Thank you for your question.
We support applying a rigorous rural lens to how programs are designed and implemented, for all the reasons you mentioned. For sure, in the housing accelerator fund, the budget talks about ensuring that smaller and fast-growing rural communities can access that. I was at the HUMA committee last week on the program. I made the suggestion that it would be possible to have a carve-out for rural and smaller communities within that program, so that they're not applying in the same bucket as larger communities. We've seen that work in other models.
I mentioned the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund ahead of the budget. In our pre-budget submissions, we talked about the need for water and waste-water infrastructure, particularly for smaller communities, and for broadband as well. That of course has received a lot of attention and remains a real focus.
On housing, what I can share is that we know the housing crisis is felt everywhere now. Our board, which represents large cities, medium-sized, rural, northern...everyone is seized with this. On something like homelessness and the Reaching Home program, we've talked before about the need for a larger carve-out for rural communities within that program and hope that's how it's implemented going forward. We appreciate all the efforts across departments to apply that rural lens. It's something that we work quite closely on with Minister Hutchings, Infrastructure Canada and other departments across Canada to get right.