot of money, and we could use this pot of money,” and it just seems completely unsustainable, but somehow.
I guess given all of that, my question is for Ms. Knight and Ms. Ley, and I guess Ms. Morren-Fraser as well. Where are we with policy conversations about giving real, sustainable funding to Adsum, to North End Community Health Centre, to the organizations we call partners? I hear it time and again at the Public Accounts Committee and at the Health Committee where we talk about our community partners, but if they’re constantly having to run on the hamster wheel to find funding, then it’s not really a partnership. Where are we with that policy conversation and when will we see these important organizations getting stable core funding?
THE CHAIR: She mentioned all three. Which one of you three want to do it?
SUSAN LEBLANC: Ms. Ley or Ms. Knight.
THE CHAIR: Okay, Ms. Knight, I guess we’ll start with you, and you’re going to tell me who it’s going to be other than you.
JOY KNIGHT: One of the really key drivers - actually why I made a shift within the civil service to come over to the Department of Health and Wellness - was my experiences when I was at the Department of Community Services with the challenges of advocating and pushing forward on this issue within this department. So I’m really, really pleased to be in this seat as somebody who wants to champion this issue within the Department of Health and Wellness.
Bringing that moral imperative of my own to this work has already established, for the first time in many ways, what we’re hoping is a new way of working across the system. We’re in our early days, but as part of that, we recognize we need better governance amongst ourselves around how we fund and how we support. We can’t be working in silos as departments because we all rely on the amazing service providers who deliver. Without them, we know we are nothing. We want to make it a smoother, better path to provide better support. So I acknowledge and absolutely agree with you that we have to work better collectively to better support our organizations, and in the early days, we’re all very committed to that. I will pass to my colleague, Ms. Ley.
SUZANNE LEY: Just to echo what Ms. Knight has said, certainly I think the Department of Community Services - I mentioned earlier a whole host of things that we’ve been able to do to support organizations like the North End Community Health Centre, Adsum, and others who are working on the front lines in this work. Certainly, the plan that was created a number of years ago - by my colleague and friend who’s next to me, our supportive-housing approach - we had funding to create a target of 1,085 supportive-housing units.
I mentioned earlier in my opening remarks that we’ve created 600 of those to date, so we are about a year ahead of schedule. That plan was created with partners like the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing and programs like the Community Housing Acquisition Program in mind, as well as alignment with the Office of Addictions and Mental Health, and the supports and programs that department offers. We also, of course, have done work with the Department of Health and Wellness on things like the Bridge, which I’m hoping Ms. Lecker will be able to talk about in a few moments.
Certainly, as Joy said, it is still really imperative for us to continue to break down departmental barriers and to continue to push from a whole-of-government perspective in terms of the work that we’re doing to support the people we serve: the individuals who are experiencing homelessness whom my colleagues from Adsum and North End talked about. They are humans, and frankly, they care not which department is funding the supports that they are able to access. It’s really up to us to bring down those barriers.
Certainly, Ms. Morren-Fraser, Ms. Knight, and I, among other leaders in other departments, work very closely together. We are chatting very regularly and are taking things - like MLA Leblanc had said in terms of how we look at an organization from multiple department lenses at how we’re funding and what we’re funding together. We’re doing that already through the Community Housing Acquisition Program and how it interacts with the supportive-housing action plan - infrastructure and then supports - and certainly moving into doing more from the Department of Health and Wellness.
THE CHAIR: Just a second, Ms. Ley.
SUZANNE LEY: That was it.
THE CHAIR: MLA Leblanc.
SUSAN LEBLANC: I’m sorry, I have such little time. I wanted to ask about two things. Number one, Ms. Lecker, when you were talking about the number of children living in hotels - we support lots of families who are living in hotels right now, and again, I can’t even get my head around it.
Is there any analysis on the cost of housing people in hotels versus the cost of building new truly affordable, deeply affordable, rent-geared-to-income housing? Let’s think broadly on this one for a second because we think about how traumatic that is for children who are changing schools, and in and out of different schools, and that lack of stability, and what happens to them down the road. What analysis has been done on that?
SHERI LECKER: I hope at some point you also ask me about the health outcomes for people who are living in hotels, aside from the cost.
The cost is significant. I will tell you that we built 25 homes for one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, many of them accessible and supported. We put more than $2 million of our own money into that, along with $5 million from government. That’s $7 million for 50 people housed. They moved in two years ago. All but one family is still there.
I would say that we have the land, we have the plans, and we have the professional team. If we could just have a bit more money - we’re raising money on our own, but if we had more government money, we’d be building again tomorrow. We’d start, and we’d be done in 18 months, because we did it in 18 months during COVID-19.
SUSAN LEBLANC: That’s the Sunflower?
SHERI LECKER: That’s the Sunflower. That housing is environmentally sustainable. It is beautiful. It is accessible. It’s permanent. That’s where rents are geared to people’s income. There you go. Fifty people housed for, I don’t know, $7 million, and that includes the community space, solar and everything.
We’ve really normalized what was an emergency response, which is hotels. It made sense. I was around when we started going around to visit hotel operators in this city at the start of COVID-19 and we were looking for extra space. This was already a number of years ago, and we are seeing some people in hotels in excess of two years, individuals and families.
There is a huge expense associated with that. There is, of course, the expense to the family and to the individuals who are impacted, to the children who are not meeting their developmental milestones because they can’t crawl around on the floor and there’s no place to cook, and all of those things. But there’s also a huge financial burden that is being covered by the government. There’s a lot of money being spent on emergencies, and I would argue that CHAP is great, but it’s by and large a rooming house model. It’s not for families, that’s for sure. We’ve already knocked on that door.
