Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Aboriginal Peoples
Issue 11 - Evidence - January 28, 2015
OTTAWA, Wednesday, January 28, 2015
The Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples met this day at 6:51 p.m. to study challenges relating to First Nations infrastructure on reserves.
Senator Dennis Glen Patterson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome all honourable senators and members of the public who are watching this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples either here in this room, via CPAC or the Web. I am Dennis Patterson from Nunavut. I have the privilege of chairing the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.
Our mandate is to examine legislation and matters relating to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada generally, but this evening we're hearing testimony on a specific order of reference we've been working on, authorizing us to examine and report on the challenges and potential solutions relating to infrastructure on reserves, including housing, community infrastructure, and innovative opportunities for financing and more effective collaborative strategies. We've completed our hearings on housing and are now focusing our study on infrastructure.
Today I'm pleased to welcome the Manto Sipi Cree Nation, a small First Nation with a population of approximately 800, located 850 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg and 255 kilometres southeast of Thompson, Manitoba. Manto Sipi Cree Nation requested to appear before the committee to discuss a proposal conducted by the committee regarding the financing of an infrastructure initiative.
Welcome. Before we proceed to hear from you, I would like to go around the table and ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator Sibbeston: Nick Sibbeston, Northwest Territories.
Senator Campbell: Larry Campbell, British Columbia.
Senator Fraser: Joan Fraser, Quebec.
Senator Oh: Victor Oh, Ontario.
Senator Ngo: Thanh Hai Ngo, Ontario.
Senator Raine: Nancy Greene Raine, British Columbia.
Senator Lang: Daniel Lang, Yukon.
The Chair: The North is well represented tonight. We have the three territories covered.
Colleagues, I know you'll join me in welcoming our witnesses from Manto Sipi Cree Nation, Chief Michael Yellowback and Councillor Daniel Ross.
We look forward to your presentation. You can expect questions from the senators following your presentation. Please go ahead.
Michael Yellowback, Chief, Manto Sipi Cree Nation:
[The witness spoke in his Native language.]
In standing before this committee, I would like to acknowledge our people, the people that we represent. I also acknowledge, in honour, the chairperson of this Senate committee, including the committee members here today.
My name is Chief Michael Yellowback, and I represent the First Nation citizens of Manto Sipi. Today we come before this committee to address the ongoing challenges that we've experienced when it comes to housing and the challenges that we have faced after we accommodated every household in Manto Sipi back in 1998 for our people to have the benefit of running water.
The practice of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada to provide major capital funding to upgrade central and essential community infrastructure, while at the same time not providing adequate capital resources to ensure the retrofitting of homes to receive these upgraded services, is one of the most significant challenges relating to First Nation infrastructure on reserves.
For example, although AANDC invested in a major capital project to connect the Manto Sipi Cree Nation to the Manitoba Hydro integrated transmission system in 1997 through the North Central Transmission Project, and although AANDC funded the major capital project to construct water and waste water treatment facilities at the Manto Sipi Cree Nation, AANDC did not provide a corresponding capital allocation to ensure that our homes could actually be hooked up to the these newly upgraded essential public services.
Before that, our houses had 15-amp service when we had Manitoba Hydro diesel-powered generation stations. With the introduction of this new transmission line, we were to have an upgrade to 200-amp service, but at the same time, there was no cost associated to upgrade those retrofit costs for the houses. At the same time, our community wanted water and sewer services.
The leadership back in the day approached the department, and they proposed $1 million be advanced from our band base capital. Secondly, $769,000 was borrowed from the bank. This liability crippled our First Nation, but at the same time, we saw the benefits of having running water. In northeastern Manitoba, we are the first First Nation to have running water for each of our households.
With that decision to accommodate our people, we could not have housing for 10 years. We were forced into co- management. Our people suffered because 70 per cent of our population consists of individuals who are 29 years and under. We have an increasing population. Our band base capital has not increased for 30 years despite our rapid increase in population.
