We'll be sharing the time.
Welcome to Medicine Hat, Canada's sunniest city, and we aren't letting you down today. I'd like to thank our MP, Mr. Glen Motz, for inviting me here today, and I thank this committee as well.
I am Ted Clugston, the mayor of Medicine Hat, and this is councillor Celina Symmonds. She is a city councillor as well as the executive director of our Medicine Hat and District Food Bank.
I would really like to welcome you to Medicine Hat, the city known around the world for successfully achieving an end to chronic homelessness.
When I first became mayor, I never even campaigned on homelessness. I never even said the word “homelessness”, but quickly my term became about ending homelessness, and I found out that this topic of ending homelessness was universal. There was an aching need to do something about this, not just locally or nationally but around the world. I became basically the talking head or the torchbearer for the first city to end homelessness.
After we declared that we would possibly end homelessness, and then when we did, I started hearing from politicians all over the world, including Canada, and then from the media. I have lost track, but I think I've done about 175 different interviews around the world on Skype and for print media. The New York Times was here yesterday just to do an interview on homelessness. There is an interest, and people want to do something about this.
We've tackled this complex issue, and I know there were some great people in this community who believed it could be done, and they were at the right place at the right time.