Finance committee  Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for welcoming us to the work of the committee and allowing us to highlight the importance of housing in the budget planning exercise. I will make my presentation in French but will happily answer questions in English or French. Let me start

Finance committee  It is therefore important that the government's additional requirements, apart from the rules of the National Building Code, be accompanied by subsidies so that these conditions do not impede the development of the housing so eagerly awaited by the vulnerable population. In Queb

Finance committee  Your second question is easy to answer. Since the federal government made the money available, if I am not mistaken, Quebec is the only province that has not signed an agreement, so we are losing out on $70 million a year. We understand that parliamentarians are responsible to t

Finance committee  It is an investment because it reduces costs in the areas of health, education, public safety and many other things. We are saying that an additional $2 billion is needed to catch up. The amount depends on the regions. It is a bit like the complexity that we have to deal with wh

Finance committee  I don't have the exact figure on the connection between a person's health and investment. It varies. However, clearly, the benefits are huge in the long term. Let's take the example of a family living in a housing unit that is too expensive, inadequate and substandard. Parents

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having us as part of the committee business so that we can highlight the importance of housing during the current crisis. I'll start by introducing our organization. The Association des groupes de ressources techniques du Québec is made up of

Human Resources committee  On the first part about the urban and the community, when we look at the mobilization of people, people when they are isolated—and that's what we see in big cities—when you see people who don't have a social network to depend on, don't have neighbours they know or proof that they

Human Resources committee  After federal funding was discontinued in the 1990s, Quebec created its own programs to fund community housing. So today, half of the country's cooperatives are in Quebec. Housing associations, federations and offices have formed an ecosystem that is integrated into the health s

Human Resources committee  All partners in housing know that the ecosystem and intervention methods exist. However, we are worried about creating something of a parallel network or operation. We want to ensure that the money gets into the system to meet the needs. I can already tell you that we currently

Human Resources committee  The current average cost of housing in a program funded half by the government and half by municipalities and mortgages or tenant rents is about $115,000. However, I should remind you that the figure we are now providing is in anticipation of next year's budget, while constructio

Human Resources committee  I will just tell you that flexibility is definitely the answer, because with the co-investment that we have we're trying to make two programs work together, and they don't. We're trying to get the AccèsLogis in to fund the program, and we're trying to go to co-investment to get t

Human Resources committee  I think the government is trying to build new housing and making sure to deliver. Whether you put it in or not, the question is this: What's the accountability on the subsidy? At the end of the convention, I think the people in Quebec and the government do want new housing. They

Human Resources committee  You have to go with the good faith. When somebody is clear that they won't use it, that's one thing, but when a government has a system in place and wants to use it in a different way, you have to get the flexibility to make sure that the money goes down. It's a question of ever

Human Resources committee  Exactly.

Human Resources committee  I don't want to get into the politics. That's for sure. I'm looking at projects for people who are probably in bad housing situations. For three years, because of the bureaucratic knowledge of who's responsible for what.... I don't want to know who's responsible. I want to make s