I'm glad you're in your position and governments have to....
Health all relates to housing, the health of the community. Working with the City of Regina affordable housing committee, under the mayor and with Saskatoon...when you hear that in one of our communities the fire department inspects the rental houses, no wonder people have health problems. The housing rental stock in some areas is not fit for those people, and it compounds the problem when their health is affected.
I think there has to be government handout dollars for people to rent a product. They're always worried about taking away that person's right to decide whether they want that piece of property to rent. I don't think we should worry about that right. I think it's society's responsibility to make sure that product has some type of standard for a healthy living exposure for the kids who are in there, who are on social dollars. Cities are trying to do this, but boy, we need more people to do it.
Of course, governments have to make sure the stock is there to be developed, as we get rid of older stock. Some of this stuff should just be torn down. It's really on the affordable housing side of things that we have a massive shortage. Unfortunately, we now have an economy where it's costing so much for government to put another unit out in the marketplace to satisfy need. It's a big problem. It's going to take years and years to try to build that stock.
I think the Province of Saskatchewan does allow people on assistance to go out and work without having their assistance cut back, so they are accommodating some way of trying to encourage people back into the workforce. That type of stuff is good. Things like that should be encouraged. If you have people on social welfare, they need support systems, skills development systems, not a tax system that attacks them as soon as they start making a buck somewhere else. They need some easing into the system to get them fully employed, things like that.
As you said, we all have to get together and get a plan. If we know what the problem is in another industry and what it is in ours, we can work together to maybe find a common answer and move ahead with our economy. You're absolutely right.