I’ll give a really good example - an actual one. There’s a family - I’m not going to give all of their details because I don’t have their permission - but let’s say there’s a large family and they needed two hotel rooms. Two hotel rooms at $200 a night, including taxes and so on, came to about $146,000 for a year. They were there for more than a year, but let’s say it’s $146,000.
We found them an apartment. They are paying $14,400. We are paying - Adsum, not government - the remaining $19,200 for them to live in a three-bedroom apartment. We just saved the government $146,000 for one year, and this family is together. We’re fundraising the $19,200 to keep them housed, and we could do that with multiple families over multiple years. I see Suzanne nodding, and Joy - I can look at Joy too. We’ve worked so closely on all of these issues. What both of them have said is true. We are working with bureaucrats around the clock. There is no doubt that everybody is doing what they can.
There are huge amounts of money involved in this, and a lot of figuring out - by family, but of course also by system. You want to change the system. You don’t want to just fix it for one family.
THE CHAIR: Order. Sorry. Next will be the PC caucus.
MLA White.
JOHN WHITE: I was listening intently. Sorry to cut you off.
[2:00 p.m.]
My first couple of questions are for the Department of Community Services. We talk about housing on a continuum, with homelessness and sleeping rough on one end of the spectrum and home ownership or market rental on the other side. I’m just wondering if the department can maybe tell us a little bit about the other points on the continuum, and how their vision is that somebody may move along that continuum to, ultimately, home ownership, if that’s their goal.
SUZANNE LEY: I’m absolutely happy to start, and you may wish to hear from my colleagues with Adsum and the North End Community Health Centre as well.
As you mentioned, we talk a lot about homelessness and housing being on a continuum. We’ve heard terms like folks who are precariously housed who might be doing things like couchsurfing, individuals who might be sleeping in a tent, and then sort of moving from there through the continuum to things like emergency shelters. We’ve heard about needing to respond to emergencies if people need a warm place to come in and have a place to stay. We have a number of service providers who are providing emergency shelters in a variety of models.
In that kind of category of emergency supports is also where we fund - we call it the shelter diversion program for families with children. As a rule, we don’t necessarily support putting children into shelters, so we are thankful for partners like Adsum who are able to support families with children in hotels until they’re able to find a more suitable option.
You can’t see the visual I can see in my head, but moving right down the continuum, there’s a new category that we’ve sort of been working on here in Nova Scotia over the last couple of years, in between emergency sheltering and what we call supportive housing. We’re calling it transitional housing. That’s really things like the Bridge - which I hope Ms. Lecker has an opportunity to talk about - which is not quite an emergency shelter in the way we are doing it in other places. It’s a unique model with integrated services.
It’s also things like the transitional shelter villages we’ve created, where we have single-room occupancy units for people to be able to come in and have some dignity and some space of their own. It is faster to deploy and kind of a step between a shelter and supportive housing. Supportive housing for us is all of the housing programs that both Ms. Lecker and Ms. LeBlanc talked about, in terms of the portfolio of projects they and other service providers have for folks who have been experiencing homelessness. There are many models in that category that we support - some for low acuity, where people might just need a bit of support to stay housed until they’re able to find an affordable apartment, for instance, or as Ms. LeBlanc mentioned, things like the Overlook, which is a much more intense wraparound support approach to supportive housing.
I will say, in all of that and in the work we do, balancing the need for emergency response and the need for long-term investments in things like supportive housing - it’s a continual conversation. We support the discussion around families with children and how we move them along the housing continuum into something more long term. We’ve got a number of projects we’re excited about with Adsum that I’m hoping we can tell you about in a couple of weeks.
The other piece that I would say about the continuum - feel free to stop me; I will keep going - is that it is not a linear path for folks. We know that people who are experiencing homelessness - they’re human beings. Everybody’s experience is unique, and everybody’s experience through the continuum is unique. You may have people kind of moving in and out at different phases and requiring different supports, depending on a life event, for instance. Really what we want to be able to do is provide a range of options to give the supports that a person needs, wherever they are in their life and in their experience. Maybe I’ll end there.
THE CHAIR: MLA White, you want anything else?
JOHN WHITE: I got from that that you’re meeting them where they’re at. (Laughs)
This is a lot. It is a lot, for sure, but it is a big topic we’re talking about. It really is. We’re talking about from homelessness to market rentals or home ownership.
There’s a lot in between, and I appreciate that’s a big challenge.
Something else we heard about today is the rising cost of living. I know that’s not just in the city. It’s not only this province. It’s this nation. I’m wondering if you can tell us a little more about what the department is doing to help Nova Scotians who are struggling with the rising cost of living, because that really is leading to a lot of the issues we’re facing.
THE CHAIR: Ms. Ley again, I’m assuming. She’s smiling.
SUZANNE LEY: I have the great privilege of not only being responsible for the department’s response to homelessness and supportive housing, I also lead the program area of employment supports and income assistance. In my own shop, we have some tools to help with the affordability for some Nova Scotians who are eligible for income assistance and employment supports. Certainly, this year you would have seen increases to income assistance through indexing - an increase of $300 to approximately 60 per cent of the caseload who are eligible for a disability supplement.
There are broader affordability conversations and work happening across government that will have an impact on Nova Scotians beyond DCS’s clients - things like the school lunch program and some of the food programming that we are funding, as well as other departments that are providing supports for food instability, taking the question of: How am I going to pay for my child’s lunch? Being able to do some of those things for families will have an impact.
