Federal Advocacy
How Federal Policy Lands in Stratford
Housing, gender-based violence, and food security policy get decided in Ottawa, and I'm one of the people upper levels of government actually call into the room to help decide it. I've testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women on its study of coercive control (watch my testimony https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2?fk=12713100) authored formal pre-budget submission to the House of Commons Finance Committee. This isn't secondhand knowledge of how federal policy works. I've sat at that table and helped shape the recommendations.
That depth of understanding is exactly why I advocate for the following at the federal level:
Revising the federal calculation of core housing need so that people living in shelter and transitional housing are actually counted.
Right now, someone living in a shelter or transitional housing doesn't count toward federal housing need data. That means the government is planning housing supply around numbers that already exclude some of the people who need housing most, and every downstream target gets built on a false floor.
Reissuing federal affordable housing targets broken into distinct emergency, transitional, and affordable supply categories.
A single, blended housing target hides where the real gaps are. Splitting targets into emergency, transitional, and affordable categories forces funding to follow the actual shape of need, instead of getting absorbed into whichever category is easiest to build.
Extending GST exemptions currently available to for-profit purpose-built rental to not-for-profit builders and social service providers building transitional housing.
For-profit developers already get a GST break to build rental housing. Not-for-profit and social service organizations building the transitional housing that moves people out of shelters do not get the same break, which makes the housing we need most to build the most expensive to build.
Continued direct federal funding to municipalities and social service providers to preserve existing affordable rental stock, with guaranteed first right of refusal for municipalities or provincial land banks if a non-profit owner sells.
It's cheaper to keep existing affordable units affordable than to build new ones from scratch. A first-right-of-refusal guarantee also ensures that if a non-profit ever needs to sell a property, that affordable stock stays in public or non-profit hands instead of disappearing into the private market.
Stronger federal incentives for for-profit builders to partner with not-for-profit and social housing providers, with additional incentives for smaller and rural centres.
Urban centres can sometimes attract this kind of partnership on their own, but smaller and rural communities often can't offer developers enough profitability to bother. Without targeted incentives, rural and small-city Canada gets left out of the affordable housing conversation entirely.
A federal funding stream dedicated specifically to women's and family shelters and survivor safe houses for those exiting human trafficking and violent situations.
General affordable housing funding doesn't account for the specialized security and support that survivor shelters require. Without a dedicated stream, these life-saving spaces are left competing against every other housing priority for the same limited dollars.
Federal support for new dedicated survivor safe houses in currently underserved regions.
I've specifically advocated for new safe house capacity in Southwestern Ontario and Atlantic Canada, regions where survivors currently have far fewer safe options to turn to than the rest of the country.
Increased federal funding to housing and social service providers caring for asylum and refugee claimants.
Roughly a third of people in emergency shelters nationally are asylum or refugee claimants. Housing is a universal right, not one that pauses at immigration status, and the organizations doing this work need funding that matches that reality.
Expanding eligibility for the federal Interim Housing Assistance Fund so social service and housing providers can apply for funding directly, rather than only provinces and municipalities.
Right now, a shelter provider like the Salvation Army can't access this fund directly, even as the largest shelter operator in the country. It has to wait on a province or municipality to apply on its behalf, and increasing political sensitivity around immigration has made some of them reluctant to. That leaves front-line providers unable to respond quickly to need they can see happening in real time.
Adapting that same fund to provide rapid, project-based emergency funding.
Sudden spikes in demand, whether from a labour trafficking response, an extreme weather event, or an unexpected surge in claimants, need funding that can move fast. A fund built around slow, standard applications can't respond to a crisis on the timeline a crisis actually requires.
Direct federal investment in community food providers, so food banks can purchase diverse, nutritious, and specialized food rather than relying solely on donations.
Donation-based food banks rarely receive the items that are hardest to find and most needed, like infant formula or allergen-safe food. A purchasing model lets providers stock what their community actually needs, tracks trends over time, and reduces the administrative burden currently carried by volunteers.
Criminalizing coercive control federally, paired with mandatory training for police, Crown attorneys, and judges.
A law against coercive control is only as good as the system's ability to recognize it. Without proper training, the people responsible for enforcing this kind of law won't know what to look for, and the law will exist on paper without protecting anyone in practice.
A community hub model for survivor services.
Someone leaving a coercive or violent relationship is currently forced to travel between separate offices for legal support, housing help, and employment counselling, and every trip between them adds real, physical risk. Centralizing these services in one location removes that danger at the exact moment a survivor is most vulnerable.
Stand-alone legal protection for children subjected to coercive tactics like threats, manipulation, intimidation, and isolation.
Coercive control creates generational trauma, and children currently have no distinct legal protection from these tactics of their own. Without that protection, the law treats a child's exposure to coercive control as incidental to their parent's experience rather than as harm in its own right.
A national public education campaign on coercive control, developed alongside social and legal service providers.
New legal protections only help the people who know they exist. Many survivors don't recognize what they've experienced as coercive control at all, and without public education paired with any new legislation, the people the law is meant to protect may never know to ask for it.
Reforming the federal charitable donation tax credit from a flat dollar-amount structure to one based on a percentage of income.
The current credit structure treats a donation the same regardless of a donor's income, which quietly disadvantages lower- and middle-income donors relative to their actual capacity to give. A percentage-of-income model would make the credit fairer across income levels and help stabilize the donor base that organizations like food banks and shelters depend on for the services this list depends on funding.
Ensuring immigration settlement funding actually reaches the municipalities absorbing the impact.
Immigration levels are set federally, but the health, shelter, and social service costs of settlement often land on municipalities and local service providers without matching funding following. IRCC settlement dollars are frequently routed through provincial and regional intermediaries in ways that don't reliably reach the local shelters, housing providers, and service organizations actually doing the work, leaving communities to absorb real costs the federal government created.
Expanding and stabilizing funding like the federal Emergency Treatment Fund for mental health and addictions.
Ottawa has started providing funding directly to municipalities and Indigenous communities for urgent substance use and overdose crisis response, rather than routing everything through provincial health transfers first. That's the right model, but the funding has been short-term and project-based rather than stable and ongoing. A city the size of Stratford needs to know this kind of support will still be there next year, not just for the length of a single grant cycle.
Growing federal infrastructure programs like Green and Inclusive Community Buildings so they reach smaller municipalities.
The federal government already funds energy-efficient, accessible retrofits and new builds for community spaces like libraries, recreation centres, and hubs. This is a real, existing funding source for projects like our library, YMCA, and Grand Trunk site redevelopment, and I want to see it expanded and made genuinely accessible to smaller municipalities that don't have large grant-writing departments competing against major cities for the same pool of money.
Local Impact for Stratford
Federal decisions aren't abstract—they decide if a senior in Stratford can stay in their home, if a young family can afford their first house, and how much of your property tax goes toward emergency services instead of parks and recreation. My role is to ensure that Stratford isn't just a recipient of federal policy, but an active participant in shaping it to work for us.