Prince George's French language services have been dealt a funding blow. The city's only integrated francophone employment centre, College Educacentre, was told Thursday by the provincial government that not only would their contract not be renewed but that it was being cancelled early.
The Ministry of Housing and Social Development is the department responsible for the funding, and The Citizen was told that a response is pending on this issue but would not be available by deadline.
Three Prince George staff of College Educacentre will now ironically be out of work and the people they try to find jobs for will have to find employment services at some other agency and hope that someone there speaks French.
Adding to the difficulty, said Educacentre executive director Yvon Laberge, is that the loss of this program will hurt a number of others based like they are at Le Cercle des Canadiens Francais (the French Canadian Centre).
"We are offering continuing education classes, GED (graduation equivalency) in French, literacy course as well, supported by another contract. We will have to sit down and analyze what it means for those programs as well. The impact may not be closing those services immediately but it may mean fewer participants. It is too early to know."
The employment centre's all-encompassing service menu dovetailed into other work being done at the French Canadian Centre, and also paid rent to the society running the centre. The contract was a $600,000 total investment by the Ministry of Housing and Social Development, for services between January 2008 and September 2011 (about $90,000 per year). The contract will instead cease this coming January 31.
The employment centre has, said Laberge, placed at least 1,000 people in jobs around the Prince George region in the past 10 years of operation.
"We have a very high rate of our clients finding gainful employment, and we can also refer them to finding places to live, daycare for their children, contact with the French schools, so all this helps them feel settled in this community and that has all the spinoff effect on the local economy when we gain and retain new professional people."
He wonders now how such comprehensive and francophone-focused service could be offered anywhere else.
Five francophone employment centres got the notice that they are either not being renewed or being terminated early. The others are in Kelowna, Penticton, New Westminister and Vancouver.
"These cuts will have a devastating impact on French-speaking clients," said Real Roy, chairman of the Federation des Francophones de la B.C. "In Prince George there will now be just a single point of access to support in French and that access, provided by only one person, is located inside an English-speaking centre that specializes in providing services for the immigrant community."
Canadians of French background make up the biggest part of the francophone community in the Prince George region, although College Educacentre was there for them and the international French population alike.
