The community suicide prevention fund was announced earlier this month, and that's a very short window for spending the money in this fiscal year. There was a commitment to work with communities to fund their projects early in the next fiscal year so that they would get a jump on this. What I do know from the department is: there's been a lot of interest in this fund. I know that there are groups who have been able to finalize proposals and offer their own suicide prevention and intervention programming.
The Member mentioned that $45,000 is the cap. That doesn't mean that every group will apply for that amount of money. Some of the proposals that have come in are for significantly less money than that, so our hope is that more than five communities will benefit. Having said that, this is a brand new fund, and we need to test it out to see if it is the right amount of money. If it needs more money, then we're going to need to talk to Health Canada about more money. It's important for the community-based organization, whether it's an Indigenous government or a non-profit or a community government, to work with local counselling teams to plan the activity that they want funded and to make sure that there is support and connection there for the most effective program delivery. What the department does is focus on the uptake, how many people participated and what did they themselves report as outcomes. Because these are community-based projects and each one can be different, the department is not planning to formally evaluate each of the projects. What we know about suicide prevention is to increase protective factors and address risk factors, and my hope for this fund is that the money will do both of these things. Thank you.