I'll have a go at that.
In my opinion, no, they don't understand what's happening. It takes a great deal of advocacy and a lot of education on the part of agencies such as ours with our front-line workers to get them to understand and to appreciate the impact of such changes.
You also have to consider the fact that as a charitable organization, we're restricted in how much of those advocacy pieces we can actually do on a daily or annual basis. We're very much restricted in doing that. The only thing we can possibly do is to indicate rather clearly that there are changes that aren't very friendly to the work we do with the immigrants we serve or the clients we work for and to become educated about them.
I would say no, absolutely not. For example, when Pat Hynes was sent to go and get more information, I was specifically invited--and it was by invitation only--to attend that session--