Thank you.
Again, I know I said it very quickly, but I don't think most people understand how this program came to be.
Rachel Wernick first came to visit our office in October 2017 to see about our capacity.
On June 29, 2018, we were awarded $800,000 for a youth service initiative to test programs to engage youth nationally in service. Of course, this had been a long-standing [Technical difficulty--Editor] the government launching a national service program.
On May 19, ESDC asked us to put together a white paper on how the civil service could implement a national service program.
On August 21, 2019, they came to us again to deepen that conversation.
On March 6, they asked us to prepare again a follow-up white paper for their civil service.
These were requests that came to us from the civil service because of our capacity on this. This wasn't out of the blue. This wasn't a sudden pandemic issue. We had been the go-to for the government in helping to support, as were many other charities, so we have a deep relationship with Rachel Wernick and ESDC.
I feel bad that she got dragged into this also. This whole program should have just happened for kids.