In old Quebec City there is the conversion of an old hotel across from the train station, where on every floor they treat a different segment of the population who are homeless. Homeless young women are kept together, separate and distinct, as are older homeless individuals who obviously can't go out during the day, where others might.
The former monasteries and religious buildings in virtually every major Quebec community are congregate living, with individual rooms with communal settings with meal programs. They are set up for conversion.
What we're seeing in these situations is that once you stabilize a homeless person's living environment, adding the health services to get them back to full health and independence, the real success is not housing people who are homeless, but watching homeless people lead the system. In fact, people with lived experience are some of the best housing providers now in the country.
If you're looking for advocates who do great work—and I'm not sure I can share this—one of the top-ranking bureaucrats in Hamilton came through the housing system and was homeless as a youth and graduated into the system, graduated through university, through the municipal sector and is now leading that city's charge to end homelessness. They have one of the most pronounced and aggressive housing programs in the country.
To me, there is no joy comparable to watching a homeless person get their own unit, and there is nothing as brilliant as watching one of those individuals graduate to leadership and to delivering the housing to solve the problem for us, on the ground in different communities across the country.
The stories roll through my head so quickly I can't even tell all of the stories, but the reality is that when we make that difference, we turn someone who has high needs into a high contributor.
I'll tell you the population that is the most inspiring. It's former armed forces personnel. They come with public service trained into them. They have extraordinary skills in construction, group management, and in interfacing with authority and structured figures. I think that homeless veterans, in particular, have the potential to literally be the next brigade of housing workers, and are transformational in their capacity to be redeployed into the sector. The good news is they come from every corner of the country, every community in the country. They are indigenous, they are anglophone, they're francophone, and they live on the coasts, in the north and in the major cities.
What's really interesting is the way in which government responds to veterans and the public responds to veterans. I don't think there is a community in this country that would have the Nimbyism toward them or the reaction that I don't want a group home in my neighbourhood. When you tell them that it's a group home for veterans, they calm down. When you tell them that the group home will be led by a former veteran, they respect the public service and the authority that's invested in that kind of training.
I think we have the potential to end chronic homelessness very quickly in this country. It just takes all of our deciding that's what we're going to do. I think we're at a turning point in this country's history, and that, to me, is the most inspiring thing that's come from rapid housing. It's what inspired me about the throne speech and it's the work that lies ahead with the budget. Getting those dates, those projects, but more importantly, those keys into the hands of homeless people and that transformation in their lives, to me, is the real opportunity here. Rapid housing has untied that knot and I expect great things in the future and we are working very hard to realize that with all of you.