CIMM – Interim Housing Assistance Program – May 12, 2022

Key Messages

• The Government of Canada is committed to working collaboratively with its provincial and municipal partners to help alleviate the pressures they are facing with respect to providing temporary housing for asylum claimants.
• The Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP) was renewed until March 31, 2023, to help provinces and municipalities address interim housing costs resulting from increased volumes of asylum claimants and continued high costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The extension of the IHAP will provide time for other federal investments in affordable housing to yield results.
• The Department’s 2022-23 Main Estimates include $173M in re-profiled funding for the IHAP to enable partners to address these pressures and ensure that asylum claimants can be temporarily housed until permanent housing can be secured.

Supporting facts and figures

• The 2022-2023 Main Estimates include $173M for the IHAP to provide funding to provinces and, if necessary, to municipalities, to compensate for interim housing costs incurred in 2021 and 2022 as a result of increased asylum claimant volumes.
• While COVID-19 border measures reduced the number of asylum claimants entering Canada in 2020 and 2021, the lifting of border measures led to an increase in asylum claimants. At the same time, financial pressures on shelter systems persist as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly due to increased costs of physical distancing and cleaning, and longer than average stays.
• Given the recent pressures on interim housing in Quebec by asylum claimants, and the ongoing capacity constraints in the shelter systems in major cities in Ontario, it is expected that these jurisdictions will continue to receive a significant portion of funding under the IHAP. Any funding requests from other jurisdictions will also be assessed.

Background

• Increased volumes of irregular and regular asylum claimants since 2017 have placed pressures on provincial and municipal social services. Some provinces have positioned these pressures as a federal responsibility, pointing to a backlog in the asylum system and perceived inability to control irregular migration.
• In March 2019, the Government created a grant entitled the “Interim Housing Assistance Program” in order to cost share with provinces (and, if necessary, municipalities) the interim housing costs they incurred in 2017 through 2019. The primary objective was to provide temporary assistance to allow provinces to adjust to new asylum pressures and to increase interim housing capacity, reducing the risk of homelessness for asylum claimants. As a result of the continued increase in asylum volumes during the first few months of 2020, followed by increased shelter pressures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program was first extended until March 31, 2021.
• An amount of $716M ($150M in 2018-2019, $324M in 2019-2020 and $242M in 2020-2021) was approved through past estimates in order to compensate provinces and municipalities for extraordinary costs related to the provision of temporary housing to asylum claimants.
• To date, the Department has issued payments totalling $534.5M to the following provinces and municipalities: Quebec ($374M); Manitoba ($8M); British Columbia ($6M); the City of Toronto ($127M), the City of Ottawa ($17.1M). Peel Region ($2.2M), and the City of Hamilton ($0.2M).
• The IHAP was further extended until March 31, 2023, to allow the Department to conclude grant agreements with provinces and municipalities to respond to the ongoing interim housing needs of asylum claimants in 2021 and 2022. As border measures that prohibit entry into Canada are gradually lifted, the usual pressures that provinces and municipalities face due to large volumes of asylum claimants have returned and are likely to intensify.
• The extension of the IHAP will provide time for other federal investments in affordable housing to yield results. This includes the $1.5B investment in Budget 2022 to extend the Rapid Housing Initiative to address urgent housing needs for vulnerable people by rapidly creating new affordable housing, and $562.2M also provided through Budget 2022 to continue to prevent and address homelessness through Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy.
• As mentioned in the Speech from the Throne and Budget 2022, addressing the issue of affordable housing is a priority for the federal government and the government is working with all orders of government to unlock and create more housing supply.