As Jamal mentioned in his opening statement, the immediate impact is on our lease.
The lease was signed for five years based on CIC's insistence. We were working from a different location before 2008. We were told to move from that location and they would find a better place, better furniture, and so on and so forth. Fine, we don't care: if you pay for it, we'll do it; otherwise, we'll not move.
The new location requirement was that we had to sign the lease for five years. We contacted the CIC about the lease issue. They said it was no problem, to go ahead and sign the lease; they'd pay the first month and the last two months of the five-year lease. And they did that.
Then, after we were told that there would be no more funding beginning April 1 of this year, we didn't know what to do. There were still two years left on the lease. In fact, last week we informed the landlord that the last two months of the lease...we can use that deposit. The landlord told us, no, we can't; we signed the lease and we have a legal obligation.
On the one hand, we didn't know what to do. We sent an e-mail to CIC asking them what do we do now: you advised us to sign the lease with the landlord, you paid the deposit of the last two months, and you agreed, you gave the approval. But now they will not respond to us.
On the other hand, the landlord keeps asking us...and we're scared. The board is thinking that if the landlord comes tomorrow and locks the door, our office people won't....
We don't know what's going to happen next Monday. The day before yesterday, the landlord dropped off another letter for us saying that we have until February 14 to pay the rent for this month. We have not paid it yet.