We are also looking at things like digital inclusion and how we can support Nova Scotians with one of the major social determinants of health that we know, being connected to digital tools, being able to connect to a number of government and other service providers who are increasingly moving services online - being able to make sure that all of the Nova Scotians we represent are able to make that connection as well.
We know lots of other programs that other departments are doing. I won’t speak to all of them because they’re certainly not my area of expertise, but we absolutely have an eye to those programs to make sure that as we are thinking about affordability and the programs that we run at the Department of Community Services, that we are considering impact. Things like - and Ms. Morren-Fraser could talk more about the rent supplement program, the official title of which I’ve just forgotten - the HEAT fund and HARP program from the Department of Service Nova Scotia, the Seniors Care Grant, and some of those other important pieces. While they’re not run by DCS, of course, they’re a critical piece for us.
JOHN WHITE: Before I pass it to MLA Young, I would also say I’m particularly happy with the increase in earned income exemption and the training allowance to be considered as earned income. That is meeting people right where they’re at and trying to help move them forward because that is a safety net that they’re using.
THE CHAIR: MLA Young with eleven and a half minutes left.
NOLAN YOUNG: I’ll direct my questions to the Department of Community Services. You’ve been doing this several years and I’m sure you’ve learned a lot along the way. I’m just curious - maybe you could explain what you’re doing differently now compared to, perhaps, even two years ago?
SUZANNE LEY: I personally have only been doing this now for eight months. My colleague, Joy Knight, to the right, has been doing it a bit longer or was doing it a bit longer before I arrived. I’ll speak to some of the things that Joy implemented.
I mentioned in my opening remarks that one of the things we rely on - almost the most, I would say - in the work that we do at the Department of Community Services on homelessness is listening to our partners like Ms. LeBlanc and Ms. Lecker on how context is evolving, and how we can rise to the occasion and meet them where they are in terms of the solution that they’re trying to provide. Again, I will put a plug in for Ms. LeBlanc to talk about the Bridge. It is one of the ways that we’ve evolved in our work.
A number of years ago, an increased need was identified for an integrated approach to a shelter with health services and other services on site to determine how that would impact people’s outcomes. I would look to my colleague, Ms. LeBlanc, to talk about the Bridge and what it looks like today, and lots of other examples of how we’ve evolved. I mentioned the transitional housing category with Pallet villages - things that are easier to deploy, faster to deploy, while we’re also trying to build support organizations to build housing.
Really, it comes down to every single project, every single conversation we’re having, I think the department and our staff learn something new. Our program and our funding are flexible in that we can meet most times the ask in terms of a project that comes up. That’s how things like the Bridge, things like the shelter villages and other pieces, have been able to come to fruition.
NOLAN YOUNG: We’ve got extreme heat and we’ve got extreme cold here in the province. What’s the plan? What does it look like?
SUZANNE LEY: Our team has an emergency weather response team and protocol. Whenever we get an alert - we have a connection with the Office of Emergency Management. Whenever we get an alert that there is potential weather coming, we have a number of organizations that we activate across the province to do things like open up additional shelter capacity. We know that on a day-to-day basis, not everybody is able - or willing, or wants - to access a shelter in their community, for instance, but often if there’s an extreme weather event, we’ll do more to encourage folks to come in. We have a list of organizations that will stand up additional capacity in a very short amount of time. There are some criteria. If it’s a big snowstorm, for instance, or if it’s very hot, then we might do that. We might also send service providers out with additional water and things like that.
We are always kind of forecasting and planning out what projects we might need to bring online. We’re already thinking now about what Winter will look like and whether we need additional capacity beyond what we have in place for the Winter. All of that kind of work is happening now.
We got an alert this morning that there’s a potential hurricane potentially making its way to Nova Scotia, so the team is already starting to think about, if that starts to track, what our plans are to be ready.
NOLAN YOUNG: You mentioned that Winter is coming. What are you doing to get ready for Winter now?
SUZANNE LEY: Essentially, I mentioned some of the work we do in terms of the emergency weather response - being able to activate and make sure that all of our service providers who are in that group have the tools that they need. I mentioned that we are working now on assessing capacity indoors for Winter - what we have coming online for supportive housing, transitional housing, and other pieces between now and October, for instance.
We are also always looking at properties to assess them, whether they’re useful for supportive housing, transitional housing, or shelter. Winter shelter, of course, is one of those things that is top of mind as our team is out looking at and assessing properties, whether that is a season-long shelter or something that we can stand up and stand down. That’s the type of planning that is happening now.
NOLAN YOUNG: I’ll pass it on to my colleague MLA Palmer.
THE CHAIR: MLA Palmer.
CHRIS PALMER: Well, this is a great conversation. Thank you for being here this afternoon. Ms. LeBlanc and Ms. Lecker, thank you for the work you’re doing in your organizations, and to all the department staff who are here today. It’s encouraging for people who might be watching, Nova Scotians, to know that there is great dialogue happening between service providers in our communities and our government departments in trying to find those solutions as we’re working toward better outcomes, for sure.
We’ve heard from your organizations, and I just want to highlight a couple in my area, in the Annapolis Valley. I know there were some recent investments and some attempts with the Valley Roots Housing Association, the Portal - a lot of people know the great work they do in those wraparound health services. There were some recent investments - I just have some information here - 16 new supportive-housing units for individuals in the Waterville area, more in Kentville.
[2:15 p.m.]
