Canadian Heritage committee  In terms of what we just finished, we had about a $3-million budget in total. I don't have this year's in front of me, but I've had to cut about.... The budget last year still left us with a $150,000 deficit. I had to cut approximately $300,000 from the budget for this year in terms of balancing the budget and making priorities move forward for this particular year, because we're in the year where athletes are qualifying for the Olympics.

Canadian Heritage committee  No. As I said before, every coach who's funded, with the three national-level coaches—

Canadian Heritage committee  A couple of things.... One was that when we made the decision, we still had some athletes who Lisa was coaching. Her trip was already planned for the European championship. That's why, as I mentioned before, even though the decision to terminate her was in February, we made the decision that we would actually give her notice the moment the European championship was over, which was on March 17.

Canadian Heritage committee  I appreciate that.

Canadian Heritage committee  Currently, we have one contract woman coaching our top-level athletes. We have other up-and-coming female coaches coming through the system who are more at the provincial level. We are engaging them in training camps and other projects that we're working on with our provincial partners to give them more experience and develop their skills, but we currently have one contract female coach.

Canadian Heritage committee  She was a full-time employee at the time, but no, we did not seek...outside of the legal advice, if I understood your question properly. She was a full-time employee whom we terminated for financial reasons, again, just because of our budget situation, which meant that we had to make a number of cuts going into this fiscal year.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are two things that are false. First, because of our financial situation, we terminated Lisa's contract, which cost us—in terms of her salary, benefits and travel—about $120,000 per year. We've contracted a female coach to provide similar services for $20,000 a year. We're effectively saving about $100,000 in our budget, which really allowed us to balance our budget this year but still provide the services that we need to provide to our athletes.

Canadian Heritage committee  It was true that she told us she was pregnant, and we did the formal termination, but the decision to terminate Lisa was made in February.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  We stopped getting that money at the end of the fiscal year 2022. We kept Lisa on for another year through some other funding that we were able to get, again, through the government funding, which was called “return to sport” funding. We had a line item there that also said we wanted to continue the position of a female coach.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  We consulted two. The one I consulted first was a female Ontario lawyer. She said that because this contract was negotiated with Lisa—

Canadian Heritage committee  Then we found a Nova Scotia lawyer, Megan Thompson, another female. We have records to show that as of.... I contacted her on February 17. She gave me—

Canadian Heritage committee  I did. Because we had already made the decision and it was for financial reasons, we were told that we still had the right to terminate that position because there was no funding for that position, and we didn't have the funding in our budget.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. I can do that.