Our community is made up of a majority of women. Some 65% to 70% are women because of that live-in caregiver program, for the last 20 years. In terms of services, we do not have any core funding and we also do not have the same services that other immigrant service societies are delivering. We do our services through volunteer efforts of the community. We have several organizations in our community doing this, and they are supporting the women who are victims of human rights violations, of exploitation. Even for legal services, we have to look for lawyers who are giving us pro bono services in order for the community to help their members who are in this situation.
We have women who have been imprisoned here in Ottawa, so we have to look for lawyers. There are also increasing numbers of women in Toronto who are being criminalized. A few months ago we supported a woman who was charged with theft by her employer. There was no way for her to pay for a lawyer, so we had to go to the legal aid services. Also, because of the lack of legal aid funding right now and because these women are not able to get services from legal aid, it was really difficult for this woman to get the lawyer. We were able to get another pro bono service from a young lawyer who supported her, and her case was discharged. So she is still here and continuing to work as a domestic worker.
So there are a lot of cases right now. This is the reason that the community, especially the women in our community, are calling for the scrapping of this program, because it is us who are really hard hit by the situation. We are very, very much affected by the experiences of these women because we're the first ones to hear their stories.