Thank you.
Yes, me too. That was a terrific presentation. You put in a tremendous amount of stuff.
I agree with you on a whole lot of things. I'm going to tell you some of the things I agree with and what we should do about them. Then I'll ask you questions on them, and then you can comment.
One of them is the root cause. Economics is a major cause, there's no question. The economic conditions of women, whether in Canada or abroad or in the developing world, the dire poverty that women live in, and their inability to access proper economic stability of any kind are major issues. In fact, this committee was to be looking at economic security for women before we started on this one. We thought we would do them both together. And it makes sense to do both together. Eventually, we'll get to that. I agree with you 100%. The root cause is economic, a vulnerability that women have.
I wanted to ask you a couple of things, some of which you alluded to. You said that the Status of Women was taking the lead in this area and was funding consultations. Other organizations have appeared before us, and advocacy groups have said the same thing--not on this, but that they themselves were doing some work.
Can you tell us a little more clearly how the cuts to Status of Women and the change of criteria will affect this kind of work, both from the Status of Women Canada and other NGOs on the ground?