The first plan that allowed this was what we called the Dion plan. It offered the possibility of basic funding, as it was called at the time—the terms have been changed a bit since then. Such permanent funding revived the FAJEF and the federal network of all the associations because it was possible to establish a presence in every province.
This created a network of people who talked to each other. With a network comes collaboration, and several national projects have been launched.
The roadmap was created, and funding was then based on well-defined projects. Since the network already existed, gains were not lost everywhere, but many provinces that had not received as much funding per project had to give up on maintaining a presence.
Extraordinary projects have been set up focusing on training and information, which are undoubtedly very important. However, the need for funding per project and for those projects to be defined within that dual focus has made us lose a little flexibility to adapt. And as I said earlier, it has also lost us the possibility of seeing more “one-off” projects in a community.
Without making it into a federal funding project, there could be some collaboration with seniors, for instance. The Ontario elder abuse project is not a national program, but it was created because the AJEFO had a presence in the francophonie network and someone in the seniors network identified a very specific need.
This flexibility, which is ensured by the presence of each AJEF, helps to identify needs and create projects more easily, but also to ensure that the same thing is not repeated in every province and every network. We use the strengths of each one, which we are familiar with because we are in the network. This would be much more difficult without a presence.