Thank you for your question. I'm concerned that your question implies that we are not providing direct services. In our organization, we are providing a direct service, but it's advocacy.
We did a workshop in a women's shelter in northern Manitoba, in a small community. Some of the women in our workshop could not leave the shelter because they could not find a house to live in. Their children were not allowed to go to school, because children in women's shelters can't go to school as part of the policy.
The idea that we could not advocate for more social housing—and in this particular community there's a four-year waiting list for social housing—that we cannot advocate for that as part of our direct service to women and cannot encourage this particular woman, who probably had never met with a politician, had never written a letter to a politician; that we can't encourage her and support her in that work.... I don't understand how that works.
As to national organizations, we're a provincial organization, but we rely heavily on research from organizations like CRIAW, who provide the fact sheets on women's situation in Canada. Those are widely used in our work.