Canadian Heritage committee  Indeed, in the past we regularly—at least once or twice a year—had a meeting with the minister. With regard to the new minister, I have yet to have the opportunity to meet with her. I have sent a letter and an email and I'm waiting for a response.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, on racial discrimination, years ago it started out based on nationality, then it was skin colour, and then it just morphed, and eventually has become framed now in the context of religion. So really, religion is.... We're looking at the fact that underneath it is racism, but it's framed in the religious narrative.

Canadian Heritage committee  We are creating a network of almost 500 leaders from the various faith communities across Canada, as well as the cultural communities, and that's a result of the 24 workshops I mentioned earlier. In each workshop, we specifically invited the leaders from the various communities locally.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. The National Film Board, for example, is also a partner. We also work with OMNI Television. We work with many of the ethnic media in order to accomplish that communication and awareness aspect. I want to go back to LGBTQ and many of those other issues as well. Those are important issues.

Canadian Heritage committee  —with this limited budget that we can only focus on what we are able to do.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, in relation to, for example, the refugees and immigrants, we actually met as a board and committees just in the last few weeks. One of the things that was decided upon was that going forward we'll continue to work with the universities and municipalities, and by the way, the foundation is a founding member of the Canadian Coalition of Municipalities against Racism and Discrimination.

Canadian Heritage committee  The day-to-day struggle is really that many of our board members, who are part-time appointees, supposedly spend no more than two or three weeks a year for meetings, but I can tell you that I personally spend about two or three hours a day. Those are some of the challenges. We try to fill in the gaps.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Several years ago, around 2009, a consultant was hired by the Department of Multiculturalism to look into what we did. Part of the report said that at the time of the report, the foundation was really part of the chorus of protest groups. However, when they looked further, they said that based on the strategic direction that we adopted and the indicators that they had looked at, including the media reports and the surveys that were done across the country with various stakeholders and interested parties, they were beginning to see some hopeful signs.

Canadian Heritage committee  Right now we have 10 employees, including the executive director, who is a full-time GIC appointee. Seven of those employees are in permanent positions unrelated to the project grants. In terms of raising funds, we don't have a particular person dedicated to doing that work, but we have a very committed board of directors.

Canadian Heritage committee  For example, we partnered with the City of Richmond in B.C. For a long time there had been a lot of complaints in the public, in the media, talking about, for example, Chinese language signage. That caused a lot of angst in the local community. The city partnered with us. We hosted a one-day symposium.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think one of the things I can point to right away is the mayor's summit for racial inclusion in Winnipeg that was hosted by the mayor of Winnipeg. We were invited as a partner to deal with the fallout when Winnipeg was described by the media as the racist capital of Canada. During the session there were all kinds of comments from some of the media folks who said that people were just repeating all the complaints, and so what are you going to do?

Canadian Heritage committee  I always describe the funding as a congenital funding challenge. At the time the endowment was created, people were thinking we would have a 10% interest rate in perpetuity, but we know what the story is. In 2008, because of a market hiccup, the endowment went down to something like $18 million.

Canadian Heritage committee  We did a recent session, and another one is actually coming up in May, in Halifax. We were asked to postpone it at the request of one of our partners locally, the RCMP, but we also had a number of events in the past in Halifax, including an award of excellence symposium a few years ago.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, not yet.