Thank you very much, Chris.
Good morning, everyone.
In relation to its focus on housing, we want to urge the committee to carefully consider the analysis of consultation feedback outlined in the recently released Let's Talk Housing report. As noted in the report released by the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, the feedback was received through a broad range of outreach efforts, which helps to frame the challenges facing Canada's housing system and details innovative ideas.
The City of Prince George was an active contributor to the consultation process, as were a number of community-based organizations within the city of Prince George.
There are a number of themes that emerged from the consultation process that are particularly applicable to the city of Prince George, which serves as a service hub for many northern communities. For those of you not familiar with Prince George, it is located in the central part of the province of B.C., and is, in fact, a hub to many service organizations, such as housing services, RCMP services, and medical services.
It helps indigenous people achieve better housing outcomes, adopts a housing systems perspective to ensure that housing needs across the continuum are addressed, and sets clear outcomes and targets in relation to housing so that progress can be monitored and reported. We want to take a collaborative approach to housing by building on the capacity of all orders of government to achieve a national vision of housing.
We would like the committee to recommend that Prince George, B.C., be chosen to participate in the tackling poverty together project. This will provide the opportunity to consider how utilization of a collective impact approach may enable systemic change in relation to poverty reduction, and it will provide the opportunity to shed light on the challenges associated with poverty reduction in the absence of a supporting provincial framework.
We are aware that no B.C. communities have been invited to participate in the tackling poverty together project, and we believe that in order to get a comprehensive picture of the Canadian context, B.C., and particularly a community with a large percentage of indigenous peoples as residents, must be included in the study.
In Prince George, we are also challenged with distressed neighbourhoods and urge the committee to consider how the federal government may be able to support, through policy and programs, a community development corporation model such as the one currently being trialled in Edmonton, Alberta. We note the model creates and expands economic opportunity for low-to-moderate income people in high-need neighbourhoods by implementing a full set of tools requiring a cross-governmental approach to poverty reduction that integrates both orders and departments of government.
Criteria for current funding programs often cause divisiveness amongst the very partners required to initiate innovative multi-sectoral approaches to addressing complex social issues. We'd like to close by reiterating the need for the committee to ensure the mechanisms necessary to ensure there is collaboration and commitment between levels of government to address poverty and that associated policies and funding initiatives are aligned with a shared vision.
It is also critical that poverty reduction targets be established and associated progress measured using a shared definition of poverty and agreed-to metrics.
Thank you very much to the committee for giving us an opportunity to say a few words, and we'll certainly be available for questions later on. Thank you very much.