I have a couple of comments. Very clearly, in terms of the child welfare situation, in a sense this is a good example of putting kids at risk in an area where there is a clear federal responsibility. Our reason for presenting this as a case study was to show that there are some very real examples to show that not providing appropriate funding within what would be considered an appropriate standard, or comparable standard, has real costs and real implications for children now and essentially in the future, because of the inappropriate nature of the interventions that result from that lack of funding. I think child welfare is a good example.
We have also done a lot of work in terms of health. We actually feel we're on the brink of a health crisis in terms of access to health care. In terms of access to health services, we feel similarly--and we've worked very closely with departments to look at the impacts of those--that we're in a situation in which there's going to be loss of life or loss of limb, or other similar and very real and tangible losses.
We can go down the list in terms of education, and so on. It represents similar lost opportunities. Our point is somewhat similar to the point made by the oil sands and other groups--we really feel that this infrastructure is necessary to be part of participating in this prosperous future that seems to be out there for Canada. To us, dealing with these issues will enable us to participate fully and vigorously in these opportunities, but only if our youth have access to good education and similarly good access to the training opportunities. We see it as both a challenge and a very real area of difficulty.
I've tried to express some of the human terms, but I want to go back to the individual community example. In our analysis, these funding restrictions actually represent a 45% reduction in terms of costs that should be there to run those systems appropriately; those costs run from $1.5 million, depending on the size of the community, to $13.9 million in real terms at the community level.