We would have to be at least double where we are at now. We have been cut back so much that we are operating at less than half of what we need, and that is just to meet minimum standards, minimum emergency crisis standards, when people come to our door, not to even get to the kind of larger long-term, capacity-building or sustainability. Talking about advocates in the system, this is one of the fundamental problems. There are many resources and supports out there, but even for well-educated people who have significant resources—phones, the Internet, and all of these things—it's difficult to navigate all of the many systems. Often dollars go unspent, and resources are not accessed, because of the number of hoops they have to be get through.
We have a centre in Thunder Bay where they have brought together workers in one building, where one worker is for housing, one worker is for child welfare, one worker is for the healthy babies initiative, and it's a model.... We've had these community hubs where when a woman and her children come in, and if she comes in for employment, but then we find out she has nowhere to sleep tonight, and then we walk down the hall together.
Having this kind of wraparound care in every province would help us to work to end the violence, to build that capacity, and to make sure that an investment in a woman always results in long-term improvement for the entire family and community, because that increases the chances of those children having a better outcome, of having increased education, and for employment later in life.
Significant upstream investments, for us to be able to just meet the demand that's out there right now, would require double our current budget. To start making improvements and significant long-term improvements in the lives of indigenous women and children, we would have to be at minimum four times what we're at now. With that we also have to build the capacity in the provincial associations.