I have been involved in our administration department and am going on my third term as chief of my community, and I've always advocated to the department that we need to be funded according to our population. How can you effectively deliver these types of services given the demands to our people when there are funding inequities?
This is why a majority of First Nations are in intervention. Some First Nations do not have any economic development to capitalize on resource development to subsidize what we need because we are located in isolated communities where 80 per cent of our youth are losing hope.
These are the pictures that were distributed today — mould, including in this same room where you see these two children. We have band base capital of $381,000. We cannot even continue or see how to address these renovations.
For five or six years running, Canada was voted as the one of the best countries to live in in the world. I've always disagreed with that, especially when our people are living in Third World conditions.
The other one that I'd like to bring to your attention is that the city of Winnipeg, right now, has a boil-water advisory. Every day other First Nations are subject to that, but they do not garner national attention. Yet, when an urban centre meets these challenges, right away it makes it to the news.
I come from an organization called Keewatin Tribal Council. The majority of our communities within the KTC region are also in situations like ours. Our community gets daily calls to address housing. A lot of studies have been done on Aboriginal people, and things need to change.
I don't want to disrespect the Senate, but at the same time there's the compassion that I have for my people who continue to suffer on a daily basis living in these overcrowded houses. You would not see this in urban environments. Approximately 60 per cent of our housing units would be considered condemned. We even have one housing unit that was built in 1969, but we were forced to make renovations to accommodate a young family of six. There was one family who had close to 18 people living in a four-bedroom house.
There is a backlog of housing in our community of approximately 60 houses. In today's costs, it would cost us $300,000 just to build one house, and we only get, in our band base capital, $381,000. Something is wrong with that picture.
I believe that our children are our future and they need to grow up in an environment that is safe and comfortable, but right now we don't have that. It always brings me so many emotions when I talk about this. I have been a leader for my community for close to eight years and in administration close to 10 years, working in the administration department. When I see the federal government commit funding to other countries, it just makes me sad. But I hope, with the work that is done by this Senate committee, that improvements to capital infrastructure on First Nations can be achieved.
For us, too, our water and sewer infrastructure is at capacity as well. We've been advocating that the department upgrade our water and sewer treatment plants, and we are just falling on deaf ears.
I don't want to take too much of your time. I would also like, if I may, have Councillor Daniel Ross say a few words.
Daniel Ross, Councillor, Manto Sipi Cree Nation: I guess you heard pretty well why we are here appearing before you. We get pretty emotional when we discuss things like infrastructure in our community, the way we live, the way we see our children growing up in a bad environment regarding mouldy houses. We don't need to see that, but we do see that now on a daily basis.
When that Manitoba Hydro North Central line project came in, there should have been a study done on how to accommodate the houses at that time, because when you bring new power into another existing house, that's inadequate. More plans should have been made on how to better equip the existing house.
We saw one drawback that's catching up to us. Let me go back a little bit.
When we first installed these electrical power systems in our housing units, we weren't advised that we should have an HRV unit included in each housing unit, so they weren't. Now it's starting to come back on us. Probably it's just my thinking, but that's where all the mould is coming from. The heat and water vapours can't go anywhere, so they turn into mould. That's where you get all these problems in our housing units.
We feel that proper studies should have been done by the federal government and even Manitoba Hydro before they installed the new power to our housing units. We see evidence of it every day now. Our housing units, like the chief said, could be condemned if somebody really took a look at them. Drastic steps need to be taken to improve our housing units, not just in our community but in surrounding communities as well. Every time we get together with other community leaders, we discuss these situations and how to better our communities. We do address them, but like the chief said, it's falling on deaf ears. With the help of this standing Senate committee and with whatever you recommend, I hope there's improvement in our communities.
The Chair: Thank you for describing the housing situation and your challenges in such detail.
I'd like to ask you about the school project, as we're looking at more than just housing in this study. I understand that your community is part of a northern schools P3 project that is aiming to build and maintain four schools in four different communities in your region. I wonder if you could tell us basically how that's going and whether you're making progress, please.
