The Federal Housing Advocate is in Prince George this weekend as a part of her first regional visit.
From August 22nd to September 2nd, Marie-Josée Houle has been making her first journey out of Ottawa to see firsthand the effects of systemic housing issues, from high rent to homeless encampments, on British Columbians.
I'm happy to share that I'm heading to British Columbia today for my inaugural regional visit as Canada's first Federal Housing Advocate! I'm stopping in Victoria, Prince George and Vancouver to learn more about the #Right2Housing challenges people are facing. – MJ pic.twitter.com/1bO5odEIZ4
— Office of the Federal Housing Advocate (@HousingLogement) August 22, 2022
Her trip has three stops, Victoria where she started, Prince George, and Vancouver to close.
She told My PG Now that her job is “not a partisan position. I am not there to make the government look good, I’m there to actually help the government find solutions.”
“This job has me face a lot of things. It’s real. It has to be real.”
Houle arrived in Prince George late Thursday night and spent most of the day yesterday (Friday) meeting with local services like PGNAETA and other outreach programs, and some of our city’s unhoused in Moccasin Flats.
“Numbers don’t translate into lives,” she said while outlining the importance of meeting face to face with these groups. “It is a huge privilege for me to be here.”
She said Canada’s right to housing is not being met for a lot of people.
“Adequate housing has a real definition. That definition includes affordability, security of tenure, it is safe and free of vermin, it is close to amenities, it culturally appropriate. It is not just four walls and a roof.”
Houle says, to her knowledge, nobody from Prince George city hall has reached out to meet with her before or since she has been in town.
However, she says that is alright by her and that “talking with public officials has not been our priority, we can meet virtually any time. I am trying to meet people who I wouldn’t through virtual means, and that is predominantly people who are living in encampments.”
When she returns to Ottawa, Houle says she will have some recommendations to present to start to bring meaningful change in this area.
“I think all three levels of government need to stop pointing fingers at each other and actually sit down together and create real solutions. Those solutions need to be human rights based.”
Houle also believes there should be provincial and municipal housing advocates: “I would love to see a counterpart to myself created at those two levels, because I cannot do this work all by myself.”
“I know that’s really big and really ethereal, but that’s a start.”
Some topics further in this article include violence against Indigenous women, and human trafficking.
Prince George is an outlier when put on the same list as Vancouver and Victoria in most contexts. Houle said there is a lot of additional trauma in Prince George and the northern region.
“When I got off my plane [Thursday] night I saw the big bear at the airport, which is very cool. I also saw highway 16, and I know what that was. Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.”
She said she had spoken to many women throughout the day at encampments who did not feel safe “anywhere they go.”
“There are young Indigenous girls who are being preyed upon by people and brought into the drug trade that are human trafficked. There are a lot of people who have money here who will pay to have sex with children. There is an appetite for that here, a big appetite.”
She says the lack of a wide spread inter-city bus system within, and out coming of, the North leads to more hitchhiking on the highway of tears, and those who do not have access to a car fleeing a dangerous situation can feel like they are left with no other options. This is something that needs to be fixed, she says.
“There are people who are out there hunting other people and killing them, or making them disappear. It is heavy, but it is real, and this is what is happening right here.”
She says the results of her BC tour will be publicly available before the end of September.
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