Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and welcome to all our guests this morning.
Ms. Epners, along with the chair, I also was actually flabbergasted by some of these statistics. One of my first responsibilities when I came to Parliament four and a half years ago, as I sat on the human resources committee, was to do a four or five month study on literacy. When these numbers came up, 42%, it was almost unbelievable, but every witness who came forward did tell us that those were the statistics.
So I'd like to talk to you briefly about this. Literacy is something that is very interesting to me, that I've follow very closely and that I've supported in Manitoba. I know that in the small francophone communities of Manitoba, nine centres have closed lately under the auspices of Pluri-elles, a francophone group out there. We know how difficult it is to get people involved in the first place. There's a lot of shame involved with this. To get people out and even admit that there are some literacy problems is a big thing, so I wonder if you're going through the same thing.
Number one, people must be extremely disappointed. Are you losing staff? Are you losing counsellors, as we are in Manitoba, for instance, because of these funding cuts?