Status of Women committee  It's a challenging question to answer because I think research, in most instances, does add some value. There is always a question of how much value the particular research adds, as opposed to funding for direct benefits. In a generic way, I find research to be useful in many cases, but not always.

Status of Women committee  Prior to the efficiency review, there were 130 FTEs, which is the term that is used to describe the staff. With supplementary estimates (A), we now have 77 FTEs in the department. So there are 76 people working with me when we're at full staff. The actual mandate of Status of Women was not changed.

Status of Women committee  We are, I think, officially called a departmental agency, whatever that means. The coordonnatrice reports directly to the minister responsible for status of women and heritage. While we are part of the portfolio that the heritage minister has responsibility for, we are an independent agency.

Status of Women committee  Yes. Indeed there are people who are working with us who were there before, and we value their corporate memory tremendously. We have a very good mix of new people and people who have corporate memory. We of course have to be more strategic and focused on the issues that we're looking at, and that's what we're trying to do, be very focused and strategic.

Status of Women committee  Well, I don't think I said it wasn't going to work. Again, I wasn't here when the decisions were made, so I'm not privy to all the discussion that went on. I think some of the regional offices out there were operating with people alone, and not necessarily getting the best efficiencies, where you have people who come together to share skill sets.

Status of Women committee  I'll do my best. Yes, we do track all travel expenditures, of course. It's required as part of our mandate. One of the ways that we are also getting out to people is we do work through our Service Canada offices, which are in many more communities than we are. We do send information through there—

Status of Women committee  We are mindful of the groups that have less access. We're trying to make sure the information goes out in many different formats, including community newspapers. We don't rely on just the Internet to get it out.

Status of Women committee  With respect, what the partnership fund does is it gives us an opportunity to actually create genuine partnerships where other partners are involved from the beginning of the project through to its completion and the evaluation. What that does is say that we know that other sectors of society—not just government, but the private sector, non-governmental, other levels of government—equally have responsibility towards ensuring that women will have full participation.

Status of Women committee  Yes, that was part of the efficiency review cuts.

Status of Women committee  I'm afraid I won't be able to help you on the first one, on why the changes were made, because I wasn't here at the time. I think they were made so that there would be a more direct benefit for women. The decision was made that the funding should be going to directly benefit women.

Status of Women committee  This, as you know, is the first year we're operating with four regional offices, and we have not yet had full staffing. We did receive some funding under the supplementary estimates, which is the subject of this meeting today, which will add more resources, or at least an additional resource, to each of our regional offices.

Status of Women committee  I'll do the best I can, because I wasn't here when it happened. As you know, there is $5 million for Sisters in Spirit, and this was the first year's payment. It turned out that Status of Women only had authority for grants, and this was a contribution agreement. So it was a technical error that required us to change our terms and conditions to have authority to pay under both grants and contributions.

Status of Women committee  I would have to look at the specific information, but in the past couple of years we have had a threefold increase in requests for access to information. In fact, already this year we've had double the amount we had in the first eight months of last year. We currently have one person working on the ATI requests.

Status of Women committee  One of my first priorities is to rebuild the organization. As you know, when we went through the efficiency review, a number of people left the organization, and some left even though they weren't affected. So we've been building a new and very strong team, including the members of my management team, whom you see here today, who are new to the organization.

Status of Women committee  Status of Women is part of an interdepartmental committee that is working on the issues around trafficking. We have been working very closely, for example, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to assist them and encourage them in the training they're doing for other police forces on how to identify victims of trafficking.