Thank you very much.
Thank you to all our witnesses for being here today. There has been some great testimony.
One of the things I'm hearing is that one of our problems when it comes to the housing space is we have a government that still really only measures value in the housing space through profit, so a lot of the programs we're seeing always ask the question of how people who invest in housing make profit. If the answer is that they don't, there's very little investment. If there's a mechanism that somehow includes profit—as it did in the RCFI, as an example—the government seems to appreciate the value of the program more than when there isn't profit.
We talk about productivity and we talk about access to housing for workers and all of the more indirect points, which are perhaps harder to measure, although a lot of folks have shown they're pretty easy to measure if you have the conceptual tools at your disposal.
One thing we've talked a bit about here today is a non-profit acquisition fund to ensure that community organizations that are competent housing deliverers have the access to capital they need to compete with the corporate landlords that are otherwise coming in and scooping up those buildings. That's something New Democrats have supported for a long time. We're very happy to see the B.C. NDP move ahead on that in its own way.
One of the questions that come up in the context of a non-profit acquisition fund is how to make sure it doesn't simply become a tool for divestment by REITs and corporate landlords who have bought up some of these buildings and done what they're going to do in terms of evicting tenants and jacking up rents, and now see more value in selling the buildings than continuing to operate them.
I'm wondering, Ms. Houle and Mr. Sullivan, if you might have some thoughts on what kinds of guardrails can be put in place to ensure that a non-profit acquisition fund delivers benefits to Canadians and to people who need access to affordable housing, and doesn't simply become a divestment tool for larger landlords.
Maybe we could start with Mr. Sullivan and then come to Ms. Houle.