Mr. Yellowback: Our community, Manto Sipi, has been involved in trying to secure a school since 1997. We did three feasibility studies, the first one being in 1996. Afterwards, we got a letter from the department in December 1998 that we were to proceed with our new school. It took several years after that to get the project going. In 2005, the department gave us the go-ahead to construct our new school.
In 2006, we went for the architectural design. The Department of Indian Affairs spent over $600,000 on that phase. I mention this because we were ready to move to the construction phase when the project was stopped by the department, even though they had invested $600,000 in the architectural design, and nobody ever questioned it. So $600,000 just went down the drain.
Several years later, I believe it was November 2010, I got a call: "Would you be interested in participating in P3 discussions on constructing schools?'' We jumped at the opportunity that involved other First Nation communities. It was described to us that if we proceeded, it would be a new and innovative way of constructing schools on reserves. The talks progressed and the department also spent funds to have this dialogue. At the end of the day, the department made the decision not to pursue P3 to construct schools.
Now we are involved with three other First Nations in this northern schools funding project. I was told that it's progressing. At the same time, given the history in our community when the new school was stopped in 2006, we still have some reservations. We hope that will not happen again.
We are happy that our young children will finally get a new educational facility. The old school infrastructure has been overcrowded since it opened. In 1992, the department brought in three ATCO temporary trailers for classrooms. I have yet to receive an answer from the department as to what their definition of "temporary'' is. Over 20 years later, we are still using those ATCO trailers. Just three years ago, they brought in five more ready-to-move buildings, RTMs, to accommodate our students. This is why we pushed our community, along with the chiefs from the other three communities, to get this project going; so I'm happy to hear that it's going.
We selected a school project coordinator, and we're going to move ahead with the architectural design. It is anticipated that the materials for these schools will be shipped in the winter of 2017, with an anticipated opening of January 2019 for all the schools.
The Chair: That's very useful information. Thank you.
Senator Sibbeston: I want to go back to the pictures that you provided of some of the houses in your community. When you look at them, they're pretty terrible. There is one picture of a ceiling that is all rotted. Obviously the roof is leaking and the floor has the tiles off. One part of people's reaction would be, "Well, that is terrible.'' On the other hand, a lot of people would say, "Come on, what's the matter with you guys? Can't you fix your housing by yourselves? And why do you depend on the federal government for everything? Why do you depend on the federal government to fix your housing?'' Most people in our country look after their own houses, and it's only Indian people, First Nations people, that kind of depend on the federal government for their houses. I think it would be good if you could explain to us and to the Canadian people, who don't know very much about First Nations living in remote parts of the country, why this is so.
I come from the Northwest Territories, way up in the North, and I'm familiar with the lives of First Nations people. Only one or two generations ago people lived in the bush. People lived along lakes and rivers. Eventually the government enticed and encouraged people to move into a community because of schooling, and in many ways it's easier to administer. They began providing housing and stuff like that.
While First Nations people were living in the bush, they were fine. They hunted, trapped, fished and provided their own means of living. But when they came to town, the rules changed. It's a whole different life, living in the bush as opposed to living in town. I know that therein lies some of the answer; the cultural and social changes from living in the bush compared to living in a community. I'm aware of that, but I think it would serve some purpose if you could explain it to Canadians: Why don't you just fix your own houses? Why do you look to the federal government to do it? That's because it's never going to happen. It's going to take so many years.
Mr. Yellowback: I thank you for your comment.
I guess the first response I would provide to that comment is that when we converted our housing units and retrofitted them with running water, we did not anticipate, nor were we told, that we would expect this because this was the first time our people had running water. My colleague mentioned that there was also inadequate installation of HRV units.
