Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this area has been a challenge for us in the past when we have been going through reduction exercises in government, for example, to try to offer the NGO partners some stability in terms of their own budgets and planning. Certainly we are very much aware that they would all like to get to a place where we could be offering them three-year funding agreements so they would be able to keep staff, guarantee staff and they would not have to lay them off come March 31st. This has been a big concern for NGOs.

Of course, it is difficult for the department in all cases to be able to give commitments on funding for which we have not yet had approval in this House. We kind of get caught in a catch-22 where it is hard for us to make commitments two years in the future when we have not gone through our own budget process yet.

However, we have had some success with our federal partners in terms of the agreements we administer on their behalf, for example, Brighter Futures, Building Healthy Communities programs. A lot of those monies go to support NGOs. In fact, a vast majority of that money goes straight to the NGO community. In that sense, in some of those agreements where we have demonstrated successful programs, we have been able, because we sign a multi-year agreement with the federal government, to offer multi-year agreements with some of those partners. Our goal is to try to expand that and make that more, particularly for the more stabilized and mature organizations that have a demonstrated track record of both good administration and really good quality of product. There are many of them out there. Thank you.