Our organization is a collective of 13 provincial-territorial member associations. For sure, our collective voice is going to be impacted, because we don't formulate our national perspective based on what's going on at the national office; it's from our grassroots women who feed into the provincial or territorial member, who then feed into the national level. With the lack of support at the provincial or territorial level, it will limit their ability to talk to grassroots women, to get issues out there in a quick manner. Quite often, discussions require short timeframes to get back. So it sends a ripple through the whole process that's been designed and built on what's here today, with no provision for how you make that adjustment to still hear grassroots women's voices.
Even things like the cancellation of the court challenges program, by which the average aboriginal woman would have an opportunity to bring her voice forward, has now been silenced.
It's a ripple effect that's going through, and every avenue through which she could talk to government about her issues is now shutting down. We're desperate to try to figure out how we still hear from the women every day who are struggling out there.