Maybe I’ll ask Ms. Ley: Could you comment on those and just talk about the partnerships that worked really well for Nova Scotians so they can know that there are a lot of advances and outcomes improving?
SUZANNE LEY: The list of projects in Kentville and in the Annapolis Valley area - we do have a number of really amazing partners down there. You missed one: Open Arms Resource Centre Society. We’ve been working with them on a number of projects. One of them is a shelter village that is opening, I understand, imminently in Kings County, just outside of Kentville. We’ve talked a lot today about HRM and the service providers that represent the HRM. There are many others in HRM that aren’t here today, and there are many others in other parts of Nova Scotia that we work really closely with. I believe there’s a list of 26 organizations at this point that are in this work with us.
When we talked about things like data challenges earlier today, it really is those organizations that are on the ground that understand the needs of the community, where people are. When we talked earlier about meeting people where they are, it really is those organizations that know what those needs are. They are the ones that are informing us in terms of where investments could be and how we can support folks.
In the Valley with the projects that you mentioned, and a few others that we know are coming online, we actually think the Valley will be in a very good position coming into the Winter. I will never predict to solve homelessness, but good progress is being made there and we’re really encouraged by the work that our service providers are doing. We know similar work is happening in many other places. We talked about the Ally Centre of Cape Breton, New Dawn Enterprises, Cape Breton Community Housing Association, and lots of other organizations in other parts of the province that, again, are as great as Ms. Lecker and Ms. Leblanc in terms of the work they’re doing.
CHRIS PALMER: Thank you for that because the numbers we’re suggesting of developments for people getting housed - they’re not insignificant numbers for areas in rural Nova Scotia, so I appreciate the work that’s happening there. I did not want to slight Open Arms because they do an amazing job, and Project H.O.P.E. is another organization trying to connect people to housing. There are some great organizations out there.
I just want to switch gears to Ms. Knight and the Department of Health and Wellness. People in our province - we don’t know what those circumstances are - move from one place to another. Maybe access to primary care because of those moves might be a little more challenging. Can you talk about some of the developments and some of the things that we’ve been doing as a government over the last few years with things like virtual care, primary care and pharmacy clinics, which help people in those moves have access to primary care? If you could discuss that, I’d appreciate it.
THE CHAIR: Ms. Knight with one minute, 20 seconds.
JOY KNIGHT: There have been a number of initiatives over the last couple of years to increase access to primary health care. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we’re looking to continue to expand and push that envelope with the health home and health neighbourhood model and ensuring that people have access to the right care in the way they need to receive it. There are a number of new initiatives in place and expansion of existing in really meaningful ways across the province. There are the collaborative family practice teams. We now have 107 across the province.
You mentioned virtual care. Those numbers are significantly growing - actually in use - particularly for people who aren’t attached to a primary care practice at this time. One of the great statistics that we’re seeing out of access to virtual care is it has significantly reduced the number of visits to emergency departments for people who are not attached to a physician because they are being attached to the services that they need. Emergency departments are where they would have gone in the past because they didn’t have other avenues to access the services they needed.
We’ve got a number of mobile primary care clinics around the province offering - just as in May, over 2,000 patient visits. The primary care clinics - an excellent example of how a new model has come into being to ensure we have access for people on the Need a Family Practice Registry . . .
THE CHAIR: Order. The next round will be eight minutes, starting with MLA Clark.
BRAEDON CLARK: Thank you, everyone, for being here today. I would say, listening to this for the past hour and 20 minutes or so - I don’t want to speak for Ms. Lecker or Ms. LeBlanc, but I think what I’ve heard is that one of the main barriers to continuing and expanding the work that you’re doing is core funding, consistency and stability. That’s an issue that we hear from non-profit groups in all sectors all across the province, and dealing with 30 contracts is an administrative nightmare beyond belief.
I was just thinking about this during the last round of questions, but one of the things that’s come up in some housing legislation recently is the idea of a trusted-partner program for developers, which I actually think is a good idea. If you’ve been building housing in Nova Scotia for 50 years and you’ve got a great track record, maybe it should be easier for you to move through the process than someone who started yesterday, for example. When you think about the work that the North End Community Health Centre and Adsum are doing - again, you’re not the new kids on the block. You’ve been around for 40 or 50 years.
This is a question for either Ms. Ley or Ms. Knight, perhaps. I know we’ve touched earlier on the need for core funding, but does something of that nature - a trusted partner - obviously these organizations are trusted partners. It’s something the government has endorsed for private developers who have a track record. Why would we not pursue a similar model for non-profit organizations that have identified today how critical that stability and core funding is? They are trusted partners, I think it’s safe to say. What would be the impediment to doing that, I guess?
THE CHAIR: Ms. Ley, since she seems to be whispering in your ear.
SUZANNE LEY: I think the link I’m trying to make is between - the example - they’re sort of different contexts, I think, in terms of the funding that a developer would get doesn’t necessarily align with the funding that the Department of Community Services provides for something like a shelter or a supportive-housing unit, where we fund - for instance, if a supportive-housing building was being created, we don’t necessarily fund infrastructure. I would look to my colleague to speak about that.
From a unit perspective, and the cost to run the organization, to support the operations of the organization, we would fund all of the elements identified in there with things like staffing and supplies and that sort of thing.
There is a bit of a nuance for us in terms of the mandate we have in terms of funding. It’s not necessarily funding organizations. We’re funding the types of - we’re funding projects, essentially.
We talked about earlier that I think we can do better across government . . .
