At 12:50pm on Monday, March 29th RCMP officers arrested six women who were peacefully refusing to leave Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl's office until he pledged to restore funding to the Aboriginal Health Foundation. The sit-in began at 12:05pm.

"By cutting the funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and having us arrested for protesting these cuts, Harper is denying effective services to thousands of residential school survivors," said Maya Rolbin-Ghanie, a member of the Montreal-based grassroots group Missing Justice.

Rolbin-Ghanie was among those arrested.

"Harper and Strahl's budget cuts affect 134 organizations across Canada, including the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal," said Monica van Schaik, another Missing Justice member who was arrested.

"That Strahl would have us arrested less than an hour after our sit-in began shows that this is something he doesn't want the public to talk about," van Schaik added.

"It's been less than two years since Prime Minister Harper's apology to survivors of the residential schools, yet the Conservative government is ready to shut down programs specifically aimed at helping the healing the Prime Minister spoke about," Rolbin-Ghanie said before her arrest.

For more information: www.missingjustice.ca