Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for inviting Mortgage Professionals Canada to speak to you today. My name is Paul Taylor, and I'm President and CEO of the national association.
I'm joined today by mortgage expert and Mortgage Professionals Canada member Jacquie Bushell of Ottawa.
Mortgage Professionals Canada is Canada's national, non-profit industry association representing mortgage brokers, mortgage lenders, mortgage insurers and industry service providers. We have 11,500 individual members and 1,000 business members, and we generally speak on their behalf with regard to all aspects of commercial and residential mortgage origination processes. Collectively, their hard work represents about $80 billion across Canada.
Coincidentally, yesterday we met over 50 MPs and senators to discuss the various Canadian housing markets, housing affordability, and the impact of recent legislative changes to the economic well-being of the younger Canadian middle class.
That said, this invitation clearly focuses on studying the network of shelters and transition houses that service women and children affected by violence and women affected by intimate partner violence. Your invitation led me and my staff to reach out to some female members of our association to see what insight they could provide with regard to that matter.
We asked them for some specific examples of how new, more stringent lending rules, more formally known as stress tests, have impacted some of these women. I wish I could list the names of all of the contributing folks who we reached out to. They went out of their way over the weekend to share some compelling experiences. I can't share them all now, but I have asked some of our members to send some of their feedback directly to this committee so that you can read their responses as well.
We heard from Veronica Love-Alexander, who is regional vice-president of MERIX Financial. She donates to Interval House and Yellow Brick House, two women's shelters. She shared some personal stories.
Through Veronica, we heard from Kathy Gregory, who is Paradigm Quest's CEO. She leads our industry support of the Canadian Women's Foundation in many ways.
Also through Veronica, we heard from Lorris Herenda, the Executive Director of Yellow Brick House. She said that in Ontario, we're experiencing a tremendous gap in the number of needed shelter beds and transition homes and the number available. Yellow Brick House, with 41 beds and 10 cribs between two shelter locations—16 beds and three cribs were added in 2012—was able to accommodate 234 women and 132 children last year. Sadly, 344 women and 488 children could not get a shelter bed in her region and chose not to leave the region in search of an available bed somewhere else in the province. The addition of beds and cribs in 2012 also received only one year of government funding through the province, and only at 50% of the cost. Their shelter really has been relying entirely on fundraising to keep the shelter beds open.
One of her suggestions to us for this committee was that for every housing or condominium development approved going forward, there should be some units dedicated to abused women and children and victims of violence.
I'll ask my colleague Jacquie to provide some further details.