Thank you very much.
First of all, let me thank you all very much for your very comprehensive presentations here this morning. You have obviously put a lot of time and consideration into your presentations. It certainly showed in the presentations and the number of suggestions that you have made, and we certainly appreciate that.
Secondly, I want to thank you as well for all that you do in the community for mental health. It is certainly a very serious issue for Canada, for Canadians, and for individuals. Anyone in this room at any given time could be utilizing your services, so I appreciate that very much. There but for the grace of God, right?
Those were just some opening remarks. I want to talk a little bit about the hierarchy of needs.
Many of you talked about housing. I have two questions to formulate, so I'm going to start with the first one on housing.
I'd like to get specifics on what we should be doing on housing. As you know, the Canadian government over the last number of years put a significant amount of money towards housing initiatives. I am going to be holding in the next week a round table in my community about housing issues and concerns. I've been to a lot of the places where those with mental illness live, and it's not pretty.
Will any of you make suggestions on what we should be doing specifically for housing at this point in time? It's a very serious issue.
I want to get to my second question, because we only have seven minutes. Are you seeing an increased demand for your services because of the downturn in the economy? For example, I think Mr. Palmer talked about the availability of jobs. Has that been decreasing? Are we having more serious impact? What I'm concerned about is prevention and early intervention and the spiralling effect, because it's a spiralling effect. We could all have mental illness today and find ourselves in poverty, it's that serious of an issue.
I have many questions, but I'll start with those two.