Thank you for the invite, Mr. Chairman, and committee members.
Yes, I'm from the city of New Westminster, B.C., the original capital of B.C. for a short period of time. There is a lot of history in New Westminster. I'm the fire chief there and on the board of directors for Honour House, the subject of the presentation I'm going to give you.
Honour House is a home away from home for first responders and military personnel seeking medical treatment in the Lower Mainland area of Vancouver. There is a vision behind Honour House.
Our president, Al De Genova, was watching a documentary on Trevor Greene. It's called Peace Warrior. Trevor Greene was serving on a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan when he was attacked by a militant who hit him over the head with a fire axe. He was severely injured, was flown to Germany from Kandahar, went back to Alberta, where he sought treatment, and then went on to B.C. Al De Genova saw this, was touched by it, and said that something needed to be done for these veterans, that they needed to a place to go to, hence Honour House was born.
The vision was there. We raised money to get the initial capital. The mayor in New Westminister approached me to get involved and to be on the committee. It wasn't a hard thing to get involved with.
The home is actually on the same site where the parliament was supposed to have been in New Westminster. We bought the property, but the house was slated for demolition. We took it right down to the studs, more or less, and renovated the home. The British Columbia Construction Association donated up to $250 million of in-kind costs.
The total cost for the home was $4.9 million. It has 10 rooms, all with their own handicapped-accessible washroom. There are common areas, meeting rooms, and a common kitchen to give families the ability to connect with other families who are staying at the home. The home is free of charge for any serving military person or veteran needing medical treatment or care in the Lower Mainland.
Some of the fundraising efforts we have done include galas and Helmets for Heroes, a campaign that we launched with first responders—firefighters, police, paramedics and military—going out to the community with their helmets out and reaching out to the public for help. This isn't something that's commonly done. Military personnel and first responders are usually proud. They're used to giving back to the community, not asking for help, so this is a way for the community to give back to our first responders.
You can see in this slide that the house is very calming. We had psychologists come in and pick the decor and the colours, especially for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. I know that we talk about post-traumatic stress, but it is very real. In fact, when I get home, next week we'll be burying a firefighter who was being treated for post-traumatic stress and took his life last week.
Again, there is a need for this. Honour House is the only home in the country that's fully accessible to any military personnel, either serving personnel or veterans, as well as their families, and that's probably the key thing. It's not just for the veterans. It's for their families. We've had personnel stay there with spouses who were seeking cancer treatment. Most of the vets we've talked to say that it would financially cripple them if they had to come and stay in a hotel in the Vancouver area.
Again, we've had many success stories. Since opening the doors in 2011, we've had 2,000 night stays. Nonetheless, the house is very underutilized. We opened in 2011. About 10,000 night stays were available to veterans and their families, so we're really only at about 20% capacity. I know there's a great need out there for that. There's no charge. The problem is getting the message out. We're a small society made up of volunteers. We only have one full-time paid house manager. The grounds are maintained by volunteers. All the linen, the laundry service, the cooking is done by volunteers. Local grocery stores provide the food to the house for people staying there.
Again, we're underutilized only because we don't have the ability to get the message out. We've talked to different organizations. We go around the province. We haven't even been able to get outside the province. We've had some initial talks about creating another Honour House in Alberta.
We're seeing more and more cases of post-traumatic stress, operational stress injuries. We've been holding sessions in the house, where they actually come in and do sessions monthly in the house.
Master Warrant Officer Jim Sutton, who was kind enough to let us tell his story, stayed in the house free of charge. He stayed in the Lower Mainland. It would have cost him upwards of about $12,000 just for the stay.
Our goal is to get an Honour House in every province across the country. Right now there's only one in the country, and that's in New Westminster, B.C. We've been in talks with other communities, and there seems to be some interest, but it's a big undertaking. Our operating costs for the home are approximately $160,000 to $200,000 a year. That's all covered by public funding, fundraising, donated support. We have no federal funding whatsoever. We were lucky enough to get a low-interest loan from BC Housing. It's becoming more and more challenging just to keep the doors open. There are so many different funding initiatives out there that it is becoming more and more challenging to make even the $200,000 a year to keep the house operational, never mind trying to knock down the debt on the home.
For fundraising, we've had great support from different entertainers. Jim Cuddy and Sarah McLachlan have come out and done in-kind concerts. At our galas we do once a year, we raise between $200,000 and $300,000, which pretty much goes into the operating costs of the home.
The takeaway from this, really, is asking this committee to look at funding sources through the federal government that could help with operational or initial capital costs to develop these homes across the country. Veterans need them. The second ask, really, is to create a platform for communicating this resource to veterans and getting the message out in a clear way. Going around with a small group of volunteers is a hard way to get that message out. We've heard many stories where people have said after the fact that they didn't know this resource existed. They say they had to come down to the Lower Mainland for medical treatment and that it was a financial hardship for them. Other veterans who have stayed there have said that they would have been financially bankrupted if this resource had not been available to them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the committee. That's my presentation.