Thank you for the question.
A group of organizations have come together. All of them are pan-Canadian and have an impact across Canada. The ones I mentioned already are Catalyst, Women in Capital Markets, the ICD, the Clarkson Centre, the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, and the 30% Club. We came together because, quite frankly, we believe that the efforts are too fragmented. We all have the same goal and that is to advance women, but we feel there are too many small parts. We all have small budgets so the impact is very small, based on our budgets.
Also, by collaborating we believe there's an opportunity to have a larger strategy for Canada. We would like to create an appropriate Canadian solution. Recently we have had a couple of U.S. for-profit organizations telling us how to advance women. I'm thinking to myself “excuse me”.
Why can't we create a Canada-wide solution instead of having all these smaller organizations out there? We are hoping to create an alliance or an umbrella organization, and we have been starting to do that. So far, the Ontario government loves it because it is using us as a think tank to run ideas or issues by this alliance and to ask for its recommendations.
We would hope to create a larger alliance Canada-wide, and ideally we would love to have the federal government's support for that. Quite frankly, you need to have a carrot, and the carrot is always our budgets.