I appreciate the comments from the Solicitor General.

An effective response for my community in London would have been stable, permanent funding for the COAST program. That is a program that pairs police officers with mental health workers, social workers and nurses so that they can respond effectively to the crisis of mental health and addictions that we are seeing in our city. We have a crisis that has triggered a whole-of-community response to address the escalating levels of mental health and addictions and homelessness. That permanent funding for the COAST program, which is what my community has been asking for for several years, would have gone a long way to improving community safety in London.

In London, we have 2,000 people on the by-name list, who are unhoused. We have 6,000 households, representing 11,000 individuals, who have been waiting, sometimes for a decade, to get into rent-geared-to-income housing, and in the meantime, they’re living in substandard housing; they’re couch-surfing. They are not able to get into that kind of housing stability that’s going to help them move forward and build their lives. Housing is where it has to start.

I want to assure the member across the way that I am very much informed about what is happening in my community.

There was an initial investment from the province that, following the budget, was supplemented by an additional $8 million for London-Middlesex; $1 million of that went to Middlesex, leaving London with an additional $7 million. That is funding that came after the city had developed the health and homelessness whole-of-community response. It is funding that needs to be supplemented to a much higher degree if the city is to be able to move forward with this model, innovative program to actually deal with the health and homelessness crisis that we are facing in the city of London.