I can possibly try to shed some light on it.
Until all the provinces sign on, all criminal injury compensation or compensation programs that victims are able to apply to are all administered provincially. They used to be administered federally, or moneys used to come from the federal government, but since 1989 we have had what's called the victims' justice fund, which is a fund made up of the fines by all persons convicted of a speeding offence or whatever. That goes into a fund. That came about in 1989, along with victim impact statements.
But this fund is administered by the Department of Justice. The fund does not sustain organizations. It's for project funding. So organizations are always caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to projects. If you don't have the money to pay staff, then you cannot do the project. And if you apply for the project funding, there are very, very strict criteria and stipulations on it.
We've applied for two of them now and it seems to be coming along all right, although it's most difficult. When you apply for government money you have to be very, very.... For instance, we applied to put out a newsletter, something we used to do years ago. This newsletter has to be monitored and has to be read by the Department of Justice before we can release it to the Canadian public. So it's really, really difficult to be government-funded and to be able to afford to do the type of work that we at Victims of Violence are able to do and have been able to do for years without government constraints.
So again, I would rather see that money going to benefit seniors.