I'll just give you a little bit of history, because I was the first health director of the Native Women's Association of Canada back in 2005. We applied for and received funding from the first nations and Inuit health branch of Health Canada to delve into different health topics, such as maternal and child health, aboriginal health human resources, FASD, early childhood development, and diabetes. The issues that were of great concern to aboriginal women were our concern as well.
We applied for project funding. Every year we got the funding and we would develop whatever we could develop. We would raise the awareness of these issues to our constituents and try to address the issues. We have done very well. As a matter of fact, one of our products on suicide prevention was identified—this was for young girls, as a matter of fact—as a best practice last year.
So as I said, we really thought that we would continue this work. We were very proud of our health unit, and consequently we were very surprised when they cut us at 100%. What will that do to the national office? Well, it's one-fifth of our budget. Six of our staff had to be let go. They had to be laid off. That seems to be the end of our health unit.
So yes, it doesn't only impact us at the national level. It's going to impact our constituents as well. When we had our annual general assembly or special meetings throughout the year, we would talk about whatever issue there was and whatever project we were developing. We would bring that information to them and get their input. We would also go to the tables at the national level, where they would talk about diabetes prevention, for example, or maternal and child health. We would have somebody from our health unit there to give their expert advice and to develop better programs and better policies.
There will be a tremendous backlash, I think, on the health of our women and girls.