At the same time, to respond to your question, our band base capital alone is only $381,000. From there, a surcharge of $27,800 is taken right off the bat and we have to pay for insurance; that's $40,000. We're trying to secure CMHC units but we have to go through bonding as well. Our capital plan has to come out of there to accommodate the bonding for CMHC units.
The other thing is that we have submitted a Management Action Plan to address our debt and a portion of that, from our capital plan, is committed to addressing our overall debt.
There is another question that I would respond to: Our First Nations, particularly our community, are trying to capitalize on resource development in our communities. This is the way to address the challenges we face in our communities. Too many times, industry will come to extract our resources and not include First Nations. In northern Manitoba alone, $3 billion worth of resources is extracted. How much of that goes to First Nations? Zero. If we had our fair share of these benefits, I would not be here today sitting in front of this Senate committee. We have a large lithium deposit about 10 kilometres from our community. We're trying to capitalize on that.
We now understand that we have to think outside the box. At the same time, currently, we cannot address our social shortfalls until the challenges and the bureaucracy we face with the federal and provincial governments give us our fair share in economic development opportunities.
Right now we're focusing more on economic development to address our housing needs, but it's a challenge when there's roadblock after roadblock.
The Chair: Thank you. Maybe I can follow up on your answer before I turn to Senator Greene Raine.
You mentioned the long-term loan that was secured to put in running water. I believe that was in 1998, and that was electrification as well. In your response, you also mentioned the challenge of getting CMHC units.
I do understand that there was a plan to convert some housing units to a Section 10 project, which would have converted those homes so that you could get some rental revenue from the Shelter Allowance Program. You can correct me, but I believe some 70 houses were converted. I understand that the hope or the intention was that those shelter allowance revenues could help repayment of the loan for the electrification and water. Could you tell me how that has turned out and whether that was of assistance?
Mr. Yellowback: Securing those two loans created additional financial burden for our community. Sure, I was told that we've repaid this from our own shelter allowances through Section 10. But at the same time, the majority of the repayment of our debt has gone to paying these loans as opposed to trying to renovate these houses.
You have to understand that some of these houses were built in the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s. These 70 houses that you are referring to are in deplorable condition today, and it's hard. With the $769,000 that we borrowed, and we are not counting the interest that we had to pay already, it has been very high and a challenge for us. It took about 10 years to get a ministerial loan guarantee to access CMHC Section 95 housing, but we've done our due diligence to try and get more housing.
Right now we have 130 units in our community. Within the last four years we've constructed about 28, with an additional 5 coming next summer. But at the same time, going through CMHC creates additional liability because we have to pay those funds back. It is not necessarily just these two loans; we are trying to address our housing shortage, which we approximate at 60 houses.
Senator Raine: I don't quite know where to start. It sounds like an almost hopeless situation that you're in.
Before you hooked up to the new hydro and you were on the original hydro, which was diesel supplied, were the houses better then? Did the new hydro, new plumbing and water services create this mould problem and the problems with deterioration of the houses? Were the houses sounder before the modern hydro and water?
Mr. Ross: I would say no because some of the houses back then had two-by-four walls on them, and now they have two-by-six walls. But with the heating, the electric furnace, you had to pretty well put your furnace on full blast to heat up your house. Back then, heating wise, it was much better with a wood stove. You could get more heat and put firewood in your wood stove. That would last, and you would not have that much financial burden.
Right now, once you turn on your furnace during winter months, you get a monthly bill between maybe $300 and $600 in some houses just to heat your house. Some of these houses don't have the proper windows or doors on them, and that's where you lose all the heat.
To answer your question, back then if you used the wood stove it was good, but in today's age I guess it's not.
Senator Raine: Is there a good source of wood for heat in your area?
Mr. Ross: Yes. We have a lot.
Senator Raine: We visited some northern communities in northern Ontario, and it seems like the houses being built were not designed for the North; they were designed for the South. Maybe it seems like they are nice and modern, but if they are not designed for that climate, then you come up with problems. If you had to start over, would you design a different kind of house?
