Thank you so much, Chair.
Thank you to two phenomenal witnesses.
Every time I do this committee, I say that six minutes are definitely not enough to deeply dive into a lot of what we are talking about.
I'm going to start with you, Ms. Lewis. It's great work that you do. Thank you. What a heartbreaking stat you've shared, that 500 women were turned away. That made me sick, to be honest with you. I think that's one of the big things we have to look at in terms of policy. If we're telling people that, when they finally have the courage to ask for help or to flee, there's nowhere for them to go, what is the incentive to leave? I think that's a really big issue we need to investigate.
To your point, I really want to hone in on housing, because I think you're absolutely right; it's the baseline for how we help.
Ironically, I had a meeting this morning with some local builders in my riding about supply and demand, definitely not on the affordable housing end of things. They wouldn't be your clients per se, but they touched on a point I found extremely interesting in that, if they can open up supply and demand and get more housing up, they're opening up the opportunity for these more affordable units for your transitional homes, especially for women fleeing.
I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on that and if you would be supportive of a policy that would remove red tape from the federal level that leads down to the municipal level on speeding up planning applications so that we can get more houses built and focus on this so that we can open up supply and, in consequence, lower rent prices.