THUNDER BAY — A three-day event being held in Thunder Bay will bring together partners, stakeholders, and leaders to offer a wide range of technical, administrative, and planning advice to improve housing builds in First Nations communities.
The 21st annual First Nations Housing Conference opened at the Valhalla Hotel and Conference Centre on Tuesday, with this year's conference aiming to encourage partnerships to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and solutions in building new homes.
“We're all gathered here for today is the First Nation Housing Conference to learn about the housing industry and learn about what's coming down for funding opportunities for First Nations in the Ontario region and, of course, also for across Canada,” said Jonathan Gregg, a committee member of the First Nation Housing Conference.
The conference is organized by the First Nations Housing Working Group, comprised of ten tribal council representatives across Northern Ontario.
Over the next three days, we're going to have sessions on various topics related to housing and a lot of the challenges that the communities deal with remote construction, and transporting goods on the winter road,” Gregg said.
“A lot of us now are working towards getting ready for that. We're starting to put together our housing packages, order our houses, and make sure that winter road season is a long one this year so we can get all our housing materials up there.”
There are many challenges that First Nation communities must face, especially, those remote communities who rely on the winter road to get building supplies. The warmer winters are adding extra risk to getting building supplies to the far northern communities. Far northern communities like Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and Pikangikum First Nation need to be timely with their purchases, so they can take advantage of the winter road season while it lasts.
Gregg acknowledged funding opportunities from grants can be a challenge.
“That's always a main factor,” said Gregg.
“Any kind of funding for housing is much needed, especially when it talks about housing managers and developing those skills and anything related to adding more housing dollars and more infrastructure. The challenge is just the farther you're away from a major city, it's just harder to work and infrastructure is just starting to reach to end of its life."
Karim Hajiani, the head of capital planning, community infrastructure for Indigenous Services Canada, stood in for federal Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu to announce the government's housing management subsidy to improve housing management.
“The capacity to take advantage of these investments with shovel-ready projects is paramount. I know that in the past, this conference has provided a forum to enhance the capacity of housing professionals and to network with others to find best practices. I wouldn't expect any less,” said Hajiani.
Another challenge to First Nation communities of acquiring the skill train employment. Gregg said communities bring in skilled labourers, which also comes at an additional cost.
Gregg said that having outside support is not bad for communities, but the over-reliance on outside contractors does help the First Nations community build economic basins.
Fostering more skill trade programs within the community helps youths and adults provide them with a “sense of pride,” Gregg added.
“We're building our own homes which was always done in the past. But with COVID and things that happened, we found that a lot of people have moved on to different careers. So just to replenish that industry of construction that's what we're working towards. The conference here is a great avenue of just networking and finding out what other communities are doing where they have success,” said Gregg.
One such success story Gregg mentioned is the Independent First Nations Alliance's relationship with Mohawk College.
“We're working with Mohawk College and we're going to start to develop an 8 to 12-week program in one of our communities, Pikangikum First Nation. They're going to start to deliver training on tool usage and carpentry skills. It's an introduction to the trade and we're hoping to target young people in the First Nation. Female or male, all are welcome. We're hoping to start building that capacity with the governments so that we can have more skilled trades in our community,” Gregg said.
