Thank you.
In respect to the Auditor General, we clearly support the need for the Government of Canada to have a strong audit function in respect to auditing its own practices. I think the concern of the sector is that we're already, frankly, subject to multiple audits under the grants and contributions processes. Sometimes the grants are multi-departmental: there may be a Heritage Canada component that supports volunteerism, for example; or there may be an Industry Canada program that supports consumer protection. With these very small organizations, it's helpful to understand that 46% of them have under five employees and their ability to sustain multiple audits is part of the problem and not really part of the solution we would see. So our representations are about fewer administrative demands on the organizations so that they can focus more on helping people in the communities and not have the personnel who are trained to do that filling out forms in the office all day.
In terms of long-term funding, this is a really a very critical issue for our sector. For many of you who are active in your communities and have served on these boards, you will understand that the human resources cycle you refer to is an in-and-out-the-door policy; grants end and three months later they get restarted again and people have to be terminated and rehired. It does interfere with the ability of these organizations to have effective human resources planning.
There are five or six areas where the lack of long-term funding really impacts on these organizations. I'll give you one very practical example. It's in the area of insurance. By definition, organizations in our communities that are out there delivering summer camps to disabled children or providing shelters for battered spouses and for homeless people are doing high-risk things with a high-risk clientele, and they're not able to do that unless they can have insurance to cover their staff and their volunteers. With liability insurance rates rising by 25% and none of the grants and contributions and contracts necessarily including provision for insurance, it becomes impossible for many of these organizations to carry out the very services that we would like them to in dealing with higher-risk clientele.
The same applies to directors' and officers' insurance. In order to be a not-for-profit corporation or a charity, you must have a board of directors. If I approach any of you about coming onto the board of an organization and advise you that there's no liability insurance and that you will be personally liable for any acts or omissions of that organization, or any of its staff, the likely response of most individuals is they are not going to serve on that board. This is one of the repercussions of the lack of infrastructure funding and long-term funding, that the organizations have trouble attracting the qualified people to their board who they need in order to comply with their legal obligations.