Yes, I think a national housing strategy is a key element for reducing poverty and eliminating poverty in Canada. The simple reason is that there's a high proportion of people, particularly renters, who pay a disproportionate amount of their money for rent. There's not enough affordable housing. Waiting lists for non-profit housing in some areas are ridiculously long, and people just get turned away.
Housing is one of these key things that we need if we're going to live and thrive and live in dignity. Since the federal government stepped back from funding construction of affordable housing a decade or so ago--it has stepped forward with a little bit of funding, and many provinces as well—the stock of affordable housing has dwindled dramatically. At the same time, people's incomes, particularly from work, stagnated, even during the ten years we just went through when there was low unemployment. Many people were working longer hours and not making so much more money.
It's been shown that just relying on the private sector housing providers to build enough housing to create an affordable housing market hasn't worked. So there's clearly a role for both the federal government and the provincial governments to create...well, at the federal level, to create a national housing strategy, to fund construction of housing, subsidies. There needs to be a strategic approach to make sure that everybody has access to affordable, safe, secure housing.