 So, in case you're not familiar with this guy, he was elected to represent the Vancouver Point Gray Riding in 2013. He has served as Attorney General from 2017 until earlier this year. He added minister responsible for housing to the mix in 2020. And just a few weeks ago, a few days ago, was sworn in as BC's 37th Premier. He's promised a very clear mission to improve housing affordability in communities throughout the province, rolling out new legislation on basically his first day on the job, first full working day on the job just yesterday, and sees our sector as a key partner in helping to realize that goal. So again, please help me welcome a Premier, E.B. to my question. It's okay, Jill. I'm still getting used to the title as well. It's been a really wonderful and high-speed four days since my swearing in. And I am so delighted to be here with you. It feels a bit like coming home to talk to you. And before I get any further, I'll begin by recognizing that we're here on the territory of the Squamish, Musqueam and Slewa Tooth people, and express my appreciation for the opportunity to live, work and play on those indigenous lands that we call Vancouver. The reason why I feel like I'm coming home here is, you know, there are people in this room that I worked with 20 years ago when I was working in the downtown East Side. And I can't believe that was 20 years ago, but it was. And housing has been central to our journey together, advocacy for housing for everybody to have a decent home in our province. So when I heard that there was an opportunity to be here, thank you to Jill and Tom, Housing Central Margaret, for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I'm going to, because I'm feeling like a bit nostalgic being here, I'm going to share a story with you about how important it is to be in government and to be able to make a difference in people's lives from just my own experience. And all of my colleagues can tell you very similar stories about their files. But for me, the story that really illustrates it is a story about when I was in my early days at Pivot, we had gotten a grant from, gosh, this is a law foundation, gave us some funding to do work on housing. And they used that funding to hire me as a lawyer, to be an advocate on housing in the downtown East Side. And one of the calls that I got as a lawyer at that organization was, there's a building called the Burns Block. And the Burns Block, one of the old SROs in the downtown East Side, beautiful old building. It was in real disarray. It had been purchased by a guy, you know, he had no idea what he was buying. He had no experience running an SRO in the downtown East Side. And very, very quickly he lost control of the building. There were rooms being used for drug trafficking. The building was falling apart. He was neck deep in enforcement orders from Vancouver Fire Department. Just didn't know what he was doing. And it got to the point where, I'm getting ahead of myself. So I get a call that Vancouver Fire and City is down at the Burns Block building. And they're condemning the building. They say the building is no longer safe for tenants. And there were people who had been living in that building for decades. And one of those people was Veronica Crow Eagle, who had been a tenant in that building for more than a decade. All of the tenants were brought out onto the sidewalk. They were given an hour's notice that their homes were going to be locked up, that the building wasn't safe for occupation. They grabbed a few of their belongings. And the landlord on hearing this news rushed to Home Depot to buy plywood and tools. And it wasn't to fix up the fire code violations that he knew were there. It was to board up the front door because he was relieved. The building was worth more without the tenants in it. And he had lost control of the building. This was a solution to his problem. And the tenants were collateral damage. They were moved off to the Salvation Army building to try to figure out where they were going to go. And as a lawyer who was there, and I was like, hey, I'm a lawyer from Pivot. I'm here to help you. Is there anything I can do? And they're like, well, what can you do? Can you get us our house guy? I was like, we can go to the residential tenancy branch, and it's going to take a couple months, and maybe we'll get an order, and they're like, oh. And then it's like, how do I get in touch with you? And they're like, we don't know. This is our address. It's like a feeling of total powerlessness to stop this slow-motion tragedy that was rolling out. And the building ultimately was purchased and renovated. And as housing minister, we had the opportunity to buy that building back and to reopen it as housing for women and children fleeing violence. And it's called Veronica's Place. And the difference, that is the difference between being in opposition and being in government. Watching bad government policy, and it's not bad because people are malicious. It's bad just because it's not structured in a way to consider the human cost. Watch it play out and feel essentially powerless except through a court process that might take years. And being able to take action that people can see and touch and feel and live in that makes lives better for people. I know that you live in that world. Non-profit housing providers are not in some kind of theoretical housing think tank. Well, I mean, you are in some of them, frankly. But you're delivering on the ground in ways that your community can see and touch and feel. In the