I'll start.
I think the key components to a national housing plan--I'm not going to prioritize them necessarily--would include collaboration and consultation with communities, with municipal and provincial governments, most definitely with aboriginal communities, and with advocates who are doing the work on the ground and have the experience to help inform what that plan should look like. It should entail--and maybe this is the priority--first and foremost, the construction of new affordable housing. The federal government has invested significant resources this year in renovations, and these are much-needed investments, but to tackle the homelessness crisis in Canada we really need to be building new affordable units, somewhere along the lines of the 20,000 to 30,000 units of social housing we were constructing under the previous national housing strategy.
I recall your question to the last panel. Part of a national housing strategy has to include investment in support services for people dealing with mental illnesses and people dealing with addictions and other barriers in their lives. Providing housing first is an important first step to providing a sort of foundation to allow people to address their other issues, but having care and health services and medical support available to people with other issues is a crucial component of any housing strategy.