Thank you, Chair.
It's interesting to see the comparison between the chamber's view on the initiative of homelessness and yours, Mr. Mitchell, in terms of presenting your proposal, or at least your request.
I have a couple of questions for both of you. I'm not going to pick one or the other. I just want to say a couple of things and then get your thoughts.
There's the issue of investments and expenditures that the federal government would make in this area to hopefully alleviate homelessness and obviously move in a direction that gets us into that position. I look at the numbers. The minister actually just announced another $79 million to create more than 1,100 affordable new housing units in Ontario. I look at $1.4 billion in new funds for the creation of affordable housing. This is on top of $2 billion that our government will spend through the year, through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, in support of some 630,000 low-income residents. And I also look at the 2006 budget, which allocated $800 million for additional investments in housing. Specifically, British Columbia would receive $106 million in general for that, and for off-reserve aboriginal housing there's an additional almost $51 million.
I don't throw these numbers out here to try to impress everyone and say the problem is gone. It obviously isn't. We're dealing with it. You mentioned, Ms. Renault, that there's obviously an issue that Victoria is dealing with just a couple of blocks away from this hotel. But the reason I bring it up is that it would seem to me that there has been a substantial amount of investment into this, and there has certainly been, from a federal government perspective, a continuing will to try to alleviate homelessness.
I didn't necessarily hear anything specific, Ms. Renault, in terms of trying to address the issue.
I wondered if both of you could comment on a need for an understanding of where each of the provinces needs to go—and I obviously speak specifically of British Columbia because we're here—in trying to address this. In your comments, you both addressed issues from a very local perspective, but obviously the federal government deals with things on a broader basis than having to get assistance from the municipalities and from the provinces in order to deal with it.
I'd just like to get at a couple of things that we could include specifically that would address.... I know money is always an issue, but I'm not so sure that all of those recommendations have to include more money. Maybe we just need to spend some of this money a lot more wisely.