Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Fraser. It's good to see you.
When I was a little boy in Timmins, my Irish granny used to call my Scottish granny, and we'd go uptown. All the old mining widows would sit at the Woolworths, and the kids would go window shopping. Nobody wants to go into the downtown anymore because we're hit with the triple crisis—mental health, opioid addiction and homelessness.
The city is doing extraordinary work, but they are not equipped for this job, so they rely on Reaching Home. However, that program funding is spread across Cochrane District, which is 144,000 square kilometres with over a dozen communities and numerous first nations.
They are doing all this on $944,696 a year, and yet you've told them that they're going to get a 50% cut, so they're going to do all this on $465,000. Why would you walk away on northern Ontario when this crisis is hitting us full force in the face?