I think being bold comes in many different forms. Part of it is knowing what's happening in your ridings, and in your communities as well. Bringing that information back, as you are doing right now, is instrumental.
As well, please question what we tell you. Always question what you're hearing. Talk to people with lived experience, those who are actually experiencing poverty. We can all sit up here on an expert panel as witnesses, but talk to people who are experiencing it and are having challenges working within that system right now.
I know this will likely be happening, or you have avenues to do it, so respectfully, continue that. Be bold.
Look at your current policies. There are policies right now that are not working. I know policy change takes a long time. Just to illustrate this, I'll share one example that concerns the homelessness partnering strategy.
We are both a housing management body, a community-based organization, and a community entity. Something brilliant happened with the homelessness partnering strategy. We went from a three-year funding investment cycle to a five-year cycle. The federal government stated that Housing First was the priority. It has changed how the rest of Canada addresses homelessness.
It allowed us a couple of things. It allowed us to do longer-term planning with our communities. It also allowed us to leverage it and say to the provincial government, which does one-year funding, “Our federal government was bold enough to commit to five-year funding.” That has allowed us leverage points.
That's just one example, when you look at your policies, of what communities are saying and what's working well. Be bold and take those leaps of faith with your communities. They will do the hard work for you and implement your policies as they should be implemented, because people matter.