Public Accounts committee  I know it was a significant proportion. I don't have the exact figure, but I can probably get it for you. I think it had a huge impact, and I believe we still are working to repay what was lost.

Public Accounts committee  We will be putting it through the usual method we have for advertising for board members. We have gone through the existing board members to see if we can find contacts. I'm serious—this was not meant as a rebuttal to you—I'm really serious that if anyone can help us to find a qualified person with an expertise in finance who would be willing to serve on the board of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, please forward the name.

Public Accounts committee  We have worked with cities across the country to implement policies on anti-racism. We did that in partnership with UNESCO and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. We work in partnership with the Province of Ontario to deliver training across Ontario. We have worked in the past with various community organizations on their specific initiatives.

Public Accounts committee  The consequences of going to—

Public Accounts committee  Actually, our challenge on the board is to have other than visible minorities on it. We have a few, but I see the real challenge in going from 20 to 11 in terms of representing different regions in the country. It's hard to represent everything with 20, and it's even harder to represent everything with 12.

Public Accounts committee  Given that we have changed our fund manager, we have not reviewed all the criteria at this time. However, after one year’s operation, we are going to review both the extent to which the current manager’s objectives have been met and the criteria themselves.

Public Accounts committee  First of all, I don't know all the thousands, but I'm sure there are many. The ones who and other board members have approached are concerned by the amount of time they have to invest in the activity compared to the amount of remuneration that they usually get for doing the same activity elsewhere.

Public Accounts committee  For instance, the project I just mentioned on interfaith and belonging will engage Canadians across the country on the emerging issue of discrimination based on religion. This is an issue that has started to come to the fore, so in that sense we are ahead of the game. We continue to maintain our contacts and to highlight how people fight racism locally in dealing with all manner of issues, the way the black community in Nova Scotia is dealing with racism in Nova Scotia, the way aboriginal communities come at the whole question of participation in Canadian society.

Public Accounts committee  That is a very good question. Obviously we are always looking for additional sources of funding besides those we already have. We are discussing the possibility of doing some fund-raising to add to the resources we already have. We will continue to seek information about the various government programs to find out which ones we could apply to for funding.

Public Accounts committee  If you are asking me whether the time spent managing money takes time and resources that we cannot allocate to measures that are more active and direct pertaining to race relations, I can only agree with you. The answer is yes. Still, we must pay attention to the spending of public money.

Public Accounts committee  First, that the CRRF was established in itself is a major achievement. When you understand that our organization is actually a result of a partnership between a community and the government, this is very unusual, so even that is an achievement. Second, we've managed to create a profile for ourselves in the communities across the country.

Public Accounts committee  This is one of the areas where I'm not totally familiar with what we've done in the past year. We have held round table consultations, and in general we do that not to achieve a specific concrete result other than to raise awareness of the issues and engage people in the discussion of how to eliminate racism in Canadian society.

Public Accounts committee  The initiatives that we take relate to our mandate. Our mandate is one of research, sharing of information, running education initiatives, stimulating discussion and action across Canada to deal with racism on a daily basis. It is our view that the best way to fight racism is to ensure that people treat each other with respect every day.

Public Accounts committee  Good morning. Thank you for inviting us to take part in this discussion of the Auditor General’s report on the special examination of the Canada Race Relations Foundation. With your permission, I am going to try to shorten some parts of what I am going to read because I have added two more points.