Speech from Minister Jean-Yves Duclos: Reaching Home, the redesigned Homelessness Partnering Strategy

Montreal, Quebec
June 13, 2018
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Mesdames, messieurs,

Hello, everyone.

It is my pleasure to be here in Montreal on the traditional territory of the Mohawk people.

Thank you to the community group L’Itinéraire and to everyone working at The Roundhouse Café for allowing us to be here together today, as well as for your important work with the most vulnerable people in our society.

Concrete action

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “everyone deserves a safe and affordable place to call home […] One person on the streets in Canada is too many.”

That is why, last November, Prime Minister Trudeau and I announced Canada’s very first National Housing Strategy, a historic $40-billion, 10-year plan that aims to give more Canadians a place to call home.

It’s also why, last Monday, I announced the Government of Canada’s new strategy to fight homelessness.

Along with other National Housing Strategy investments, Reaching Home will help us meet our ambitious goal of reducing homelessness by 50 percent over the next 10 years - and I think we can do even better if we all continue to work together.

To do this, we are making bold changes.

Over the last year, we’ve consulted with communities and local service providers, experts, provinces and territories, Indigenous partners and people with lived experience of homelessness from across the country.

I would like to highlight that this new strategy is the product of considerable collaboration—collaboration from everyone who agreed to share their points of view with us, and in particular, from members of the advisory committee, who have worked so hard these last few months.

I’m proud to say: We listened!

Reaching Home components

At its core, the National Housing Strategy supports community engagement to meet local needs.

This also applies to federal government support for combatting homelessness, which is why Reaching Home will support a collaborative approached rooted in communities.

This means the program will adapt to people instead of making people adapt to the program.

As a starting point, we will continue to deliver funding directly to municipalities and local service providers to support the most vulnerable Canadians in accessing and maintaining a safe, stable and affordable home.  

We will also give communities more choice. Of course, the Housing First model has proven to be very useful for reducing homelessness in Canada—and it will continue to be a priority for Reaching Home.

However, we will not close the door on any innovation in service delivery, or on any vulnerable populations that are at risk of ending up on the street, such as youth, women fleeing domestic violence or people suffering from addiction or mental health problems.

That is why, thanks to Reaching Home, we will work with communities to help them target and reach specific results together, instead of imposing a specific intervention model.

The National Housing Strategy’s target of reducing chronic homelessness by at least 50% will be an objective that communities must work toward.

But communities will also be required to set, monitor, and achieve other key outcomes, including outcomes demonstrating progress on prevention.

To clarify, we know that the Housing First model works well for some types of people experiencing difficulties, and we expect it to have a significant presence in a number of communities. And we also believe that communities are the best placed to assess their needs and know how to meet them collectively.

As a third step toward a Communities First approach, our Government will expand the geographic reach of our homelessness investments.

At present, 61 communities across Canada receive funding to help them tackle homelessness, based on decisions and data from nearly 20 years ago.

I’m pleased to report that, under Reaching Home, new communities can apply to be Designated Communities. This process will launch later this year.

As another component of the Communities First approach, we will help communities adopt intervention models based on local data.

This will also help service providers work together more and use a coordinated access system to better prevent and reduce homelessness.

This collaborative community approach will help establish shared objectives, access better data and perform more effective local follow-up.

Finally, we know that we cannot reduce homelessness in Canada without a different, respectful approach for Indigenous peoples.

We will work with our Indigenous partners to take a holistic approach to homelessness.

We will enhance funding to prevent and reduce homelessness among Indigenous people.

In fact, we are announcing that we will increase funding to tackle indigenous homelessness above and beyond the doubling of overall program funding we delivered in Budget 2016.

In the coming weeks and months, we will have more details to share with you. We are currently working with communities to define and find the best ways to implement the various components of Reaching Home.

As you know, in Quebec, the Homelessness Partnering Strategy is delivered through the Canada-Quebec agreement.

In order to implement Reaching Home in Quebec beyond April 1, 2019, negotiations will begin in the coming weeks with the Government of Quebec.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that today’s announcement is only possible thanks to the points of view and encouragment we gathered from Canadians throughout the numerous consultations activities which took place in 2017 and early 2018.

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank all Canadians who participated in these consultations and who helped us build Canada’s Homelessness Strategy: Reaching Home.

Thanks to them, we can be confident that Reaching Home is a significant step forward toward reaching a Canada without homelessness.

Thank you.