community of Vernon, your work reduced police interactions downtown by 50%, providing supportive housing in the city of Vernon. And when the issue of public safety is front of mind, absolutely, when the issue of public safety is front of mind for so many British Columbians, knowing that housing can help break that cycle, especially housing with supports, can help break that cycle that people are in and out of jail, in and out of our courts is huge. And congratulations to Vernon for your work on that. I announced yesterday, and our housing minister, Marie Rankin, introduced legislation on two separate housing initiatives. The first is around the rules that govern strata in our province. So for buildings that were built before 2010, they're permitted to have rent restrictions in place, prohibiting people from renting out their units. And there's a journalist from Kamloops, Shane Woodford, who told a reporter about his family's story. So he was working at Radio NL, and they decided to move to Kamloops, or to Denmark. And they reached an agreement with their strata that they would be able to rent it out. And as soon as they landed in Denmark, the strata contacted them and said, we did say that you were going to be allowed to rent out your condo, but we've changed our mind. And you're not able to rent it out anymore. They had to evict their tenant, and the unit sits empty. And I know that for all of us, we see the housing crisis every day up close. We can't leave any housing on the table. And I know there's some anxiety among some strata owner groups about, well, what if we get a bad tenant and so on? Stratas will be able to appear at the residential tenancy branch and address those issues. But boy, to have someone on Craigslist searching for a place to rent, and to have an empty condo that Shane's family wants to rent out, sitting there in the middle of a housing crisis, we need every single unit we can get immediately for people in British Columbia. I know everyone in this room knows that. Some of the announcement yesterday was clean up work. You know, I got a call from at my constituency office, and then as Minister for Housing, a couple that was pregnant with a child. And they lived in a building that had a strata rule that the only residents who were allowed to live in the building must be 19 years of age or older. And they're like, the letter that I got in the Minister of Housing office was like, is it legal? Is this not discriminatory that when we have a baby that we get kicked out of our building? And I was like, of course, that's got to be illegal. That can't be a legitimate rule in British, no, totally legal. It's totally acceptable, and a rule that apparently was not seen as discriminatory against young families, and we got rid of that rule yesterday as well, once that legislation passes. And we have to have a long range view when it comes to housing. Everyone in this room knows how long it takes to get from assembling the plan, getting the players together, grab the funding from here and there, and putting it together and the donations and the commitment to the board and how long it takes to open that housing. And to be grappling, I ran into the folks from Unity. Laurel's here, there was an amazing proposal in Surrey for housing, for adults with disabilities, proposed for Surrey, and they got everything together, all the funding, all the approvals and everything, and they got to City Hall and they put it forward and it was voted down by one vote. And it's just unbelievable to me that that happened, and through their advocacy, through their advocacy, they got commitments from all the mayoral candidates in the Surrey election that was going to pass. I understand they're at the public hearing stage now. So congratulations to them for their advocacy. Everyone from Unity, way to go to raise public awareness about this. But that, I mean, that can't be the case, right? You can't work overtime to assemble something that's a tribute to the community, that is this blood, sweat, and tears of so many dedicated people, all the possible government funding. You've got the cost locked down, you've got the contractors in, and then you get rejected at the steps of City Hall for reasons that you do not understand. And to be honest, I have a lot of empathy for the city councillors and mayors that are put in this position. They get recommendations from staff, they have angry neighbors coming, they're getting letters from this side, from that side, and it's very easy to be incredibly pressured in that situation. That's why a piece of legislation we introduced yesterday is to restructure the relationship between cities and the province when it comes to housing, that we are going to set out targets developed in partnership with municipalities about delivering housing and all kinds of housing, housing that cities need, which could include affordable housing, rental housing, supportive housing, emergency shelters, what does the community need? And the cities and the province will work together to deliver on that housing. It might be my, I was just talking to the mayor of Terrace, he's like, we are on side, we're ready to go, but we need support on vital infrastructure to build the housing that we need. Absolutely. The province is there to partner with you to deliver that housing because we are in a housing crisis. Whatever it is that is blocking and preventing the housing from getting built, so it doesn't come down to a decision at a public hearing where you've done all your work and then you get