Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would first like to make a statement to follow up on what was said earlier by the minister with respect to immigrant women.
There was a great deal of discussion this morning both by the minister and members opposite with respect to programs for immigrant women, assisting immigrant women on the ground and all of these things, which of course is fair. I'm someone who has lived the immigrant experience and I worked for about 30 years with immigrant women in the city of Toronto. I have a strong understanding of what they go through, I can assure you.
I'm also a co-founder of NOIVMWC. I also know that if it wasn't for a charter challenge to the Government of Canada in 1986, immigrant women would not have received English as a second language subsidized language training. It was deemed at the time that women did not need language training and so on.
There are still many barriers. Multicultural health is an issue. Immigrant women deal with certain health issues in different ways. On language there are a lot of barriers. The fact that we have charter rights doesn't mean they automatically are applied to women in this country. You have to fight for them and you have to challenge them, as everyone knows.
My question is, having removed the advocacy part of the criteria, will NOIVMWC be one of those organizations that will be defunded once the new criteria come into effect?