SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — The Trail--Transition Housing for Veterans
May 27, 2021
Honourable senators, I am speaking today in the first of a series dedicated to highlighting the unfortunate plight of many retired Armed Forces members and veterans and what Le Sentier — The Trail Transition Housing for Veterans is doing to help them.
Statistics from 2017 have shown there are 58,000 “traditional” veterans from World War I — The Great War — and World War II, and the Korean War, and 600,400 “modern times” veterans from UN peacekeeping missions and the wars in the Middle East who reside in Canada. Of those veterans, 120,000 live in Quebec. In 2018, veterans accounted for 7.7% of Canadians living with housing problems.
In 1979, the non-profit Fondation Maison Biéler Inc. was created with the sole mission of providing affordable housing to independent seniors in downtown Montreal, with priority going to veterans and retired members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
In 2017, to free up funds to realign the foundation’s mission to better serve its clientele and since the buildings were no longer housing veterans as was initially intended, Maison Biéler was taken over by the City of Montreal. The same decision was made in 2020 with the transfer of its second facility in downtown Montreal, Maison Jean Brillant. The City of Montreal has maintained these buildings to continue to provide affordable housing in their downtown core.
Since then, the foundation has redefined its mandate. It now focuses on helping and serving military members and veterans, young and old, as they transition to civilian life by offering rehabilitation therapies tailored to their needs. This subsidiary of the parent foundation is now called Le Sentier — The Trail Transition Housing for Veterans and will be the subject of this series.
Honourable senators, I look forward to continuing to tell you about Le Sentier — The Trail and their existing services, their therapeutic equestrian centre and their plans for a state-of-the-art facility in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue in the next segments of the series. Thank you.