THE CHAIR: Order. Just one sec.
MLA Clark.
BRAEDON CLARK: Thank you, Chair. Apologies, Ms. Ley. I just have probably five minutes now.
I understand that it’s not apples to apples, exactly. I’m workshopping this on the fly. My point is that I think there’s a concept that the government has acknowledged on the private development side, that if you’re a Shaw Group or you’re a Cresco or somebody who’s built thousands and thousands of homes in HRM, you are trusted, and the paperwork and the red tape that might exist for somebody coming in today should be less. That’s my point.
I’ll direct this, perhaps, to Ms. Lecker or Ms. LeBlanc. If what I’m saying makes sense to you, could you just describe for us what the value is of having that consistency and simplicity, and what is the detriment right now of having to deal with, for example, 30 contracts? What’s the administrative pull versus the actual work that you’re meant to do and that you want to do with most of your time?
THE CHAIR: MLA Clark, which one do you want?
BRAEDON CLARK: Ms. LeBlanc, perhaps, to start.
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: I actually get the link that you were trying to make. The key thing is that we don’t think in silos. I don’t think: Well, this is a health issue and this is a housing issue and this is an issue. Unfortunately, to get any solutions, that’s how the government thinks.
To your point that you’ll only fund projects - to solve this problem, we’ve got to get away from that. It’s not a project. It’s a full spectrum, and whether it should be - in my humble opinion, it should be an issue of homelessness. What do we need for that? We don’t need to go to the Department of Health and Wellness for one thing and for another. Even back to metrics, primary health care asks me for metrics on one thing that has nothing to do with homelessness, but those are the people I’m treating. DCS asks me for metrics on something else from my clinic, which is completely geared to health because that’s what the Department of Health and Wellness wants.
It is an absolute nightmare, and it’s not looking at the issue as a whole. It’s looking at it from government department perspectives, as opposed to from the people perspective, and what they need in order to solve this issue - which, in fact, is what we need in order to help them solve that issue.
I have 30 buckets, and not one of them pays for me. Not one of them pays for my director of Supported Housing; my director of Community and Mental Health; my director of Finance and Operations, who has to manage 30 buckets of money; or my director of Human Resources, who has to manage 180 people. None of those things are paid for. Plus, not a single one of my contracts - I have one contract for a Managed Alcohol Program, which is the same amount, year after year, for three years. Has anyone looked at the cost of alcohol? Has anyone looked at the cost of gas for the car that’s going to it? None of those are static costs, and I’m still expected to support the exact same number of people. Who’s paying for that difference right now? Who’s paying for the difference in the cost of oil and all that? None of these things are taken into consideration as real-life issues. They’re little projects and leaving it to the not-for-profit to figure that out.
To your point, if we had a way of looking at it as in, “Here’s the solution. How do we all work together?” and we’re not looking at it from, “I need to get this from Health and Wellness, and I need to get this, and I need to get that” - in some cases, projects are approved by one department, and when they go to get the money from another department, they don’t approve it, but we’ve already started. We’ve hired the people, and now we’re being told it’s not happening. This happens on a regular basis as well.
It’s very complicated, and the system’s just not built for that.
Sheri, I think, wanted to add something.
THE CHAIR: Ms. Lecker, 41 seconds.
SHERI LECKER: I would say ditto. Programs don’t come with - that’s not an all-encompassing solution. I particularly look to the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing. They have a great CHAP program, but it’s really a rooming house model. It doesn’t work for families. That’s an example.
There are things at the Bridge - and I haven’t had an opportunity to speak about the Bridge. There are health needs that we are paying for with our own funds, because our health partner doesn’t have funds for it and it’s not in the budget anywhere. But we need to provide those things. If people need foot care, we’re paying for foot care. Even though there are health services available, they don’t include foot care.
THE CHAIR: Order. Sorry. MLA Burrill.
GARY BURRILL: Thank you, Ms. Lecker. Would you like to complete your thought?
SHERI LECKER: Sure. I was just going to say that there are many things in the needs of individuals and families that we can’t even imagine until we’re working with people, right? Everyone around this table has different needs. Your households have different needs. While we’re working to end someone’s experience of homelessness and support them, they have many different levels of acuity and need, and we have to meet them. If somebody needs Ensure, we have to buy it, but it’s not in the health budget. It’s not in the shelter budget. We just pay for it.
GARY BURRILL: Ms. Morren-Fraser, I wanted to come back to this key idea that Ms. Lecker has raised about pathways to homelessness. We know that a key central pathway to homelessness, of course, is the price of rent, particularly in Nova Scotia. We know our rent has gone up in the last year more than in any other part of the country.
When Food Banks Canada looked at this recently, one of the things they recommended had to do with this important subject Ms. Ley brought up earlier: the rent supplement program. An awful lot of suffering related to rent and housing has been caused by that transition that you no longer were eligible with 30 per cent of your costs being related to rent. It had to be 50 per cent in order to be eligible. They said that if we want to put it in this language, block this pathway, then we need to restore the eligibility for the rent supplement as it was before the government made that transition.
[2:30 p.m.]
I want to ask you: Is the department alive to the real suffering that has been caused by that transition from 30 per cent to 50 per cent? Is some consideration being given to re-establishing the eligibility for the rent supplement program that is so important for the people we are talking about as it was before that change?
THE CHAIR: Ms. Morren-Fraser.