rejected. It comes down to a coordinated plan working together where your project is encouraged by the city because it helps them meet the target so that they can unlock funds from the provincial government for things every community needs, for the swimming pools, for the trails, for the arenas, for the things that make communities great. Your project is a way to make the community stronger and it's seen that way by local leaders. That's the shift we need and that's what this proposed legislation will do. Now some of you, I imagine a few of you are quickly scanning back to see because during the leadership campaign I made a number of commitments to British Columbians about how we were going to go after the housing crisis. Those plans are very reliant on the people in this room. One of those specific proposals is around a housing acquisition strategy. We're doing the work on developing that right now. The idea is simple and full credit to Housing Central for advocating for this, for helping design it, for working on it because the idea is simple. When you're in a hole like we are in relation to housing, you've got to stop digging. We can't afford to lose any affordable rental housing in this province and there's no feeling like the feeling that a tenant has when they wake up in the morning and they open the drapes and there's a giant for sale sign hammered into the lawn out front of the building. What is this going to mean for me? Am I going to be evicted or am I rents going to go up? Is the building going to be torn down? What's going to happen? And the people who feel the most intense anxiety in these, a lot of these older buildings, I can say this in this room, the old Merb buildings, right? A lot of people who live in those buildings, they're seniors and they've been living there for decades. They're full security network, they're safety network, the grocery store, they know where their healthcare providers are all in that community. So they're not just losing a home, they're losing all of their connections and we're seeing more and more seniors showing up in our homeless numbers and it's incredibly alarming to everybody, including me. Having a fund where a nonprofit organization can identify a building that's for sale, purchase that building, use that building and preserve that building for affordable housing going forward. The province can support you in getting funding, take out funding so that the rents will sustain you. And then ultimately, you may be able to redevelop that site, make sure that the tenants are looked after, add more units, and putting that affordable housing stock into the non-profit ecosystem will preserve it forever. And that is what we need to do with affordable housing in our province. For generations, it can't be the whims of one government to decide to sell all the social housing sites that we're gonna be built on to try to pretend the budget is balanced. That can't be the way. We need your partnership to make sure that affordable housing stays affordable regardless of what is happening within government and I'm excited to partner with you on that. Now I do have some news for you. It's not huge news, but it is significant news because it is a, you know that housing has been central for our government since we were elected. Everything from addressing speculation in the housing market, to making sure that there's resources available to address homelessness, encampments, and so on. A lot of work has been done. We all know so much more to do. In my opinion, it is vital that we have a minister around the cabinet table that has one job and one focus only, which is to deliver on housing. And that's why for the first time, imagine this, for the first time in British Columbia's history, we will have a dedicated minister of housing that is only focused on housing and delivering housing for British Columbians across the province. That will help us deliver for people. I know it's a technical change, but it is key to have a person that is focused on working with you, working with the sector. And I'm so excited for that work to continue and expand. For our family, for myself, a lot changed when my son was born. And when my daughter was born five years later, all the time, Kaylee and I are thinking about what's her future gonna be like? What's her future gonna be like in this province? We think about issues like, of course, climate change, the challenge of our generation. We think about where are they gonna live? Are they gonna have decent housing? Are they gonna have housing where they can support a family of their own if they choose to do that? Where are we gonna live? Seniors, where's the seniors' housing gonna be with an aging population? Housing is so central. And I know that everyone in this room and all British Columbians share a vision of our province where everybody has a good home, everybody has a decent place to live. That is the cornerstone of how we provide services, how our provinces grow. We cannot have a strong economy unless we have a strong home for British Columbians. Going it alone doesn't work. If there's one thing that we learned during the pandemic, the answer to these problems is working together. And you are a key part of how we're gonna work together to deliver this. I know you have challenges. I know you have strains. I'm gonna work with you on that. And we are gonna deliver together the most ambitious housing plan in North America. We're gonna make it happen together. And I am so excited to work with you, let's get to work. Thanks very much.