Madam Speaker, I will reply to the comments of the member opposite who said it was not necessary to provide definitions for homelessness, poverty and affordable housing.
I disagree. The amount of money recently put into the city of Edmonton housing trust fund by the ministry for the homeless, $17 million in federal funding for a total value of some $50 million, has not resulted in even one new home. The funding is going into existing shelters, additions on shelters or assisted living. It has not gone into even one designated new private home.
The funding going into Edmonton and being transposed across the country from coast to coast is a phenomenal amount. The problem is that it is not creating any new housing. The problem with creating no new housing is that it forces people to stay in emergency shelters.
In the city of Edmonton another federal government program, RRAP, for persons with disabilities has also been an abysmal failure. Ninety-five per cent of the program's funding is not going toward the greatest single need in the city of Edmonton: the need for rooming houses.
The funding for RRAP is going into upscale housing. That is a problem because the men and women who live in the Herb Jamieson Centre and other shelters in Edmonton are locked into that condition on a perpetual basis. They cannot move to new housing.
The long and the short of it is that not one new rooming house has been built in Edmonton in three to five years. The result is that shelters in Edmonton are as full as they are in Toronto. The $17 million that the member opposite mentioned has been put into the city of Edmonton will simply build more shelters.
It is time to start building homes, not shelters. That is the main direction we should go in. I feel very strongly that this is happening because there is a misunderstanding about where the funding is going. The misunderstanding exists because there is a lack of common terminology or definition for the basics.
The basic questions are: What is affordable housing? What is poverty? Those terminologies must be defined. That is why there is such a discrepancy and why shelters across the country are filled.
I agree with the Progressive Conservative member that, yes, if we had affordable housing the majority of the population in shelters would be gone. They are there simply because they need affordable housing.
The need for affordable housing is strong. However first and foremost we must come up with common identifiable determinations on what are the basics. We must then look at a national plan to build affordable housing for the country again. For too many years the federal government has been out of it. It is time the government developed national standards to help builders re-enter the affordable housing market.
It is absolutely essential that be done. It has been far too long now. Simply putting more and more money into more and more shelters across the country is not the solution.
The $17 million which has gone to the city of Edmonton, combined with the provincial funds and city funds, provides a total fund of $50 million. The identifiable homeless population is 1,000. Simple mathematics would indicate that is $50,000 for every homeless person.
We could build them a home and give them a home. It would be far better to spend the money there than to continuously build on the shelter system and keep our people locked up in a shelter system when what they want and need is affordable housing.