While we're talking about a shift on how money has flowed, I want to point to one of the pillars of the friendship centres. Friendship centres run independent of political organizations. That was the beauty. It's what attracted me as an individual to work with the friendship centres, to try to set up an operation in a community that focused on people rather than on whether they're Inuit or Indian or Métis.
If the money is run through one of the national organizations, then you fall under their guidelines or under that umbrella, and it moves away from the intention of friendship centres to run independently, outside political organizations, political bodies. How would that affect the friendship centres?
I could see it in some of the communities, where the chief or the Métis president would then be in charge of the friendship centres and steer money. It would go towards their membership, not necessarily towards the people who need it or the people who come into the community who don't belong to a band or a Métis council or an Inuit organization.