Infrastructure Canada spent about $1.36 billion between 2019 and 2021 on initiatives to prevent and reduce homelessness within the Reaching Home Program. 

However, a report from Auditor General Karen Hogan found that the department did not know whether the rates of homelessness and chronic homelessness have increased or decreased since 2019.

To date, Infrastructure Canada has spent roughly 40% of the total funding committed to the Reaching Home Program between 2019 and 2028.

Hogan released four reports today assessing the government’s performance from chronic homelessness, emergency management in First Nations communities, Arctic waters surveillance to the cybersecurity of personal information on the cloud.

The Auditor General says she sees a trend amongst government organizations, and that they are slow to use tools at their disposal to deliver results.

She mentioned data gaps being a common trend. Specifically, Infrastructure Canada not being able to measure its progress because of challenges with data. But what is most challenging is that these federal departments are cognizant of these gaps.

“The fact that there’s very little concrete action is possibly the most frustrating thing, in that departments know,” Hogan said. “And so, why aren’t they taking the actions needed?”

Five years have gone by since the launch of the federal government’s National Housing Strategy. Presently, no organization in the federal government is taking the lead on Canada’s target to prevent and reduce chronic homelessness by half by 2028.

As the lead for the National Housing Strategy, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation spent about $4.5 billion since 2018 but did not know who was benefiting from its initiatives.

The corporation did not assess whether rental housing units were going to intended vulnerable groups and in fact, the Auditor General found that some units that were labeled as affordable were above the means of many low-income households prioritized by the strategy.

“Infrastructure Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation should be coordinating their efforts to deliver on the National Housing Strategy’s objectives and get a roof over the heads of individuals and families,” said Hogan.

The report states that Infrastructure Canada has agreed to the recommendations from the Auditor General.

Without an improved alignment of efforts, Infrastructure Canada and the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation are not likely to achieve the federal National Housing Strategy target of reducing chronic homelessness by 50% by 2028, the report found.

(Top photo of Auditor General Karen Hogan speaking at a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, November 15, 2022 via The Canadian Press / Patrick Doyle).