That's why we have taken on this poverty reduction strategy, because we are determined to start moving in the right direction.
I want to refer the members of the committee to an article that really inspired me. It's called “Million-Dollar Murray”.
I don't know if you've been introduced to “Million-Dollar Murray”. It is an article written by Malcolm Gladwell. He wrote The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink. The article describes the life of a homeless man, a man who is an alcoholic, a delightful, charming, engaging person, and when he died at age 54, I think, homeless, people who had supported him through his life sat around and figured out how much they had spent, how much we had spent—it's an American example–—on Murray. A million dollars had been spent on Murray so that he could die prematurely and homeless. If we knew we were going to spend a million dollars on that man in the courts and in hospitals, would we have chosen to spend a million dollars the way we did, or would we have made fundamentally different decisions about where those investments would be made? Of course, we would all say we'd spend that money up front and provide affordable, supportive housing, whatever supports he needed. He was intelligent. He had lots of abilities. So that “Million-Dollar Murray” story is very instructive for all of us, because we do spend.
If somebody is sentenced to time in jail, we pay for that. If a child is taken into the care of the Children's Aid Society, we pay for that. If somebody shows up at an emergency department, we pay for that.
Could we get ahead of that and invest the money where it would make a difference and prevent that? Absolutely we can.
There are some wonderful pilots happening in Ontario right now. There is a program called From Hostels to Homes, where chronically homeless people are being moved out of shelters into supportive housing. It is already saving money, without even looking at all the other costs, including court costs, and so on. It results in a much better quality of life for people. We are seeing them now moving off social assistance into employment. These are chronically homeless people.
We know we can do better, and we are going to do better.