[President's Report] [Index to 1997 Annual Report] [Executive Director's Report]
[Financial Statements]

In these times of economic challenges, we are happy to report that CAEFS ends this year financially within the budget approved by the Board of Directors. While we are most appreciative of the financial support provided by the Ministry of the Solicitor General, throughout this past year, staff continued to seek alternative sources of funding in order to diversify our financial resource base. Please refer to the copy of CAEFS' audited financial statements below, for more specific information regarding CAEFS' financial picture.

This year saw CAEFS finalize and implement a regionalized budget allocation process for the sustaining funding grant received from the Ministry of the Solicitor General. Historically, these grants were provided to individual, community-based service providers, such as Elizabeth Fry and John Howard societies. At that time, the monies were received as "no strings attached" grants. The purpose of the grant program was essentially to ensure that such organizations existed and could keep their doors open, so that they might provide assistance to women and men in the community, especially those leaving prison.

Eventually, rather than continue the grant program in a piecemeal manner, the Ministry of the Solicitor General sought to consolidate the grants and administer them via national organizations whose mandate included responsibility for contributing to and commenting upon legislative and policy initiatives within the mandate of the Ministry of the Solicitor General. For CAEFS, this meant that our national office received the grant and then distributed it according to a funding formula established by its membership. According to that formula, the national office was allocated a budget. Also, each member society received a base grant, as well as an additional service delivery stipend. The service delivery stipend was calculated in accordance with the number of federally sentenced women served.

In 1993, CAEFS commenced a regionalization process. This was primarily a process of reconfiguring the governance of the organization to parallel and reflect the regionalization of the prison system for federally sentenced women. Given that the Ministry of the Solicitor General was also reviewing its Sustaining Funding Grant Program, however, we also attempted to reflect and incorporate anticipated accountability measures. The result is that the portion of the Sustaining Funding Grant that is distributed to the CAEFS' membership specifically for the work they do with and for CAEFS.

We look forward to ever new challenges as we fulfill our mandate to work with and on behalf of women who come into conflict with the law. While our resources are continuously stretched to cover this ever expanding agenda, we have managed to operate well within the budget again this year.

This is to confirm that we have examined the information contained in the foregoing 1996/97 financial summary. We are satisfied that the information presented is prepared directly from the audited financial statements on which we reported, and it fairly represents the position and the results of operations for the year.