Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here, everyone. There really are a lot of you. Lots of you might have pertinent information for us.
Essentially, my questions are going to be about the Homelessness Partnering Strategy.
If we refer to the 2012-2013 Departmental Performance Report, we see that the program under-spent its planned spending on projects to assist the homeless by almost 10%. That is almost $13 million. Though an amount of $12.8 million was budgeted and set aside, it was never spent. I would like to understand what happened and what we have to do to make sure it does not happen again.
I have spoken to people from organizations in Montreal who, too often, have seen projects fall through because they had to wait too long for an answer. They cannot go back and they cannot pay people for the work that should have been done six months ago, but that eventually did not get done.
There is some resentment. They know that they are short of grants and short of money and that, in the street, the needs are great. Money has been set aside for action but they just wait and wait.
Why did that happen in 2012-2013? What do you plan on doing to improve the situation and prevent it from happening again?