Status of Women committee  We have a best practice model already, and that's the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. There were things...the administration and the allocation of funding through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was incredibly effective. It was aboriginal controlled. It wasn't just first nations; it was first nations, Métis, and Inuit.

Status of Women committee  According to the 2006 census, that is the number.

Status of Women committee  Precisely. Continuity is so important. Program funding is important. They need to know that they will be able to provide the services next year, and the next, and so on. I know Treasury Board does five-year renewals. That's fine.

Status of Women committee  It's probably a lack of serious attention to the issues that aboriginal women are finding themselves in, in Canada; not enough support from governments—federal, provincial, and municipal—to provide, to continue to support places like Minwaashin Lodge, which are there to provide that kind of support.

Status of Women committee  There are several things. First of all, coming from a first nations community, a Métis community, or even an Inuit community to an urban setting, whether it's Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, or you name it, for a young woman, a teenage girl, maybe with a couple of children, it is, as Irene said, culture shock.

Status of Women committee  I wish I had some statistics to be able to support it, other than what I've read from the sources I found. Is it something more urban than rural? Again, I really can't provide any more clarification on that. I apologize. What your questions bring up, though, and what they provide me with is the opportunity to lead into the lack of knowledge and information Canada has about the lives of urban aboriginal people.

Status of Women committee  Sure. The people who work in the friendship centres across the country put in a lot of personal time. They work for very low wages. The amount of money involved and the number of programs that we have and the number of people we employ may give the impression that it's a lot. But given that 54% of the aboriginal population in Canada lives in urban centres across the country, meaning 54% of the 1.12 million aboriginal people counted in the 2006 census, it is quite a population.

Status of Women committee  Yes. That is definitely the case. What we report in State of the Friendship Centre Movement: 2009 is a compilation of the variety of programs friendship centres have, from St. John's to Port Alberni to Inuvik. Not all friendship centres would provide each one of those programs.

Status of Women committee  That is the core funding. That is the skeleton. We call it a skeleton because it is a skeleton. That $16 million has been frozen since 1996. The friendship centres program has not had an increase in funding since 1996, and we are at 2010. It is putting a major strain on friendship centres, because the dollars are just not as effective.

Status of Women committee  The core funding that we receive from the Department of Canadian Heritage is $16 million. That provides the core funding of approximately 116 of the 120 friendship centres. The rest of the money, the $114 million, is generated by the hard work that the people in friendship centres do to raise money from other sources, including provincial and municipal governments.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Okay. In 2007 the report states that aboriginal communities and organizations, as well as mainstream organizations and service providers, have long asserted that aboriginal women experience significantly greater rates of violence than non-aboriginal women in Ontario, and that many intersecting factors related to these levels of violence are unique for aboriginal women because they are directly related to such ongoing historical factors as colonialism, the impacts of residential schools, discriminatory provisions under the Indian Act, lack of recognition of Métis identity, and the residual effects of related community trauma, such as mental illness and poverty.

Status of Women committee  Madam Chairperson and members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, woliwon. Thank you for this opportunity to present to you a briefing on behalf of the National Association of Friendship Centres. Allow me to begin by acknowledging the Algonquin Nation who first inhabited this land that we are on today.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The friendship centres have had a long history of leveraging money from other federal departments, provincial and territorial governments, and municipal governments. The new funding will be brought into the friendship centres and will help to provide much-needed services for youth.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't think there's a lot of new money. I think it's replacing what was there.