Thank you.
Before I answer, I want to say, on behalf of CHRA, that our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of the Quebec situation yesterday.
You raised a number of excellent points, and we would agree with what you've said. One of the things we were very heartened to see, with respect to the national housing strategy that Monsieur Duclos is currently leading, is the very strong engagement he has had with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments.
I was fortunate a week and a half ago to present before the big city mayors' caucus, right after the Prime Minister. The mayors have made investment in and policy regarding affordable housing a top priority. Their commitment to the Prime Minister was to work very closely to align federal policy with municipal policy, and we know that provincial governments have said the same.
In terms of what federal levers are present, I did mention the three. Those were three out of 24 recommendations that we had provided in keeping with the scope of this particular study today. We wanted to keep the focus on social housing serving as a sort of platform or springboard for folks who want to move into the ownership space.
What we currently have is essentially operating agreements that mandate providers to maintain a certain number of units at what we call RGI, within an RGI frameworkâa rent-geared-to-income framework. With respect to the new policy framework that the national housing strategy will build upon, we want to make sure that the maintenance of existing units is protected, using whichever mechanisms are introduced and ideally, of course, to see that market grow, because as we all know, especially with regard to the Toronto area, wait-lists for social housing have grown significantly.
So, yes, there needs to be a maintenance and protection of what we have, and we need to grow what we have, using various.... I think the mayors have said they want to work with the federal government to do just that.