Thank you very much for the question. We certainly appreciate the support we've had thus far from the party and your active involvement in helping us.
I've been in this position for five and a half years, so I've been through five budget processes. It's been interesting with minority governments in that there's not really been a successive kind of planning budgetary process. There have always been quick stops and starts, and then rushes, and then in some years not even the consultations.
I think the last times we had major renewal were in 2001 and then in 2005. In going through those processes, we went around to brief as many MPs with friendship centres in their ridings as we could, to articulate their support and to talk to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Canadian Heritage. When we brief the Minister of Canadian Heritage, we usually get supportive responses. It's an important issue, but there are always other budgetary challenges. Year after year, it's been the same kind of response.
This year again, we tried a little bit of a different process in starting a business case process with, originally, Minister Oda, to say, “Let's look at the long-term sustainability of friendship centres and how we can work together”. We came up with numbers together and agreed upon an approach. Then the election happened and there was a new minister. We believe that at that time the Department of Canadian Heritage was more interested politically in the Quebec anniversary and less in this program that's in the department. With Minister Moore, they're very supportive in terms of meeting early on, but we're still stuck in this process of government priorities and not having a broader view of, we believe, maintenance and management of a program.
We're now trying to get a friendship centre caucus of all MPs with friendship centres in their ridings. As you know, Jean Crowder has offered to be one of the first co-chairs, along with Chris Warkentin, to work together to try to get multi-party support. We don't believe this is a political issue. This is really, as you say, about the future of the country and how we work together. We see people from Newfoundland and Mexico flying over us to get to the tar sands to work when we have people in those communities they're flying over who are struggling and wanting those kinds of supports in order to be engaged in the Canadian economy. That's the reason for the inclusion of AHRDS and the core funding for friendship centres: to try to reach some of those challenges.
Every year we come to the pre-budget finance committee, we make our submissions, and we brief the minister. Our challenge is having it become a priority in any of the governments in terms of having them pushing it as we move forward.