Finance Committee on Feb. 19th, 2016

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

For the housing first strategy, essentially the housing is all provided in Siloam Mission. It's a group of three major homeless shelters in Winnipeg for 1,400 people, a main street project that helps with the sniffers. The Salvation Army and Siloam Mission work together, and the idea is to provide a holistic model in which everyone is working together. I believe that's what it is.

They provide the housing to keep people off the streets, so they're not involving police, ambulance drivers, and firefighters who are always trying to respond to issues time and time again, costing a lot of money and sometimes making the streets perhaps more chaotic than they need to be.

[Vanessa Gamblin]

That is correct.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay.

Mary, thank you very much for what you were saying.

Are there things we could be doing a little bit more to help out organizations like yours? You serve women from the age of 14 all the way up to 40, I believe. A lot of them come from very disadvantaged backgrounds and some from middle-class backgrounds, but it's a wide variety and diversity of people.

[Mary Pidlaski]

What we're trying to do is stop a cycle. We're trying to arrest a behaviour that might continue if children are born without the support that we're able to offer them. We basically wrap the mother in a metaphorical blanket where she has support on all sides, from teachers to social workers to the medical team. She is taught breastfeeding skills. She has someone come into her home after her child is born to help her with parenting.

There are schools. I've spoken to post-secondary teachers who are very happy when they have girls who have come from Villa Rosa, because they work very hard. They have a lot they want to offer, and they're learning that at Villa Rosa.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Mary and Mr. Ouellette.

I would certainly like to thank the witnesses this afternoon.

As of now, we've met with 92 witnesses over the last four days. It's been a long week, and I think you can tell from this panel that there has been a very broad spectrum of witnesses who have come before committee. I would say, because we're still getting briefs coming in, that if any members get a call from someone—there is no question that we've missed some groups, and in fact one is sitting at the back of the room, representing universities—there will still be the opportunity, until 11:59 tonight, to get a letter or a brief on the website, and those will be considered as well in terms of the committee's final report.

With that, I thank the witnesses and thank committee members for their endurance over a fairly long week.

The meeting is adjourned.