I think you're absolutely right, there was no consultation and we were shocked. I'm not sure what the communication protocol is between government officials, the ministers, and the politicians and the bureaucracy, but we were told that our funding was coming; we were told it was going to be delayed slightly.
In fact, the call for proposals was opened the last week of August and closed on September 15. For those of you who have written HRDSC proposals--I'm not sure if that's still the acronym, but I think we know what I'm talking about--you know they're extremely difficult, they're extremely long, and they are very detailed. So we went ahead and wrote the proposals as we were asked. We spent hundreds of hours preparing these, and eleven days after the close of the call for proposals, we were told there was no money--eleven days.
So not only were we unprepared, not only was it unexpected--basically, I think as any normal person would, we assumed the money would be available because they had opened up the call for proposals, because they said there was funding available. Then to have it just close down was shocking, especially because the funding was so late this year, because it kept being delayed, because we were told that the new minister just needed some more time to relook at it, that it was going to come, it was coming, it was coming. So we were already working on a delayed schedule. We had hoped to have our money four or five months earlier, so it was not a pleasant surprise.