Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Seeback, if I could take a moment, I would like to respond to Ms. Blaney's comment about Veterans' House being exclusive. Veterans' House is in no way exclusive to any one gender. It is open to all genders and all people who identify in any kind of gender. The reality is, t

Veterans Affairs committee  The $6.5 million did come under the national housing strategy, under the co-investment fund run by CMHC. The rapid housing money had very specific rules and timelines around it, and one of those rules was it could not be an already funded project. Veterans' House was automaticall

Veterans Affairs committee  We were able to access a very small amount, 10%, not 25%. Fundraised money doesn't necessarily count as income, so it makes it a little difficult when your organization is based on fundraising.

Veterans Affairs committee  Veterans Affairs Canada has agreed to provide us with caseworker support for our tenants in the building. I'm going to give kudos here and a very happy wave to my Legion friends in front of me and my co-witnesses, because the Legion has come forward with $100,000 a year to pay fo

Veterans Affairs committee  No, each one gets their own unit. No one is bunking together. People have their own private space. Within the building, we have males and females together and that has to do with, one, creating a community; and two, we're talking about people who are coming from a military backgr

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, all the services in the building and to our tenants are also offered in French. Right now, we do not have the resources to do translations on websites and such. It would be a tremendous amount of resources, which is something that's not within our budget ability at this mome

Veterans Affairs committee  There has been a good amount of research. For some women, this will not be a good environment, because we have serving military who will be coming in and out of the building in our community partnerships. For some women, the sight of a uniform is a trigger. Therefore, this is not

Veterans Affairs committee  If I'm to understand it correctly, you're asking me if I consider...regular homeless population to the homeless veteran population? Is that correct?

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. Veterans' House is open to both males and females. Our first offer that went out, on December 23, went to a female veteran who had been living in her car in the Legion parking lot since 2019. The Legion had certified her service. Each unit is an independent living un

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. We have a very open organization, very welcoming to LGBTQ, and we are aware that they might have very specific areas of concern and areas where maybe some of their trauma might be coming from within their veteran experience. That is being taken into account in our pro

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My name is Suzanne Le. I'm the executive director of Multifaith Housing Initiative and the one who's ultimately going to be in charge of overseeing Veterans' House Canada. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee to outline the

Veterans Affairs committee  We've actually tried to dig into that question a lot further. We're doing further research right now. We have a partnership with the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services, and a researcher at Carleton University to try to get us a little

Veterans Affairs committee  We made an assumption that they're not going to get any other kind of support. This was what we could get them. There will be some who may go as low as Ontario Works, in which case we will have to be doing some fundraising to make up the shortfall between them and the others. We

Veterans Affairs committee  No, we haven't. It's quite sound. We're building this project to what's called “passive house” standards, which is a very high level of environmental efficiency so that our operating costs are quite low. We're putting the money in the capital up front rather than in long-term ope

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you.