I think it's important as well. Although Sisters In Spirit has not been affected by the cuts as of yet, there's no guarantee that it won't be impacted in the future.
I also want to ask you to recall that when Sisters in Spirit was initially tabled, it was a $10 million initiative, and it was cut to $5 million, based on being able to rely on the infrastructure within Status of Women Canada. They talked about resource sharing and said that we wouldn't have to go out and access different kinds of services that we wanted to from within our budget, because we could rely on the expertise at the Status of Women offices. Now that expertise is starting to go, and the infrastructure that we could rely on is not going to be there either.
When you're looking at streamlining and you're using technology and connectivity to increase access, you have to also balance that with the fact that not all women have equal access to technology and that there are huge gaps among those who have the technology. Newfoundland and Labrador still uses dial-up connections, so they are not able to get access as quickly as other places in the country are. There is no overall connectivity or technology process within the government. It's haphazard. There's no structured process that improves technology or access to technology for women, despite the fact that Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has been at the forefront of pushing forward technology on behalf of aboriginal women.
These cuts and this lack of research also stall many issues that for more than 100 years aboriginal women have been talking about. Valuable departments like Status of Women Canada, who take up research, show that from what an independent group says to what aboriginal women themselves say, yes, there's an issue. There are issues such as that of unstated paternity. There is still legislation that says if you're a victim of rape and you cannot name the father of your child, your child will not have access to status because you can't prove that the child is of aboriginal ancestry on both parents' sides. Then the Indian Act kicks in and says this child can have status, but the grandchildren will not. There are lots of impacts that affect no one in this country other than specifically aboriginal women. So I'd kindly ask you to remember all of those provisions that are in there.
Matrimonial property has been in place as an interim measure for 30 years. Even though Status of Woman Canada has helped us, through research, to bring it to the forefront, it's still taken us 30 years to get to where we are today. We can't believe what is going to happen to us now, when we don't have Status of Women Canada saying, “Yes, that's an important equality issue and there's research to back it up.” If we say it ourselves, we don't have the impact, and we don't get our issues put forward.