Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank Mr. Howard and Mr. Richter for joining us today in our meeting.
I really appreciate and value the optimism, Mr. Richter, that you shared. You said that we know what to do and we know how to do it. We pointed out in today's meeting the fact that in the United States, the number of homeless veterans has been reduced from 2009 to 2017 by a half. It was originally 73,000 and went down to approximately 40,000. In Canada we don't have data prior to 2015, but the 2015 report identified that there were 2,250 homeless veterans using shelters in our country.
Data collection, of course, as you point out, is very important. How do you think we can better capture some of the homeless veterans who are not using shelters? You've pointed out that some are out there living in parks. How do we get that data, in your experience, having worked with many veterans on the front line?