Can I add something to that, Mr. Chairman?
Yes, absolutely, there's a jurisdictional issue here, but there's something called the federal spending power as well, and you're using that. You're using the federal spending power in many areas. Health is big, as is education and, of course, housing. These are the three blocks I talked about that we build a civilized society on. You've shown that you can ask for outcomes on health spending and that you can ask for outcomes on education spending.
We're not suggesting that the federal government start telling the provinces and territories exactly how to spend the money. What we're saying is that that's their jurisdiction, and that's their right to decide. But you say there's one taxpayer, and that taxpayer deserves accountability for money put in. Many taxpayers think that a lot of social programs are simply black holes, because there's no real reporting out at the end on results and, as I said, not necessarily any real accountability for it either.
I'm with Geoff on this. I'm not saying you hold the other levels of government up at gunpoint and say, “You have to do it our way.” What I'm saying is, you sit down and say, “We all have a problem. It affects you politically. It affects us politically. And it affects all of us ethically and morally. And we need to get a grip on how we're going to deal with it.” What I think you do need an end to is unbalanced spending.
So for example, in the province you're in, B.C., most of the money that has been passed to the affordable housing initiative has been spent on supportive housing. I'm not saying it's not needed, but it's unbalanced in the sense that there is a shortage--particularly in the Lower Mainland and perhaps also in Kelowna--of affordable family housing, and that's not being addressed. In fact, it's going the other way. Affordable family housing, rental housing, is starting to disappear in B.C. rather than being added to.
Our own organization is so concerned about that, we're looking to see whether we can actually acquire apartment buildings and turn them into non-profit housing cooperatives in perpetuity, because there is a desperate need for family housing that's not being met. So I think across the range of groups that I talked about that need affordable housing solutions, they have to be looked at fairly equally. They can't just be focused at one end of the spectrum. That's the kind of discussion I think you need to have with the other levels of government.