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I am proud of Justin Trudeau’s plan to bring 25,000 Syrians to Canada.

Every day I read new stories that mention cities like Saskatoon excitedly anticipating the arrival of the refugees, who are fleeing a horror that few of us could ever imagine. The contrast between Canada and some of the states down south has never been sharper than in the past couple of weeks.

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While many Canadians are determined to do this right and welcome families into our country, where they no doubt will change and enrich the Canadian fabric, there’s something that we are missing.

Tonight, there are about 30,000 people in Canada who are homeless, and we are doing almost nothing about that. There are also thousands more who are forced to live in conditions that we would not house refugees, but these people aren’t able to access safer and more livable shelter.

Some talk about this in terms of being an ever present problem, yet Alberta has made tremendous progress in solving it. Medicine Hat has met the challenge. Several American cities have eliminated part of the problem (like housing homeless veterans) or made significant inroads toward solving all of it. It’s a solvable problem that is actually cheaper to fix than manage.