Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you also to all our witnesses. I appreciate your coming here and sharing your experience, wisdom, and ideas on how we can deal with and address this issue of housing and poverty in our country.
Also, happy birthday to the Canadian Co-operative Association--your 100th. We look forward to hopefully participating in your celebration, and all the best in the next 100 years. Ideally, it would be good if you could be out of business and eradicate poverty and move on to some other issues so we can constructively have a better country.
The reality is that it has been an issue, as we alluded to. In some cases it's getting worse instead of better, depending on which part of the country you live in. I have the good fortune of living in British Columbia and representing a constituency in the Okanagan. I spent nine years on the City of Kelowna council dealing with the social housing planning committee, so it's something I'm very passionate about. Our city is undertaking a 10-year capital plan right now, modelled after the City of Calgary model, and they're going through that study right now.
I also have a co-op across the street from my house, and it was a very controversial rezoning. People were all afraid, and they said not in my backyard. It was one of the aspects of B.C. Housing, where our government was the first to sign a Canada-B.C. social housing agreement in 2006 for the modelling of other provinces. It has been very successful in many ways.
It's, as you mentioned, a very complex issue. There's no simple solution, no silver bullet. Mental health issues in many cases have to be dealt with. Housing, as indicated, is one of the key priorities, and our government has indicated, as Mr. Gazzard alluded to, over $1.9 billion over five years in the homelessness partnership strategy.
I was very excited with our budget in January, working with Minister Flaherty, and with the additional billion dollars for social housing, and $600 million for on reserve and northern housing, $400 million for seniors housing, and $75 million for housing for people with disabilities, which is another important aspect which this committee is dealing with, and $400 million for on reserve, which will be dealt with through CMHC.
My question is for Mr. Gillard or Mr. Porter, or whoever.
Do you want to speak to the issue of a national housing strategy? One of the issues we talk about is the Constitution, the framework we live with in Canada, and the struggle we have. There's only one taxpayer, and all levels of government have to work together. By wanting to have conditions attached to the funding to the province, how do you see us getting around the constitutional issue?