Status of Women committee  I'll carry on for the remaining time. My comments will focus on the needs of young women in northern communities, drawing on findings from CRIAW's FemNorthNet project, of which I am the director. FemNorthNet is a research alliance focused on three northern communities: La Loche

Status of Women committee  Yes, definitely. The federal government needs to work with the provinces and territories to invest, and ensure that health and social service needs are being met in northern communities. Where possible, through the environmental assessment process, they should be requiring that

Status of Women committee  We certainly want to encourage and promote the model of a university like the University College of the North and call for that model elsewhere, because, as you say, it's a successful model. What we're encountering in—

Status of Women committee  Yes, okay. Thank you. I think part of what we're learning through our work with women in northern communities includes the challenges they also face with distance communication. They've made it really clear to us in our research alliance that working through Internet, webinars,

Status of Women committee  Perhaps I just need to clarify that it's our research, with our community partners, so we're not reaching out directly—

Status of Women committee  —and what can work better, and to be able to advocate alternatives, things that will make improvements, which this committee is seeking to do around looking at young women.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure about the early days, but I do know that CRIAW's whole creation and early strength relied very much on funding from Status of Women Canada. It, like many other national bilingual women's feminist organizations, really got started through Status of Women Canada. We've

Status of Women committee  We went through a very difficult time. We had to lay off our full-time executive director. We went from a staff of five to a staff of two who were part-time. So we really struggled. The board had to step up to the plate, and volunteers really had to take on trying to run the orga

Status of Women committee  Totally. Even now, for this project, we're starting to get findings for research on women in the north. We've been wanting to update fact sheets, like the fact sheet on violence against women and the fact sheet on immigrant and refugee women, for a long time. Just recently we h

Status of Women committee  Sure. I think research is really important to be able to bring forward new information, to bring forward the factual basis, and to bring forward new discoveries and new information. Sometimes it takes the form of quantitative data, and sometimes it's in the form of voices, such a

Status of Women committee  I think it does have an effect. It certainly had an effect on CRIAW. We went through and are still sort of going through some very difficult years as a result of the change in the funding criteria for Status of Women Canada. We were lucky in getting funding from SSHRC to be able

Status of Women committee  What's the number one thing? It's always hard to say.

Status of Women committee  For Status of Women Canada, I think that continuing to fund research and advocacy is important, as is the funding of national women's organizations or women's organizations. Part of what Status of Women Canada has done, as well, has been to continue to dispense a lot of money.

Status of Women committee  Definitely.

Status of Women committee  No. CRIAW has a long history of working with community partners and of bridging that gap between academia and community. We started to look at SSHRC funding and we're having success there.