Can I go first, Karen?
We think the cuts are really a drop in the bucket when it comes to the whole budget. This department, Status of Women, is one of the departments that receives amongst the lowest budget allocations. The cuts will take us back not just a little bit, but decades.
In the Canadian Federation of University Women, we've been working for 88 years on these issues, and in particular for 30 to 40 years on the issues I mentioned. The ramifications are huge for women, because whenever you have a setback, it's very hard to come back to where you were. We were actually advocating, and have been since the eighties, for a doubling or maybe more than a doubling of Status of Women's budget, and we would like to see a minister at Status of Women with full cabinet status. So in terms of our advocacy, this is a huge step back.