I would go a step further. I think what we need to do at this point in time is to create legislation for a national indigenous housing coalition from across the country. We should start with legislation, select people from across the country to sit on that national indigenous housing council and come to a quick agreement on the amount of funds that are needed to put that into action.
I agree with Ms. McGee. There is a lot of emphasis placed on what number we should select as far as the needs go and what budget to come up with. In my mind, we could easily look at $2.5 billion to $5 billion a year over the next 10 years.
In addition to this amount of money for the capital side of things, we need to recognize that there was a program in place at one time under section 56.1 of the National Housing Act. It really was the gold star of social housing across the country for urban indigenous housing providers because it not only provided resources for the capital funds, but also provided operating subsidies, which is the piece that's mandatory for urban native housing societies to function as non-profits.
There is no revenue in this. We're trying to meet the deepest needs of people across the country and the hardest to house, so we can't be looking at market housing and expecting organizations to pay market rents so that we can pay for mortgages.