I would add, as I said earlier, that I think the opportunity is to create some pooled resources that respond to a local plan.
I think one of the challenges we have as a local community in responding to even the great big RFPs from the federal government is that they're on the federal government's timeline when something is a particular priority. I think the best ideas come when they've been developed locally and they've been well thought out. Then, when they're shovel ready at the local community, how do we engage the federal government? It really happens in the opposite direction. I'll use a small illustration.
In November of 2016 there was a call for proposals in regard to looking at homelessness. Family violence was one of the areas. Luckily, as a community we had been working with four organizations to create a new model of how we would address family violence, rather than relying almost solely on an emergency system. Because we were ready, we could meet the six-week turnaround in order to pull that proposal together. If the community hadn't already been working on this.... Communities see the opportunity of a big pile of federal money and hear little angels singing, but the realistic ability to optimize those dollars locally is not there when you're not able to build on something you're already trying to achieve.
It's about changing the direction. Here's the local strategy, here's what we're working on, and here are the priorities, so how do the federal government and the provincial government engage and support this? It's really in the other direction from when government is ready to release money and then we try to scramble to get it. Again, local funders are part of that problem as well.