Mr. Yellowback: We've said many times that the National Building Code does not conform to our environment. I think that's one of the challenges we face. When we apply for CMHC housing, we have to abide by the National Building Code.
Senator Raine: It strikes me that, as Senator Sibbeston said, when you lived in the bush in small cabins you built yourself, you were probably more comfortable than 10 years down the road in a modern house in a community. Something is not right here. Our challenge is how do we come up with sustainable homes that work for your people going forward?
Mr. Yellowback: What I would say is get our people involved, our technicians, who are well versed in our natural environment.
One of the things we found is that when we tried to address our concerns about constructing a house in our communities, they don't listen to us.
Senator Raine: Yet you have to take what they say because they are giving you the money for it?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Raine: What is happening with the new school? Who is designing that? Will that work in your environment?
Mr. Yellowback: There are about 300 communities involved and at least we will have a say. We'll have a voice because one of the things that we were advised is that the construction of the four schools will have a new innovative approach as opposed to —
Senator Raine: Your innovation?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Raine: You also provided us with information about the rising hydro rates, which adds insult to injury. It strikes me that when they came in to offer this wonderful hydro, they have now made you an addict to the hydro and that has not been a very good solution to living well.
Mr. Yellowback: Right now, for me personally, my hydro bill is well over $300. It varies from house to house. Some have gotten a bill for $500. Just today we found out one hydro bill was over $1,200 for one month.
Senator Raine: That's the combination of the insulation and the poor design where you open the door and all the heat goes outside, no double doors, no double windows.
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Raine: When you are going forward now and building new houses — you say you built 28 houses in the last four years — are they the same kind of houses that were built and are not working?
Mr. Yellowback: It's a little bit different. As I said, we have to abide by the National Building Code, but we do our best to try and accommodate those and conform to the CMHC guidelines as well.
Also, before the retrofit of our units, especially in the washroom area with the specialized flooring, specialized aluminum tiles, we didn't have those in our communities when we retrofitted these housing units. Within the last five years we've had about 60 houses that we had to renovate their washrooms at a cost of a minimum of $5,000 to $10,000 per house.
Senator Raine: Because the flooring just didn't work?
Mr. Yellowback: The flooring, yes. We had one toilet almost crumble down to the crawlspace.
Senator Raine: It's obvious that the building code doesn't help your houses.
Mr. Yellowback: No.
Senator Raine: What strikes me is you can go around our country and find pioneer homes built in the early 1900s and they are still standing.
Mr. Yellowback: We have one cabin built about 40 years ago located about 40 miles downriver. It's still standing and in very good condition.
Senator Raine: Is there anything stopping you from building that kind of a house today?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes, the Department of Indian Affairs.
Senator Raine: What would that kind of house cost to build compared to the cost of the new houses?
Mr. Yellowback: It would be much more economical.
We have tried to start up our sawmill to utilize our resources to construct our homes, but the challenge is having the department recognize these houses and to address any renovations, or whatnot, to constructing these houses, because we have potential in constructing our own homes.
Senator Raine: What is the size of the timber where you live? Is it big enough timber to build log homes?
Mr. Yellowback: Oh, yes.
Senator Raine: Yet a log home would not be approved by CMHC? Is that what you're telling me?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Raine: We built a log home, my husband and I. We didn't do it ourselves, but we lived in a log home and it was the best home we've ever lived in.
Mr. Yellowback: We heard from one other First Nation that challenged it as well.
Senator Raine: Somebody told me that it is not that it wouldn't be approved; it is that it would be more expensive. But you disagree with that?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes, we disagree with that.
Senator Raine: Because you can use your local labour then?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Raine: Thank you very much for this. It has been very helpful.
Senator Fraser: I hope this question isn't based on an excessive lack of information. I do have a significant lack of information because I'm not a regular member of this committee; I'm just fortunate enough to be here this evening.
