Hello, everyone.
The Maison de la famille is a service that complements the youth home that Mr. Vermette directs. We look after children from birth to age 10, pregnant women, and fathers who want to know what a family is. We try to meet children's needs, beginning with the basics. What is this? What should I do? What is a proper diet? What is eating? What does it mean to be warm? What does it feel like to be comforted? It is the Maison de la famille that answers these questions.
The Maison de la famille has existed for 18 years, and I would say that we help some 100 families per year. Many families have come to me to say that if it had not been for our services, they don't know what would have happened to them.
What we deal with every day is children who come to us frozen in the wintertime because they have no heating in their homes because it costs too much money. Children who are 1, 2 and 3 years old come to me asking for food because their parents have no money to pay for it. We take in mothers who are five months pregnant who have starved themselves because they must give the little food they have to their child and they do not have enough for themselves. These are realities we see every day, every week.
Obviously, if we qualify for the Canada Summer Jobs program, as Mr. Vermette said, we can hire an additional employee and thus offer activities to children who normally cannot afford them. For example, they do not have enough money to take the bus to the local swimming pool or the Granby Zoo. It is impossible for them to take part in this type of activity. They have no idea what such activities are. We definitely recommend that we be able to qualify for Canada Summer Jobs at all times. It is clearly an essential tool.
Another very important recommendation concerns the Community Action Program for Children, the CAPC, which is a subsidy given by the federal government. For the past three years, we have been told that we may not be eligible for this subsidy again because the program may not be renewed. Most community organizations for families operate solely with this subsidy. So local family support centres would be forced to shut down if they did not receive the CAPC. Each year, we have to wait four or five months before finally finding out that the program will be renewed.
I can tell you for sure that without the CAPC, we would be unable to offer even half of the services currently provided by the Maison de la famille to children aged 2 to 5, to mothers, to parents who want to meet for coffee, attend conferences, have discussions with our employees and receive support. Children aged 2 to 5 receive services from us that help them develop life skills: how can we learn not to shout? How can we ask for things without hitting our friends? This program definitely meets our needs. Without it, we would lose two employees and half of our funding.
This is a major concern. When people ask me whether we will qualify for the program next year, I tell them that I do not know. I hope so, but I just do not know. Therefore, one of our recommendations would be to ensure that we can count on receiving this program funding annually. We want to be sure of receiving it so we can plan for the future and perhaps create other services.
As concerns the Community Action Program for Children, what we need and what we are asking you for is more flexibility. The program is very rigid.
It is very complicated to fill out the applications.
As concerns the grant application as such, it's fine. However, the children have to be at least two years old and have at least three problems, or else we do not qualify for the program. It's not flexible enough. Just because people don't have families, have enough to eat and have no social problems, it doesn't mean that they should not qualify for the CAPC. It's too restrictive.
Those are our recommendations.