The Department of Canadian Heritage has been very supportive of our organization since the beginning of the Canada Arts training fund, which used to be under a different name but was the same thing, since about 1996, and has supported us very well.
It's a program that supports development in the arts. From the very beginning, we have been an anomaly, but it was understood that training for a second career for a dancer really is part of training to be a dancer. You have to have that support, because as we've heard, and Mavis Staines said, their parents wouldn't let them go into dance if they knew that at the end there was just nothing.
Over the last year, we have had some red flags flown at us by the Canada arts training fund because we are not an arts training institution. They are saying that they don't know what we're doing in their program because we don't fit their criteria so well. It was a surprise to us because, from the very beginning, we had been in the program and no one had mentioned anything.
For the dancers who are transitioning, where does that support come? It's unique because we are a unique organization, so we may not totally fit in arts training, but we don't really fit in health, and we don't really fit in education.
We are really looking to have the government encourage the Canada arts training fund to acknowledge the fact that dance is unusual, unique, and different, and that training to be a dancer involves preparing for transition.
We start talking to these dancers when they're still in school about having to keep their options open and having to do some education while they're dancing, so that they can start to prepare for this and don't hit 30 or 35 or, God forbid, have a career-ending injury at 26 and suddenly find they have nothing. That would be my recommendation.