Not right now; we were, and in part it was due to the Treasury Board's guidelines on the grants and contributions that govern the types of submissions and due process that need to take place.
One of the problems we ran into is when an application would take place, the department would not start the review until April 1. The program should start on April 1. Never mind the review starting on April 1; the review should start in January. We made some structural changes because we ran into that very issue. We receive our core funding in July or August or September or later, and we have to have short-term loans, which are not eligible expenses under Treasury Board guidelines, thus reducing our funding capacity.
The Department of Canadian Heritage should be congratulated for taking the necessary measures to have front-end accountability measures built in earlier in the process to review the kinds of grants we get earlier; that has been changed. In fact, we, today, are still waiting for funding for a program from HRSDC that's supposed to start April 1. We've had our proposal in since February and we're still waiting for word on the status of that application. There are a number of examples.
So it's a systemic issue. I think it's relating back to grants and contributions and Treasury Board authorities and how they're interpreted by each department. I think it puts a greater onus on making sure all the.... I think they're more concerned about process than outputs, which is always surprising to us.
We feel they should be more focused on the outputs of the programs as opposed to the process to get to the proposal and the application.
We got through this with Heritage, and we're happy to share that experience with any other officials. I know Indian Affairs with the education grants would be slightly different, but it is a challenge for sure.