On-Reserve Housing in Canada: Waiting for the Fifth Audit
Why On-Reserve Housing in Canada Is Also an Energy Problem
Four federal audits since 2003. The same failing grade every time.
Canada’s Auditor General audited on-reserve housing again in 2024, the fourth such audit in twenty years, and found that only one of its regional offices, in Alberta, tracked mould data at all, where a third of communities reported that 30 percent or more of their homes had mould. Everywhere else in the country, neither Indigenous Services Canada nor the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the two federal bodies responsible for funding this housing, knows how much of it contains mould. Neither had assurance that the homes they funded met building code at all [1]. This is not an outside allegation. It is the federal government’s own auditor, examining the federal government’s own housing program, reaching that conclusion in writing.
The scale is not marginal. Among roughly 600 First Nations with about 119,000 housing units, 55,320 new units are needed and 80,650 require major repairs right now [1]. First Nations people are four times more likely to live in crowded housing and six times more likely to live in housing needing major repair than non-Indigenous Canadians [1]. Between 2018 and 2023, federal programs delivered only 21 percent of the new construction and 20 percent of the repairs the need actually required [1]. The Assembly of First Nations puts the true cost of closing the gap at $44 billion, plus $16 billion more for growth through 2040 [2]. Federal spending over the last five years totaled $3.8 billion [1].
This is not only a housing story. It is an energy story with a carbon and a dollar figure attached. Canada’s own energy regulator confirms that 178 remote Indigenous and Northern communities are not connected to the electricity grid or the natural gas network at all, and that they generally rely on diesel fuel for both electricity generation and home heating, a fuel the regulator itself describes as carbon- and particulate-emitting [5]. Residents in these communities pay six to ten times the energy cost paid anywhere else in the country, and Ottawa spends an estimated $300 to $400 million a year subsidizing that diesel [7]. A poorly insulated, poorly sealed building envelope multiplies the heating load that diesel has to carry, winter after winter, for as long as the building stands. That is not a one-time emission. It is the same kind of recurring, compounding carbon flow this series has argued our accounting keeps treating as background noise.
Every dollar spent subsidizing diesel to compensate for a bad envelope is a dollar not spent fixing the envelope design first, and every litre burned is a flow this ledger keeps forgetting to add up.
I have spent nearly four decades in the field, much of it working alongside Indigenous communities, and I have watched this exact pattern repeat. A government audits itself, finds the same failure, and nothing structural changes before the next audit finds it again. That is not only a funding problem. It is a design and accountability problem, and it deserves to be named as one.
Four audits. Twenty years. Same conclusion. Ask your MP what changes after the fifth.
References
[1] Office of the Auditor General of Canada (2024). 2024 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada, Report 2 — Housing in First Nations Communities, tabled to the House of Commons, 19 March 2024. oag-bvg.gc.ca / canada.ca
[2] Assembly of First Nations. “The Housing Gap.” afn.ca
[3] WSANEC Leadership Council. “Housing on reserves: Not First Nations housing, but government-issue housing for First Nations people.” wsanec.com
[4] Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. “8 Things You Need to Know About On-Reserve Housing Issues.” ictinc.ca
[5] Canada Energy Regulator (2023). “Market Snapshot: Clean Energy Projects in Remote Indigenous and Northern Communities.” cer-rec.gc.ca
[6] Canada Energy Regulator (2018). “Market Snapshot: Overcoming the challenges of powering Canada’s off-grid communities.” cer-rec.gc.ca
[7] Pembina Institute. “Diesel dependency: the hidden cost of living in remote communities.” pembina.org
This paper is independent research, unfunded and free of commercial sponsorship, offered in the spirit of open collaboration. Prepared with AI assistance. Technical content, professional judgments, theories and premises are those of the author.
John Profitt
B.Sc. Geological Engineering · P.Eng., Engineers and Geoscientists of BC
GSC Gold Seal Certified · LEED Accredited Professional · Licensed BC Builder
Principal & Founder, Nextlevel Modular Inc. · Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
About the Author
John Profitt, B.Sc., P.Eng., GSC, LEED AP® is Principal of Nextlevel Modular Inc., a BC-licensed residential builder and USGBC member company operating from a repurposed shipping container and timber frame home in Vinsulla, British Columbia, Canada. He holds individual membership in the Canada Green Building Council and is registered as a Professional Engineer with Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia. He brings nearly four decades of construction and geological engineering experience across North and South America, including field work with Indigenous communities across Canada and Mexico.
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