I will make my answer as brief as possible. Core funding of $60,000, you know... What we need is $86,000 to keep up with inflation and have the same purchasing power we had in 1985. We wanted to be realistic, but when I heard what Mr. Grenier was saying earlier, I don't think that was realistic. I am convinced of the same thing as he is: namely that the federal government has to give us proper resources. Proper resources would be $86,000.
As you know, the agreements, the interdepartmental document and sections 41 and 42 require federal government departments to help us develop projects. We should not be required to know the workings of the public service like the back of our hand, we should not be required to be familiar with every program. We do not have the resources to do that. We should be able to work much more easily with departments such as Service Canada and others to set up projects in our communities.
With respect to the third item, we would like the funding formula to take into account the number of francophones served as well as the communities in which the associations must operate. In some communities, there are no newspapers, community radio stations or other media in French. Community development is a huge undertaking, and the people involved in it should have more funding. I certainly liked what Mr. Grenier suggested earlier. If equality is our objective, we are automatically at a disadvantage, because we do not have the infrastructure that exists in major centres to do community development work.