I'd like to see the federal government work with other levels of government and with the community to facilitate full participation, not just in the economic life of our community but in the social and political and family life of the community--so a very holistic approach.
I'm glad we've been able to have this opportunity to speak about some of the underlying issues related to employability, such as affordable housing, and it's great that we've spoken so much about it. It's hard for us to believe here in Calgary that we would ever have an excess of affordable housing, but I can understand how that could happen in other communities. That's why a national housing initiative couldn't distance itself from the local community. Certainly, the federal government should not ever be working in isolation from the provincial governments and the local municipal government.
It's very frustrating for us as a community to find ourselves frequently in the position of acting as marriage brokers or marriage counsellors between different levels of government. As Denise said, we go to one level of government and we think that's the appropriate level, and while we're trying to bring all three levels to the table around a policy issue, we are continually just passed back and forth between different levels, hearing “It's not our responsibility”, and then within a level of government we're being told it's not any one department's responsibility.
So we need much better communication and collaboration within levels of government and across levels of government if we're ever going to make real, sustainable changes to these policies.