Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Welcome back to the committee, Ms. Houle.
I'll pick up where Mr. Aitchison left off.
I come from the municipal sector. I spent over 25 years as city councillor for the City of Hamilton. Many of those years I spent serving on our non-profit housing authority, through which we managed 7,000 affordable units.
One of the things I complained about before I arrived—I was even very critical of our own government after the national housing strategy was released, because to my mind it was taking too long for the dollars to flow. They eventually flowed in 2019, and I was happy to see that.
However, if I had my FCM colleagues around the table, even those who sit on the board today, they would be sitting here talking about the story of municipalities being left to their own devices for a period of 30 years. Steve Pomeroy was at our last meeting. He highlighted how through three consecutive administrations there was $4 billion invested in the housing sector. Most of that flowed through to the non-profit sector. That was over a period of 25 years.
Our government, as you know, through the national housing strategy, is probably near the $100-billion mark for a period of five years, so a lot has changed. To be that constructive critic, I still think we need to do a lot more, from a financial perspective, to invest in the non-market area, but if my FCM colleagues were here, they would talk about some of our provincial partners not being at the table. The federal government can't do it alone.
Can I get your ideas and your comments on how we deal with those provincial partners who aren't at the table? Some of your work talks about—and you referenced it today—how all three levels of government need to be working on this issue. We don't need finger pointing, but it's no secret that a number of provinces aren't investing in affordable housing. I live in a province where that's the case. I can point to others that are laggards. In the case of Manitoba, that is probably soon to change. Saskatchewan, I think, is a great example in terms of trying to look for affordable housing programs there.
What do we do with our provincial partners when we need all three levels of government at the table and we have only two?