Absolutely. It's much more difficult to ensure that students get the kinds of supports that they want when numerous shelters and services, rape crisis centres, have to close their doors. There's a huge federal role for that. Target money to fund community organizations that can assist universities. We can't have every service available on campus that a student could possibly need.
The community can provide some of that, and it's perfectly okay for us to have a back and forth relationship with the community in providing some services. When the community services are gutted, we are, too.
The federal government needs to get back into the business of supporting community organizations that are working for social justice.
The funding to assist with research is also definitely more controversial. The way that SSHRC works.... Universities are still male-dominated institutions and still quite conservative. More risky funding projects are often the last ones to get funded, and sexual violence is still considered controversial and risky in terms of funding.
When you reduce funding for research and leave it up to committees that are still more conservative in terms of determining what will get funded, issues like domestic violence and sexual violence get less opportunity for research. So, it's increasing the pool of money so that you have higher than a 17% rate of success. SSHRC is at 17% right now. Out of 100 applications, 17 get funding. You need to increase that bottom line.