Thank you. Maybe I could speak to what we're hearing nationally. I don't know if members from TASSC or Edith from Val-d'Or have any comments about what they're experiencing locally.
We have heard that there are increases in calls to friendship centres for support with violence in the home. What's happening because of the isolation measures is that where we put people, or where we can remove or move people, is very limited for shelters that friendship centres are running or partnering with.
Again, I'll go back to how availability doesn't always mean accessibility. Just because the funding has been available—and theoretically friendship centres should have been able to access some of that—I can't say there's been widespread access by friendship centres. A lot of the first nations funding for shelters went to on-reserve funding, very rightfully so. Also, then, the funding for women's shelters just generally went to a lot of the mainstream shelters, women's shelters within the urban spaces.
We end up in that jurisdictional gap again. If there's something available off reserve, because we're seen as indigenous non-profits, they think the federal government has given us money for something, or that it's the federal government's responsibility, and the federal government is saying that this money is available to all organizations, we should be able to access it through those means and we don't need a specific amount for urban indigenous.
Yes, we definitely have heard about the increase. The ability for friendship centres to access the funding has really been quite piecemeal across the country. Certainly, nationally we haven't been able to get anything cohesive through our office, not to say that we should, but that's been our experience.
I don't know if Edith or TASSC might have more localized experiences.