One of the challenges we have when we talk about addressing and ending homelessness is the difficulty in measuring homelessness.
I said yes quickly to your suggestion when I talked about the increasing incidence of homelessness. We believe it is increasing, but it is very, very difficult to demonstrate that. Just last week the City of Toronto held its second homeless count. Those are very important exercises that are happening in different cities. But even those who do those counts will acknowledge that it's very difficult sometimes to identify the homeless. There is a lot of hidden homelessness. It's very difficult. We get a snapshot in time when we do these sorts of counts.
The official federal numbers point to approximately 150,000 people who experience homelessness in Canada every year. Many, even within the federal government, would acknowledge that it's likely higher than that. We certainly feel that it is growing.
In terms of addressing homelessness and really starting to turn it around and end the problem, one of the exciting things is that we have acknowledged that until someone has a stable household they can go to at the end of the day, and within which people can support their alcohol counselling and the like, it is very difficult for them to really move on and become more productive and successful individuals. That's an exciting thing that has happened.
We need to see that. That hasn't been the approach in the past, and we need to see that expand further.