TATIANA MORREN-FRASER: I will start by saying that the department is very much - particularly the staff who work day in and day out with the folks who are accessing the program - very much alive to the challenges that folks face and how the rent supplement program is being used to reduce housing need. We are constantly reviewing our programs. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of working at this department: that it really, I can say, is a continuous-improvement environment.
That is amongst all the range of pieces that we’re looking at, for sure - to look at what is the impact of programs now, programs as they’ve evolved, and do we need to make additional adjustments? I think we’ve demonstrated that we do make changes when it’s needed. We’ve just recently made changes to the program for secondary suites, for example.
With respect to the change in eligibility to the program, I just want to clarify that it didn’t take away subsidies from people who already had them. It was about going forward to ensure that the resources were directed to those in deepest housing need. It was really about making sure and looking at how we ensure that this program that is targeted to those in housing need serves those in the deepest housing need. That was the thinking behind that change. It certainly wasn’t in any way, shape, or form intended to create hardship for anybody already in receipt of a rent supplement.
I can assure you that, yes, that is certainly one of the things that we’re looking at as we look at all of our programs to see if they’re having the intended impact, and as our staff hear daily from folks who are applying. We recognize the very difficult situations that people are in. What can we do with the policy levers and programs and resources available to us to serve as many people as possible, to meet them where they’re at to help them with regard to their housing?
GARY BURRILL: I think maybe it’s not too much to say that it’s not pathways to homelessness; it’s highways to homelessness in the current situation. We got the report last week that rents went up in Nova Scotia last year 18 per cent. We know from your own department’s internal analysis that in units where there has been a change in tenancies, the average increase is 28 per cent over a year. That’s because our rent control does not cover new tenancies as it does in other jurisdictions.
I want to ask: Does the department acknowledge - do you acknowledge, and in the world of your work, is it acknowledged that having a rent cap that excludes new tenancies is, in fact, having the effect of making rent so beyond the reach of many low- and low-medium-income earners that it is, in fact, opening up a barn door to homelessness in the province?
TATIANA MORREN-FRASER: I will start by saying that the legislative responsibility for the rent cap is with the Minister of Service Nova Scotia under the Residential Tenancies Act, so I can’t speak to the policy decisions that were made, and I certainly can’t speak to government’s decision on that. I will leave that to government officials to speak to that.
What I can say is that I was very much involved in supporting the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission that was in place at the time. There was a lot of debate around the table of the folks who represented sectors across the province in various organizations about it, and there was a lot of research done across the country that went into recommendations and considerations that were put forward. The commission itself, I believe, recommended that it be continued as an interim measure, not as a long-term permanent measure. That’s what I can say from my observation at that table - that it was recognized as something that should be pursued in the interim while other measures were taken that they had recommended in their full list of recommendations to try to improve affordability in other ways, to get more supply to market more quickly and to work with organizations across the province and across sectors to do that.
That’s sort of what I know and what I observe. I would say that more specific questions about what’s happened as a result of the implementation and where government plans to go would be for others to say.
THE CHAIR: MLA Burrill with 56 seconds.
GARY BURRILL: You have identified, Ms. Lecker and Ms. LeBlanc, the pathways to homelessness. You have talked about fixed-term leases, renovictions, rents that are too high. What would, in those areas, you recommend to block these pathways off?
SHERI LECKER: I would say that tying the rent cap to the unit as opposed to the individual would be really helpful. I would also mention that we do one-time payments through a program. Last year, that one-time payment prevented more than 500 people from becoming homeless. That’s managed by one staff, money from government, and money that we fundraise. A one-time payment at the right time - not just for rent, but maybe for utilities or anything - can make a huge difference in preventing 533 people, I think it was, from losing their housing. We have to look at ways to stop . . .
THE CHAIR: Order. Sorry. MLA Palmer.
CHRIS PALMER: I just have one more quick question. I’d like to go back to Ms. Knight to maybe have a conversation around the Department of Health and Wellness. From your experience with the Department of Community Services and now with Health and Wellness, you talked earlier about some of the things you’d like to bring to the conversation, and understanding the system gaps and addressing them from a Health and Wellness perspective. Obviously, we’ve had conversation. We understand that those who are homeless or inadequately housed face unique needs in their health care services and what they need.
Can you maybe go back to the conversation and talk about what we’re doing differently now - things we’ve learned as a department going forward, and what we’ve learned from the past, and how we’re doing things differently to address the system gaps that might exist in all these silos that are out there, and have a conversation about that, please?
JOY KNIGHT: Thanks for the question. I think there are a number of things we’ve learned. Like my colleague, I haven’t been in this position for the full two years, but I can speak from the experiences I had previously and to where I am now. There’s certainly a difference in how we think about having more than one access point and more than one type of service. One type of service can’t meet the needs of everybody. How do we more customize and tailor services to better meet the needs, and how do we learn more from community around what the right services should be?
If I could take a moment to talk about the Bridge, that being a very different, new way of thinking about how we provide health care supports to this population. It’s not just about providing the supports with a service provider who completely, fully understands their needs and is able to meet them where they are. It’s having really important impacts on the health care system more broadly. ED avoidance is a really positive outcome. We have better outcomes of the people who live there, but it’s also reducing pressures on the system. Fewer people are actually accessing emergency departments because they can get their services there. There are infectious disease clinics that are happening on site, supported by MOSH and Dr. Hughes on site there. That’s keeping people from having to come in for in-patient care or into emergency departments for care.
That’s a really different way of thinking about how we deliver health care services. Instead of asking you to come to us, we are figuring out ways to come to you. I think that’s a significant shift, and lots of opportunity to take that model - my hope is outside HRM - and think about how our other communities are able to benefit from that type of thinking and access.
