Yes. Those of us involved with affordable housing were very pleased that the provincial government adopted a ten-year plan to end homelessness. In some ways, one of the arguments we're making is that it should be extended to perhaps a ten-year plan to end poverty, because homelessness is only one dimension of it. When it comes to providing the financial resources to bring it about, we're already falling seriously behind.
Unfortunately, Alberta appointed a secretariat to study how much it would cost to end homelessness, and the number they came up with is that it would cost $3.3 billion over 10 years; that's $330 million a year. When the provincial budget came out last year, however, they only invested $400 million over three years, so they have already fallen behind there. Then, worse than that, they basically took those dollars out of other housing programs, particularly out of the rent subsidy program. That's one of the reasons the wait list for subsidized housing has gone up so dramatically: there are just no additional dollars. They ran out of dollars about four months into the budget year.
So it's a good commitment that the Alberta government has made, but we are calling upon them to fund the commitment appropriately; otherwise we're just not going to be able to achieve that worthy objective of ending homelessness. I guess that's my answer.