Our portfolio is now divided in two. Half of it we can't touch, except to transfer some of the interest from that side of the partition to the other side. On the latter side of the partition, we can withdraw the funds for operations. The fund is partitioned, and some of it we are not allowed to touch.
In terms of what happened in 2008, many charities suffered tremendous losses in 2008. We were not the only organization invested in the stock market. You may recall how many charities throughout North America were severely affected by that stock market... I wouldn't call it a crash, but to us it felt like a crash.
Let me draw your attention to the fact that before 2008 the foundation was drawing something like $2 million and more from the interest. At the time it didn't look like a bad investment strategy.
This is something about myself. I was in the Department of Multiculturalism when the Canadian Race Relations Foundation was created on paper, and I was an executive director of the Japanese Canadian redress secretariat. I remember during the discussions at the time, somebody saying, “Let's assume a conservative amount of interest. How about 10%?”
If you remember how people talked, that's why we ended up in the situation we did, and we certainly weren't the only ones.