Summer-job program funding cut will hurt: mayors

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

Cuts to a federal government’s student summer-jobs program may result in a large increase in costs for cities and their taxpayers, Kirkland Mayor John Meaney said.

“It’ll hurt. It’ll be a big hit,” said Meaney, of the cuts to the federal summer-jobs program that subsidizes businesses that hire students as summer staff.

“There’s no way we can’t hire,” the 11 engineering students the city hires every summer to bolster its planning department, whose salaries — higher-than-average salaries for students, based on the merits of the job — were normally subsidized by the program, Meaney said. He wouldn’t speculate on a concrete figure, but over an entire summer, those costs could run into the tens of thousands.

In January, the federal government cut $1 billion in spending from budgets of programs deemed too bloated - including cutting by half the amount of money dedicated to the government’s Summer Career Placement (SCP) program, originally set up in 1996.

Lac St. Louis MP Francis Scarpaleggia blasted the program cuts, calling them “a serious mistake.”

In Scarpaleggia’s riding alone, the summer-job program funded 51 community projects and 158 jobs.

“The majority of students who use the SCP program work for local non-profit groups that provide vital community services . . . it funded projects from groups like the West Island Association for the Intellectually Handicapped (WIAIH), AMCAL Family Services and Big Brothers and Big Sisters” of the West Island, Scarpaleggia said.

Beaconsfield Mayor Bob Benedetti said the SCP cuts might put a new environmental program — the Green Patrol, (which made its local debut in Pierrefonds/Roxboro last summer to many plaudits and is back there this year), at risk for the summer in Beaconsfield and Kirkland.

“We were supposed to launch a joint Green Patrol program with Kirkland, but we haven’t heard back about the federal grant,” he said.

Without the summer-job grant, Beaconsfield and Kirkland might have to shelve the project, which would put four students on the road in the two cities calling attention to environmental matters and encouraging good recycling practices, Benedetti said.

“If we can’t get the grant, no, we can’t afford it, but we will look at other options,” he said, adding he’s still confident that he’ll get funding for the project.

“We got our grant application in fairly early in the process, so we’re pretty sure we’ll get it, but you’re never a hundred per cent sure on these things,” he said.

At John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, student-employment centre manager Sylvie Boucher said JAC students haven’t yet begun to feel the effects of the funding cuts.

“We had a summer-employment fair March 20, and we had to turn companies away. We had 21 companies with 250 summer jobs and there was even more demand we couldn’t meet because we just didn’t have the space,” she said. “There’s no shortage of jobs. In terms of that, there’s been no effect just yet.”

Boucher, whose centre places between 700 and 800 students every year, said non-profit organizations will probably be hurt the most by the cuts.

“It’s non-profit companies and small businesses that are probably going to be hurt the most by this,” she said, adding since March 31 was the application deadline for the summer-job grants, the real effects won’t all be felt until May.

Dollard des Ormeaux got the ball rolling last week with its annual summer-jobs drawing at its monthly city council meeting. Mayor Ed Janiszewski said the draw, instituted in 1984 when he became mayor, makes Dollard summer-job distribution fair and equitable.

“Before I became mayor, we had some situations where councillors’ kids were getting the jobs, and so in order to put a stop to it, we put in a ban on city councillors’ kids working for the city. That sort of seemed to penalize councillors’ kids for who their parents were, so we put in the draw for jobs, which we found more than fair,” he said.