The Financial Post reports in its Thursday, May 2, edition that Cenovus Energy's Indigenous Housing Initiative, announced in January, 2022, pledged $50-million to build homes in the first nations and Metis communities. A Canadian Press dispatch to the Post reports that four years later, more than 120 homes have been financed by the program, with the goal of getting to 200. Cenovus chairman Alex Pourbaix says the effort represents the largest community investment in Cenovus's history. He says it was his own visit to Alberta indigenous communities -- many of which provide services and contract workers to the oil sands sector -- that inspired the program. He says: "I was frankly shocked at the state of the housing situation in many, if not all, of these communities. They didn't have the resources to maintain their existing houses. And as a result, they had so many people in the line for housing with no real reasonable expectation of getting good housing. And this was everything from, you know, elderly widows and widowers to young mothers with young children." In 2021, Statistics Canada said more than one in six indigenous people lived in crowded housing considered not suitable for the number of people who lived there.