CHRIS PALMER: Thank you very much, and thank you all again for coming. I’ll pass it on to my colleague.
THE CHAIR: MLA MacLeod.
MARCO MACLEOD: Thank you, Chair, and thank you, directors, for making time to be here.
My question will be directed to Ms. Morren-Fraser and it has to do with the five-year housing plan. Today, we’ve established that housing is a social determinant of health. How is the five-year housing plan going? How’s the progress going? Where are we with that?
TATIANA MORREN-FRASER: We’re not quite a year into our five-year housing plan. It was released in October, and as folks might remember, we had three key pillars that we’re advancing, focusing on creating the conditions with partners to create new supply to grow and sustain affordable housing and to make sure that we’re providing programs that people need. One of the core areas that we’re looking at is how we get more supply to market more quickly. Today we’ve all talked about the importance of having units for folks to go to at prices they can afford.
One of the things, of course, that has been a great achievement is we’re starting work on 273 new public-housing buildings. A number of times today it’s come up that what we really need is rent-geared-to-income units. Those will be rent-geared-to-income units, and they will house over 700 low-income Nova Scotians.
We also launched the new Secondary and Backyard Suite Incentive Program, which is one of the best tools that we have at our disposal to use existing properties, existing land, to add density. So far, since launching the program, we’ve approved 190 applications, so that’s 190 new units of housing for folks.
Last year, just for an example, working with our partners primarily in the community-housing sector, we contributed to the creation of 276 new units that will be offered at affordable rental rates. Just last week, we announced changes that are coming to the short-term rental regulations that will hopefully incentivize commercial short-term rentals to convert to long-term housing. There are over 7,000 of those registered in the province now. We’re hoping that a number of those will convert into long-term housing, creating more of that stock.
We know all of this takes time. We know people need affordable housing, so we are also investing in our rent supplement program, which came up. We’re adding 500 subsidies this year. We’ll have 8,500 in total by the end of the year. Just recently we also launched a new stream under that, specific to women and their families fleeing domestic violence. We are creating a new pathway with our community partners, who are going to refer eligible individuals to that stream to the program to make sure that they get rent supplements as quickly as possible.
I will just mention too that we partner closely with the Department of Community Services on a stream of our rent supplement program dedicated to those experiencing homelessness, who work with housing support workers to make sure they’re prioritized to the top of the line. We do the same thing in public housing to make sure that those folks who are experiencing homelessness are prioritized to the top of the line.
The last thing I’ll just mention is a significant piece for us. We know that we need to preserve existing affordable housing. It’s one thing to create more, but if we lose the existing housing that’s affordable for folks, we’re not going to be further ahead. We invested last year to help almost 3,000 low-income homeowners in Nova Scotia to stay in their homes, rather than having to leave and put pressure on the rental market, by being able to complete needed health and safety repairs. We’re really working on making sure that we’re helping the existing affordable housing, creating new supply, and as much as possible, we’re making those affordability supports available to those who can’t afford the housing that they may already have access to or that they could afford with just a little bit more help.
THE CHAIR: MLA MacLeod with a minute and 10 seconds.
MARCO MACLEOD: We’ve heard the term “silo” here. I was curious: How does your department, the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing, work with DCS and the Department of Health and Wellness to support people who are experiencing housing insecurity? How does that work?
TATIANA MORREN-FRASER: We work very closely. We all have program teams that work together daily, I would say, to make sure that they’re connecting on the shared clients - we have a number of shared clients, particularly those in receipt of income assistance - making sure that the income assistance caseworkers are connected to public housing support workers and to our rent supplement program to make sure they get placed, and for those who have housing support workers, that they are being placed at the top of the queue to get a rent supplement or into public housing.
We also work on what’s been mentioned, the Community Housing Acquisition Program, or CHAP, as we call it. It isn’t just a rooming house program, I’ll mention, although I think that may be . . .
THE CHAIR: Order. That concludes the time for questioning. We’ll now go to closing comments.
I will start from my right to my left. Ms. Lecker, do you have any closing comments?
[2:45 p.m.]
SHERI LECKER: I do, thank you. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak today. There is no question that not having safe, affordable housing is detrimental to health outcomes for our whole community. We need to close the pathways that are leading to housing insecurity and create conditions where people can live safely and securely, with dignity and improved health outcomes. This is not possible when we allow people to live 40 per cent to 65 per cent below the poverty line, which we have not really discussed today.
Studies show that people who experience homelessness have a reduced life expectancy. A study published just last week in Toronto found that without safe, stable housing, people live 17 years less than their housed neighbours. That’s the link to health outcomes. We all know this. We need to take immediate historic steps to make this a reality - to make a change for Nova Scotians.
THE CHAIR: Ms. LeBlanc.
MARIE-FRANCE LEBLANC: I don’t have any formal statement, but at the North End Community Health Centre, we were formed 52 years ago based on the social determinants of health. These are not new. We’ve known that the way to support those experiencing homelessness and deep poverty is through this integrative, collaborative model.
Our funding and our supports are not integrated. They’re done in silos. I understand that the departments all work together, but the thought process and the implementation are not done. Housing needs to come first. It needs to be supported by all of the other things that we’ve been talking about in order to tackle this problem, which is homelessness and health, together. We need to do it together, as a team - one approach, not 30 different buckets of money.
THE CHAIR: Ms. Ley.