I'm interested in the paper you provided about the history and in particular the history of the construction. I'm sure this came from you, yes?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Fraser: At that time, load-bearing joists were cut to accommodate the pipes. Plumbing stacks into attics were not sealed properly, resulting in loss of heat and allowing moisture into the attic, which condenses on the underside of the roofs, rotting the sheathing and causing leaks. Groundcovers in crawlspaces were not properly sealed when water and sewer lines were installed, resulting in water seepage and flooding and, I suppose, more mould.
Did you not have any recourse? In the South when builders do something deadly wrong you can go after them, and sometimes you will actually get your money back. Did you try? Were you able to do that?
Mr. Yellowback: One of the things is that, as I stated in my earlier presentation, the majority of our housing units were built in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. We did not anticipate this when we retrofitted our housing units because our housing units, until 1998 I was told, could not sustain the new water and sewer that came in.
We've tried to the best of our ability to address the issues. Given the funding allocation that we get from the department and trying to do our part to address these issues, we're doing just one small step at a time.
The whole picture is that four years ago we had one individual who went from house to house estimating how much it would cost to address these problems you are referring to, and it was close to $500,000.
When you say going after these individuals, the majority of these are local labour. They've received training, but at the same time I was told that under the CMHC applications we do have hired contractors, including also when constructing schools. When they are done, we have no recourse.
Senator Fraser: That was my question, because some of these things, cutting load-bearing joists, for example, you ought to be able to get your money back, but you were not able to? You could not go after them?
Mr. Yellowback: The thing is, in our community, when these houses were built, we did not anticipate having running water.
Senator Fraser: I do appreciate that. I'm sure people were doing their best to try and make the new systems fit into the older houses, but it sounds to me as if something went terribly wrong right there at that very beginning stage, and it's very sad that you were not able to have recourse going back.
Mr. Ross: I would like to add something to that regarding the seepage into the houses. A lot of it had to do with soil conditions also.
Where our community is located is all peat moss and silty clay. When all these houses were connected to the water and sewer, a bed of sand and gravel was put on top of the pipes. But with the groundwater, that's where seepage went into some houses that had a pretty bad silty clay foundation. So that's where some of it came into, where some of the houses have mould problems regarding that.
Senator Fraser: Basically the soil testing would not have been adequate to show that the sand bed was not adequate?
Mr. Ross: Yes.
Senator Fraser: Oh, my goodness; thank you so much.
Senator Lang: I would like to pursue one of the statements made earlier. Did you say there was a sawmill in your community?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
Senator Lang: Who owns and runs the sawmill, and who buys the lumber?
Mr. Yellowback: We invested in a sawmill. It was our hope that we could utilize our own resources that are available to us, that we could do our own harvesting of the logs. We trained about 10 young men to work on this, but at the same time, we only received limited training and employment funding. We're doing our part, but at the same time it's the issue of funding for us.
Senator Lang: Is the sawmill operating?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes, it is.
Senator Lang: You're actually producing and selling lumber?
Mr. Yellowback: We're not selling lumber.
Senator Lang: I don't quite understand this. It seems to me that if you have a sawmill, you'd use it to provide the lumber to build your houses. It seems one would follow the other. I don't quite understand what happened. How long have you had the sawmill?
Mr. Yellowback: We've had it for two years. We're not like these lumber companies. We are not advanced. We just have that little sawmill machine. One of our long-term goals is to harvest the wood available to us in our area, but our ultimate goal is to construct an actual housing unit when we harvest this wood.
The Chair: Maybe I can follow up on what Senator Fraser was asking. It's impressive that you got hydro and running water, and I think you said you were the first to have running water in your region and you managed to get this by working with the department. But you didn't get the money to hook up the hydro and the water systems. I'm wondering if you could comment on your relations with the department. How could you have secured this major leap forward in progress but not what was needed to make it happen?
Can you describe your working relations? Do they come to your community and engage with you? It seems to have worked in one respect but then faltered. What went wrong?
