Thank you.
First of all, I would like to congratulate members of Parliament for bringing this bill through two readings and to committee. It's really very exciting for an organization like ours to see that this has come to this point, and we're excited to be here.
I want to start by talking about just a few overarching principles we think are critical to an affordable national housing strategy. Canada's national housing strategy should support the housing system to meet the needs of all Canadians. While we are an association that focuses on the needs of Canadians with moderate and low incomes, we recognize that for all Canadians to be properly housed, it's critical that the entire system work well throughout the spectrum.
To do this, the national housing strategy must first of all be long term, taking a view 10 years and even 20 years down the road. A long-term approach would be taken in other parts of the wider infrastructure industry. While we're serving and housing Canadians in need, we're also building infrastructure, and we need a long-term view on how we implement that project.
The national housing strategy also needs to have measurable outcomes that we can monitor on an ongoing basis, thus ensuring progress towards our goals. Those outcomes or measurements need to be more than simply an accounting of the number of units we're developing. They need to relate to whether or not we're actually making progress in reducing the level of core housing need that exists.
Libby referred to the CHF Canada Dunning report that came out just today. It's unfortunate that core need isn't budging despite the efforts and the investments we're making. It's essentially the same as it was five years ago.
A national strategy, while critical, needs to continue to recognize that housing happens on the ground and that decisions around how federal and provincial and municipal dollars will be used need to be made locally. This strategy needs to connect, guide, and inform local strategy and local decision-making bodies, which will ensure the money is spent well and people are housed.
The bill does an excellent job of talking about the moral, legal, and social cases for putting a strategy in place. I want to just expand a little bit on the economic case for putting a national housing strategy in place, because that's another important consideration.
First, each home built creates a minimum of three jobs, that is, three person-years of employment, and we all know that the housing sector makes an enormous contribution to the overall Canadian economy. The affordable housing sector is an important, very active, and sizeable part of Canada's housing sector.
We should also continue to invest in existing housing to ensure that the life of that housing is extended. It's a relatively cost-effective way of providing housing. If we don't do that, housing falls out of the portfolio, so we're building up, but we're losing on the other end. We need to continue to invest in existing housing. At the same time, we need to make our housing more energy efficient. That's critical. I was pleased to see that referenced in the bill.
Cities like Vancouver and communities like Whistler continue to experience challenges in providing housing for the service sector and that the business community requires. I'll stop there with my economic case because I want to move on to a couple of other things, but affordable housing, relative to inaction on housing, is really a cost-effective strategy.
Before I run out of time, I want to comment on the specifics of the bill. First, I want to emphasize the importance of having the non-profit and private sectors engaged in the creation of a strategy when we get to the point of actually putting the strategy in place. We have a lot to contribute, and these are the people who will actually implement the strategy in the end.
Where you do specify priority groups and priority needs in the bill, we hope and encourage that it will be in the spirit of providing examples, and that it will not limit the groups and the priorities that might be identified locally in various communities, because they differ across Canada.
I would encourage you to reference barrier-free housing in paragraph 3(3)(g), where you talk about addressing homelessness through your housing strategy. Barrier-free housing, or “housing first”, takes people into supportive housing right off the streets. It's where we need to focus our investments.
Within the national strategy, we need to have a strategy to end homelessness, and we really need to make sure that the piece around housing aboriginal people is front and centre in the strategy, particularly for urban aboriginal populations, which are often left out of the programs.
I'll leave it there.