Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Cousyn, I can tell you that while the problem is probably nowhere more acute than Saskatchewan and perhaps British Columbia, we're hearing about this problem right across the country, including certainly in my province of Nova Scotia.
A few months ago, I talked to a fellow who's an excavator operator and who'd just come back from working six or eight weeks I think in Alberta. He and his wife were considering moving there for the last five working years of his life because he was making three times as much there as he was in Nova Scotia. So it's a problem that is spreading more and more across the country.
I'm sorry Ms. Yelich left, because she was talking about literacy, and I want to move to that for a second. She was saying that they're not actually cutting. Of course, we know that they're spending $17.7 million less on literacy. The minister said in fact, in the early weeks after the cuts were announced, that they weren't going to be funding advocacy and lobbying, which is how they described the work of the national, regional, and provincial organizations in the literacy area.
However, contrary to what she said--I think she's mistaken about this--last Wednesday there was a conference call from the Department of Human Resources to literacy groups, to the provincial and national and regional organizations, that we're going to let you apply now, and we're going to consider your applications that you put in by September 15, the deadline.
It's not a situation where they're now saying that they're just cutting advocacy or lobbying--if in fact those groups could be properly described as doing advocacy and lobbying only, which they can't, in my view. They are in fact now saying that it's still $17.7 million cut, but we aren't necessarily cutting people involved in these national and regional groups that are doing this so-called lobbying and advocacy.
I want to ask particularly the Federation of Labour about the kind of literacy work you're doing. My impression is that it's labour-sponsored, so government money is not involved. Or was there money from the national literacy strategy for that?
Other than that, what are you seeing and hearing in the literacy field as a result of these cuts?