The provincial government may be ending the funding, but the College of New Caledonia's aboriginal service program will continue, says Ray Gerow, chair of the college's board of directors.
The program has simply been too successful to kill, Gerow said Saturday, even with the college facing as much as a $1.85-million shortfall in the 2011-12 budget.
"Just purely from a business perspective, we have no choice," Gerow said. "Any business who knows that 50 per cent of its potential clients are aboriginal is going to have to learn how to cater to aboriginal people."
CNC PResident John Bowman said that it is one of the centre pieces at the college and would be protected.
"The program is critically important and we look to grow it into the future," he told The Citizen.
Over the three years the program has been in place, CNC has seen a 126 per cent increase in its number of aboriginal students, from 744 to 1,552, and the number of credentials achieved by aboriginals rose 126 per cent, from 69 to 156.
The province has been providing $400,000 a year to pay for the program, of which roughly 80 per cent pays the salaries and benefits of five liaison workers. But there has been no indication the program will be renewed and with the B.C. Liberals searching for a new leader, the government is expected to pass little more than a status quo budget in February.
It will probably mean CNC will have to find the money from within but Gerow is confident it can be done even in the face of the shortfall.
John Bowman has said the college would stave off final budget decisions until late April in the hopes that all or some of the provincial funding would be returned but the work was underway to cover the shortfall without any such help.
"It is obviously a big challenge. There isn't a single solution, we have to bring a number of factors to bear," he said. "For the next year, reducing the amount we spend on capital equipment like furniture and instructional aids is something we think we can do. But we will be finding money throughout the organization, to be reallocated to support that program."
About two-thirds of the $1.85 million can be tackled through reallocations, potential for additional revenue in some areas and reductions to equipment funding, Bowman said in earlier discussions.
As for the remaining $600,000, the plan is to offer a number of one-time early retirement incentives and voluntary severance payments available to full-time regular employees, who will not be replaced in the following year by a new employees although some part-timers may move up to full-time positions at a lower pay scale.
If anything, Gerow said the program should be enhanced.
"It's like having a recruitment campaign without having a retention campaign," Gerow said. "To spend all this effort reaching out into the communities and then try to cut them now when you've got that many students in the system would be heartless."
The results like that can only help with the looming skills shortage many employers will be facing as the recession comes to an end, he added, and called on business and industry to step up, not just government.
"I mean, the trucking industry is crying out for qualified truck drivers already," Gerow said. "I think this is just the start of that skilled workers shortage we were all worried was going to happen in 2010 and was delayed because of the economic downturn.
"You can't let your foot off the gas now, you've got to keep going full speed ahead."
