I just want to talk a little bit about the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
In 2000 the Native Women's Shelter had a project called Moving Towards the Seventh Generation. It was directed at reversing the effects of residential schools. We had it from 2000. It was cut on March 31 of this year, and the implications are humongous. We had so many different physicians over the years in order to help our women heal from the effects of residential school and also the intergenerational effects, because not all the women may have gone to residential school, but their mothers did, and therefore they lost their language, their way of life.
I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible, because I could really talk about it for a long time.
It's really huge that we've lost it. I think there is some documentation saying that residential schools opened in the 1600s, so there are so many years that we had residential schools, and yet they only give us 10 years to heal. It's not enough, and we are trying to make a lot of awareness about this issue and to see how we can have it reinstated, because there are women who come to our shelter for the services we used to provide.
We had an enormous number of services through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and now we have basic services just for the women, so we actually have to let women know, “Well, we no longer offer that.” They would sometimes send women from northern communities, not because they were homeless or for whatever issue, but they were coming because of the services, because they knew they could see an art therapist and a psychotherapist, and that we had traditional healers there. And they were coming for the workshops.
So it's huge. I guess if you have questions later on.... I don't want to say too much.
Thank you.