Mr. Yellowback: I was not involved at the time when this agreement was secured, but in those 10 years, despite the ongoing advocacy for funding shortages, we have had a positive relationship with the department.
Going back to the loans, I don't know, for me, if I was involved, the cost of putting our First Nation into much more liability as opposed to our people getting the benefits of running water and increased hydro in our communities, I would choose the latter. The rest of Canada has benefited from and enjoyed running water for the last century. Up until 1998, our people had to go to the school to take a shower. We had to go to outhouses.
The way the loans were structured, we suffered for 10 years with no new housing, and we had to pay a certain amount each year to the department for the advancement of these funds. So the loan of $769,000, we're still paying today and we will continue to pay for it for over 10 years. That's the financial situation that the department put us in with this intervention.
The Chair: Can you describe the interface you have with the department, which office you deal with and whether they come to your community?
Mr. Yellowback: In general we deal with the Manitoba region in Winnipeg. Yes, department officials come to our community now and then to address our matters. Every three months we have a quarterly meeting; they call it a management action quarterly monitoring meeting. But we don't have any high-level department officials that come from the Manitoba region to our community, just only the lower end of the totem pole, pardon my expression.
The Chair: You've indicated that some progress is being made on the school project, although it seems to be slow. It started out as a P3 project. First Nations are eligible for funding from P3 Canada, I believe, but as I understand, it is no longer a P3 project. Do you know why it's no longer a P3 project? Could you describe the department's involvement with the current project? Do you know how it's working with the other communities in your region?
Mr. Yellowback: We were ecstatic — especially having done our research involved in the discussions of P3 — about the benefits it would bring through the department and the other stakeholders. To us it was a win-win-win situation. But this past May, the department felt that P3 was not the way to go because of maintenance issues, that there was no interest from industry.
I beg to differ. There was a lot of expression, considering that the large financial institutions in Canada were contacting me and other major industry contractors were contacting us. I think that's one of things that would have benefited Canada, the department and First Nations.
Because of the way of constructing these schools the traditional route, it gives the contractor much more accountability to construct these schools and the life of the building will last for 40 years.
With that new school, the way it's structured now with this project, it's going good. Like I said, we just elected our new school project coordinator and I know that we have representatives at a department level here in Ottawa that are committed to constructing these four schools for our communities. I commend those individuals who are participating also, but at the same time it's not the P3 we had hoped for. But at least it's a new school for our children.
Senator Oh: Chief, earlier you mentioned that you have a good maintenance guy in your community. According to what you've shown us, the problems are mould and water leaking. You have maintenance that's not good enough as you can't upkeep the housing. Why is he not helping you to maintain your houses?
Mr. Yellowback: I don't believe I said we had a good maintenance record. I think it's the challenges that we face. We get daily calls from our community and we record them. At the same time, the cost of renovating each house surpasses our limited funding capacity to address the needs.
We've always said that our housing is a priority. We've done our strategic planning and housing has been a priority for us. I know that every organization, including the Senate and even Parliament, may think they have a good track record, but they don't. I commend my staff for doing what they try to do for our community, despite the limited opportunities available to address all these concerns in our community.
Senator Oh: Do you receive an annual budget or funding from the government for your nation?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes, we do. According to the National First Nations Infrastructure Investment Plan, we get $381,000, but that's not enough. We have to pay for our winter road from that, our insurance, our bonding, debt retirement and road repairs as well.
Senator Oh: So $381,000 is the only sum you receive from the government?
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
The Chair: That would be for infrastructure and housing. There would be other funds that the band would receive for education and other areas.
Mr. Yellowback: Yes.
The Chair: To clarify, I think that was your answer.
Mr. Yellowback: To address our O&M costs — education and our O&M buildings.
The Chair: On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you for coming all this way and for the excellent information you presented to us orally as well as the materials you circulated, including these graphic pictures. Thank you for your willingness to assist us with our work.
With that, colleagues, thank you for being here. Our non-regular members' contributions are appreciated.
(The committee adjourned.)