Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The NGOs are just one form of organizing a group of people together with like-minded philosophies and goals and desires to advance the causes that they work for, whether they be environment or women’s issues or family violence issues or a whole number of areas that NGOs are involved in.

In terms of being able to access program funding or tap into government programs, this government considers applications from groups other than NGOs, because we are very well aware of the fact that small communities don’t necessarily have these NGOs. So we often work with local societies or band councils or municipal governments or regional corporations. In that regard we give as much consideration to groups that are not NGOs from communities.