You asked us about the role of the federal government in dealing with poverty. We recognize the constitutional requirement for the federal government and provincial levels of government to play appropriate roles in all program areas. However, from our point of view, and more importantly, for our clients, what matters is that the appropriate services are funded and available in sufficient quantity, regardless of where the funding comes from.
Right now, Canada lacks both a national housing strategy and a national mental health strategy. In our view, these are key components of a serious attempt to reduce poverty. The Mental Health Commission is working on a mental health strategy for Canada, but no one seems to be working on a national housing strategy, although we note that a private member's bill calling for this, Bill C-304, was introduced in the House in February.
We believe the federal government should absolutely take a leadership role in the development of both strategies and in ensuring action to deal with the issues. Surely the elimination of poverty can be a shared objective with the provinces and surely there can be collaboration over such an important goal. Without strategies, there is no political direction, in our view, and no momentum to move in an appropriate direction, but if federal leadership at the level of strategy is to be respected, the federal government also needs to lead by example through funding.
Salus and its clients have benefited in the past from federal-provincial collaboration. We built 40 apartments using the Canada-Ontario affordable housing program and Supporting Communities Partnership funding. What was not available was funding for a support worker to be based in the building. By stretching existing staff resources, we have put that in place, but we can't responsibly continue to develop much-needed housing if we cannot put appropriate staffing in place to work with tenants. For our client group, funding for housing and funding for related support services need to go hand in hand.
You have asked for suggestions around innovative solutions. We believe useful innovation is built on sound experience and organizational capacity. Much is already being done that is effective in meeting the needs of our client group. What is now needed is to expand existing services and to improve them incrementally.
What is needed are programs that are adequately resourced, not just to do the work but also to evaluate that work on an ongoing basis, building what we learn into program development. For that to happen, community-based organizations need a program and a funding environment that is stable, predictable, and collaborative, promoting the expansion of models like Salus that have been shown to work.
That's the direction in which we believe the federal government needs to take positive steps and provide leadership.