Status of Women Canada did not ask Sisters in Spirit to change how it operates or its direction. One five-year project was signed by the Government of Canada in 2005. The purpose of this project was to research the issue of aboriginal women who have disappeared and been killed and to raise awareness about it. The work has been completed. The terms and conditions of the project provided an end date, which was March 31, 2010. The project ended then.
We began to speak with people from the organization long before that time, in 2009—the year I started—to see what would come after the project. The organization already had a project called "Evidence to Action" that was a follow-up to the first phase. It involved doing community work to tackle the situations that led these women to become victims of those situations. We told them that we were interested in working on these things.
We began to explain to them the terms and conditions of Status of Women Canada. We put aside the maximum amount of money each year, since we can use up to $625,000 a year to work with an organization. Then we asked them to give us their plans.
They gave us an action plan that we analyzed. We told them that we wanted to break it down to see what could be done with Status of Women Canada and that we had other federal partners that could also get involved in other areas.
This takes time. We worked with them for a long time to try to develop initiatives. I feel that the organization would really like to continue to do what it had done over five years. However, the government was very clear, in that it wants to take action and concrete measures to prevent and eliminate these vulnerability factors in the communities.
I think that we now have a project that could move forward to receive funding. If everything falls into place properly, it should move through fairly quickly.
That said, we have not asked the NWAC to disrupt the activities that they want to launch. They can do what they wish with the significant funding they are receiving from other partners or other departments.