Ah, the journey of equality for women in Canada.
The Provincial Advisory Council of the Status of Women that I'm involved with does not receive, nor does it seek, Status of Women Canada funding. We're fully provincially funded to be the advocacy voice in our province. However, the grassroots women's organizations--the local status-of-women councils and other organizations that I've mentioned--in fact must seek the advocacy funding of Status of Women Canada in order to remove the systemic discrimination and move equality forward. These are interesting times, because our province currently will fund provincial women's organizations and local organizations to deliver services. They did that when Status of Canada, a number of years ago, decided it would no longer provide core funding, and went to project funding based exclusively on advocacy pieces, so the women's movement has struggled over the years with lots of changes to programming and funding.
This is probably the most devastating one, because the groups in my province and across the country do not see how they can use and access this funding to actually move the agenda forward, so there are significant problems at play.
Website application cannot deliver social development. Women have never complained in our province that they were unable to make an application to Status of Women Canada. There was a program officer in the province who knew the women, was easy to connect with, and had a budget to travel. No one ever said they were denied access to Status of Women Canada or its funding--but they will be now. A website doesn't replace communication.