Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  That's right. The community is coming to us and saying, “We want one plan. We want one report. You departments need to get together.” So I think there's a growing trend for that, and we're being responsive.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  It did fall off the radar. The committee did meet about a month or two months ago, and it's planning its next meeting. In between, the working group has been meeting to try to do this documentation of all of the programs and services we have as departments with interest in the issue, and then to figure out the lay of the land right now and where we could look for ways to work better and smarter with what we have, and figure out where there are opportunities within those programs to maybe alter how we address the issue and change on the basis of what's now—

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  I think the Public Health Agency of Canada committed that we would follow up and have them provide that information to the committee.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  I'll just add another comment regarding a new approach—I wouldn't say trend—that some communities are trying. We are working, for instance, with Health Canada to try to get to comprehensive community planning, so the communities would put together their plans and the departments would look at them jointly.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  We can get Public Health to provide some documentation, because they collect it on behalf of all the departments. We can let them know that some follow-up is required with this committee on the information around that initiative.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  The family violence initiative committee is usually at the director general or assistant deputy minister level, and that group is supported by a working group, which is much more a line managers group. That's the construct that's been operating for that initiative.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  Those funds go to cover the cost of the 105 agencies we now have—there's been a growth in the number of first nations child and family service agencies across the country—as well as to reimburse provinces for their services. Certainly when we started a long time ago, we probably weren't providing sufficient funding to cover the needs in communities.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  Since that case was launched in 2007, there's been significant augmentation of resources for the child and family services program. We're now at $630 million a year, which is a significant increase, even from 2007. There's an additional $100 million a year going into child and family services over what there was when the case was launched in 2007.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  That's $205 million over those years, the amount we spent cumulatively. Through our budget, which is about $30 million a year, we spend about $18 million, a little more on the 41 shelters and their operations. We fund the national aboriginal circle that supports that group of 41 shelters.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  The 41 shelters are available to all first nations communities, but because of their locations, they can't serve them all, so communities that aren't close to those shelters will access provincial services or provincial shelters instead. There are about 3,000...I don't have the figures in front of me, but about 2,300 women and about 2,500 children benefit from the services of those 41 shelters every year.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  We've worked with jurisdictions as they've moved their approaches to more prevention, early intervention programming. We've made those changes as well. Since 2007 we've rolled out that enhanced prevention-focused approach to six jurisdictions, and we're working with the remaining jurisdictions to help transition them as they make more investments and design their programs to be more prevention focused.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  I'm not sure that we can reconcile. We do have departments with programs that serve.... Our department is focused on reserve. But aboriginal women are across this country. There's a complexity of services and municipal, provincial, and federal jurisdictions that deal with this population in terms of providing safety and security for women and children.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  I'm sorry. It's Public Health.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  Certainly in the area of income assistance reform, we are formalizing our relationship with Human Resources and Skills Development, as well as with Health Canada, in a regional and a national context to bring the three departments together to work with first nations communities as well as with provinces to get to better integrated programming from a client's or an individual's perspective rather than from the program's perspective.

Special Committee on Indigenous Women committee  There is the family violence initiative that involves a number of departments. PHAC has the lead for that, and we're a member.