That's such an important observation. What we do at the community level matters, so understanding communities and the limitations families have in safely isolating was a very important to our government early on. We knew that communities would do the hard work if they had the financial resources in place to provide spaces for folks who couldn't isolate well.
I'll use a personal example from my own community of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Dr. Powlowski will recognize this. When we had a significant surge a while ago, it was indeed among a group of people who are very marginally housed. When people think of folks who are experiencing homelessness, they often think of absolute homelessness—that there are shelters and nothing else. However, we know that people intersect with family and have roommates. There are all kinds of situations, because people are essentially trying to avoid shelters. They are really a last resort in someone's life.
Very quickly it became clear that our community's spread was being driven by folks who were very vulnerably housed and that what would help the community was isolation housing, so that if someone was living in a situation with multiple family members or roommates and couldn't physically isolate, they would have the space to do so and would be supported to stay in place. Of course, just sticking someone in a room isn't good enough. They need to have access to food and in some cases medical support and counselling, as well as the variety of other things they need in their day-to-day lives. People also need to be monitored if they've come into contact or are sick with COVID-19, because their condition can worsen.
When I say that COVID-19 is a lot of work, that is just a snapshot of the kind work that communities are putting in to help protect vulnerable people and stop the spread. Isolation housing has been an important part of that.
We allocated $100 million to municipalities and health regions so they could in fact have space to do the hard work but not worry about the money that it would cost to rent, clean and staff locations. It's another example of the federal government stepping up for local communities to help them stay focused on community transmission.