I understand it's the need to have the interlocking services so that people can navigate the system and understand where the supports are for somebody who's diagnosed with FASD, but if you have specific recommendations in terms of how you think the federal government could either work with the territorial or provincial governments or otherwise, through Health Canada or some other department, I'd be very interested in seeing it so that we could consider it in the report.
On mental health, Mike Kirby appeared before our committee in the spring, and when we asked him what is it specifically that can be done for mental health consumers and clients, people who have issues of mental health, he said two things: first of all, housing. We've heard that from everybody, that we need housing, and there are good models.
There's a model in my own community, in my own city of Dartmouth in Nova Scotia—I'm from Nova Scotia—called affirmative housing, whereby adults who have had experiences with mental health issues have a housing project where they can actually pay rent but build up equity in the house. That sense of purpose and that sense of dignity makes a huge difference. It's very successful.
I think when we look at housing for people, whether it's persons with mental health issues or disabilities, whether it's low-income seniors, whether it's lone parents, mothers with children, I think we're getting to the place now where we realize we don't just build the most basic of housing and say, okay, we've done our job, but we need to integrate that into the community. It needs to be mixed residential and it has to have good housing and this certainly has that.
The other thing Mike Kirby said, and I'd like your thoughts on this, Susan, is that for people who've had mental health issues, either diagnosed or undiagnosed, the social infrastructure of Canada is not designed to assist them. In part, it's episodic illness. In terms of getting sickness benefits under EI, it doesn't work. We don't have a very flexible social infrastructure system for a number of people, including people with disabilities and people with mental health issues.
I wonder if you have a thought on that, on maybe how it works up here.