As a business owner, one of our biggest problems is retaining staff, because there are no available rentals in our community. A one-bedroom apartment in Cobourg currently rents for about $1,950, and for two bedrooms, you're at $2,500-plus. At present, our community has to bring in between five and eight school buses of workers, because we have such a booming industrial complex within our community. We have zero square feet of industrial space. Our entire downtown is full of businesses like it hasn't been in 45 years, yet we don't have anywhere for workers to live in our community.
I notice in Bill C-59 that there are a lot of initiatives being put forth. We know at the county level as a service provider that the way we work with the different levels of government matters. I have a variety of recommendations that I will submit to this committee afterwards regarding how we can implement some of these changes in a more meaningful way that will help those service providers, but, Mr. Lawrence, the reality is that when the mayor of the community he lives in, who owns a business, can't afford to live in that community, that's just the tip of an iceberg that clearly is a problem we need to start addressing.