Madam Speaker, I appreciate the chance to come back to my question to the Minister of Housing from a couple of weeks ago on the housing crisis in this country, and specifically those who are experiencing homelessness and living unsheltered. I had asked the question because decades of underinvestment in both housing and mental health and addiction support are hitting my community hard. As one example of what this looks like, over the past several months an encampment has grown in downtown Kitchener to now upwards of 50 people living in tents in the downtown. My community is reeling.
At the time, I was told the solution was the reaching home program. It is part of Canada's homelessness strategy. It supports the goals of the national housing strategy, and the aim is to reduce chronic homelessness by 50% by 2027-28. Just last summer, the Parliamentary Budget Officer reviewed that plan, and here is what he had to say about it. I quote:
...we project that in the absence of additional spending the number of households in housing need would have increased to approximately 1.8 million households with a $9.3-billion aggregate affordability gap by 2025-26.
Turning back to my community, this seems like an example of the increase that the PBO was expecting. In 2018, there were 333 people experiencing homelessness in Waterloo Region. Going fast-forward to our most recent point-in-time count study last fall, we see that it tripled. There are now over a thousand people experiencing homelessness in Waterloo Region, 412 of whom are living unsheltered, for example in tents downtown. The rest are in emergency shelters or in transitional housing. There might be the hidden homeless, or people in institutions such as a hospital or a domestic violence shelter. It is clear in my community, and from the PBO's report in other communities across the country, that these plans are not working.
We also need to be clear that the encampment downtown is not only the result of insufficient federal funds for housing. It is the result of mental health as well. Despite using the right words, for example, we can all agree that mental health is health, the reality is that the funding is not there. In the last election campaign, the governing party promised billions in a new Canada mental health transfer to the provinces. When it came time for the 2022 budget, though, there was not a cent budgeted for this transfer; instead, it got a three-line mention to stay tuned for more.
The fact is that we cannot expect municipalities to take on the housing and mental health crises on their own. They need support from the provinces and, yes, the federal government as well. I appreciate that the parliamentary secretary is with us this evening. She is a person I respect. I wonder if she would be willing to join me to meet people at the encampment in downtown Kitchener. Most importantly, will she share this: Will the federal government step up? If so, what would that look like?