Good morning. My name is Audrey Lawrence. I'm the executive director of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada.
Thank you very much for having us here and listening so openly to our comments.
I want to echo and say ditto to everything you have said. I just would like to add some other salient points. One, this is the 35th anniversary of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, which formed itself to address the issue of improving aboriginal health through improvements to nursing practices and through the support of aboriginal nurses.
As mentioned, with the fact of the uncertain funding structure we went from being operationally funded by Health Canada, which we had been working with in partnership over the 35 years on and off, from 100% funding down to only getting the 10% funding from submitting projects. We have to lay off staff and then possibly be able to re-hire--