SUZANNE LEY: I also don’t have prepared remarks, but wanted to take the opportunity to thank again the teams - my team and the teams behind all of us who are doing the work - represented at this table, and the many other service providers who are doing the work. I think, loud and clear, we’ve talked a lot today about how government departments can, are, and need to do better at working together and supporting the organizations that are doing this work and seeing what is needed on the front line. Certainly we’ve done our best, and we will continue to work together on this really important piece.
THE CHAIR: I shouldn’t have skipped over to see if Ms. Morren-Fraser needed anything. My two, left and right, reminded me of that.
Ms. Morren-Fraser.
TATIANA MORREN-FRASER: Thank you for the opportunity. Yes, I would just like to echo my colleagues. I want to say that what strikes me is we all have a shared objective. We are working toward the same thing. We are very much aware of the system integration that’s needed, and we are actively working on it. I think that’s what gives me hope - that we’re asking really good questions of each other, we’re learning from folks on the ground, and the departments are working together.
While this is an extremely complex issue and there are people who are in desperate need of support, it gives me hope that we’re having this conversation today, and the recognition that we need to do things differently. Things are rolling out to do just that.
I walk away today with hope that we will continue the good work that we’re doing to work together.
THE CHAIR: Thank you. Apologies again.
Lastly, Ms. Knight.
JOY KNIGHT: Thank you, and thanks for the very thoughtful questions today, and discussion. I’ll just reiterate the commitment from the Department of Health and Wellness that we are here to be partners for the long term.
THE CHAIR: That will conclude that part. We do have some business, but I’m going to take a three-minute recess just for the witnesses to be able to get there.
We’re in recess for three minutes.
[2:49 p.m. The committee recessed.]
[2:53 p.m. The committee reconvened.]
THE CHAIR: Order. I call the meeting back to order. I’m going to deal with correspondence. On July 11, 2024, an email from the Department of Health and Wellness following up on the July 9th meeting with a link to a video promoting the province’s colon cancer screening program. Everybody saw it? Great.
The next business is - I will turn the floor over to MLA Burrill.
GARY BURRILL: I’d like to make the following motion:
Whereas housing precarity and homelessness have a direct negative impact on people’s health and wellness; and
Whereas so much homelessness is being caused by the government’s abetting of landlords’ misuse of fixed-term leases as a way to evict tenants and get around the rent cap; and
Whereas one reason the numbers of homeless people are increasing so sharply is the dramatic rise in rents enabled by a rent cap that excludes new tenants;
Therefore the Standing Committee on Health calls on the government, in light of the information that has been presented this afternoon, to review and re-evaluate its approach to these policies on housing.
THE CHAIR: Do you want to speak to it or just the motion? It’s your motion.
GARY BURRILL: I move it.
THE CHAIR: Is there any discussion on the motion? MLA Palmer.
CHRIS PALMER: I’m not exactly 100 per cent sure what’s being asked in the motion - 100 per cent - calling on the government. I think what we heard this afternoon is all three of these departments and the partners already agreeing to evaluate, re-evaluate what’s going on. Ms. Knight talked a lot in her presentation about continuously working to do different things and get better outcomes. I’m really not sure what the motion is really asking, to be honest with you. At this point, it’s not clear enough for me to decide to vote on it.
SUSAN LEBLANC: I would agree with MLA Palmer that we did hear that from the folks working in departments, but we also heard from people working on the front lines that we are in an emergency situation, and we have been for quite a while, but it is getting worse and worse. We heard from Ms. Lecker that people are living 43 to 67 per cent below the poverty line. That is an emergency situation. It’s all fine and good for departments to be speaking to each other.
One of the things that I thought about when I was listening to that today is that’s really good to be doing in a non-crisis situation, but in a crisis situation, we need to stop talking and we need to start acting. This motion suggests that, in my opinion.
THE CHAIR: Any other discussion? MLA White.
JOHN WHITE: I have your motion in my hand here, and I’m reading through it several times. I really am having trouble understanding some of it, to be honest with you. Not the point of it; I get the point of it. I get that. I thought it said here that the rent cap is noted as causing a great increase in homelessness, and I don’t recall them talking about that much, to be honest with you.
I don’t want to deny your motion just for the sake of denying it, but I would like to review the meeting today before I vote on this, to be honest with you. I don’t recall the information off the top of my head to say that it supports what you’re saying in this motion.
SUSAN LEBLANC: Is there a way to move to adjourn and keep the motion on the table so we can do just that? We can have our colleagues review the motion, and we can bring it back next meeting?
THE CHAIR: It would be in order to call for a motion to adjourn. I do want to point out - thanks, MLA Burrill for having that emailed out to everybody. That’s in order, and then this would sit on the paper for the next meeting. If somebody wants to do that or talk for the next minute and a half . . . (interruption) or I’m being told you could formally move to have it considered at the next meeting. It’s what your wish is.
GARY BURRILL: Question and recorded vote.
THE CHAIR: Okay, so no other debate. You’re calling for a recorded vote. Is everybody ready for the vote?
The clerk will conduct a recorded vote.
[The clerk calls the roll.]
[2:59 p.m.]
YEAS NAYS
Braedon Clark Marco MacLeod
Rafah DiCostanzo Chris Palmer
Gary Burrill John White
Susan Leblanc Nolan Young
John A. MacDonald
THE CHAIR: The motion is defeated.
Is there any other business?
Our next meeting is Tuesday, September 10th. As the House will be sitting, it will be 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.: Promoting Physical Activity. The witnesses: Healthy Tomorrow Foundation and the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage.
We are adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 3:00 p.m.]
