Government restores students employment program

CFS wants to see more funding restored

MICHAEL OLSON STAFF

On March 1, the Conservative government announced that it will be restoring 90 per cent of funding to a student-job creation program.

In September 2006, then Treasury Board president and Conservative MP John Baird announced that $55 million, a total of 50 per cent, would be cut from the Summer Career Placement program as part of $1 billion in federal cutbacks. The cut, which would have put approximately 25,000 students out of a summer job, was passed in Parliament without any debate.

In October, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) held a lobbying week in which it met with over 100 members of Parliament to raise concerns over the cuts made to the SCP.

“When they first cut half of the program back in the fall we were very upset by it, and we’ve been spending the last months meeting with politicians, calling on the federal

government to restore the funding,” said Amanda Aziz, national chairperson of

the CFS.

The Canada Summer Jobs program (CSJ) will replace the Student Career Placement program. The renamed CSJ is an initiative of the Summer Work Experience program, which creates summer employment opportunities for secondary and post-secondary students to help them acquire skills and work experience. Corporations request funding from the program and use it to create new summer jobs for students.

Diane Finley, who was minister of Human Resources when the cuts were announced, said that they were part of a plan to refocus the program; previously, large corporations were eligible to apply for the wage-subsidization program. With the name change, the CSJ’s guidelines have changed to focus on non-profit organizations and private corporations with less than 50 employees, and employers in high youth-unemployment, rural, and high-crime areas.

Another new aspect of the program will be that organizations will have to demonstrate that the jobs being funded could not be created otherwise.

Not-for-profit corporations participating in the program will receive a subsidy equivalent to that province’s minimum wage for full-time work; private and public-sector corporations are eligible for 50 per cent of minimum wage.

Regardless of the restored funding, the CFS is not entirely satisfied. Though most funding has been restored, the CFS wants to be informed as to why the budget is smaller than before.

“It’s certainly our position that 100 per cent needs to be restored.”

Approximately $85.9 million will be budgeted for the program, which will provide employment to about 40-45,000 people. However, this budget is over $11 million smaller than it was in 2006, when the program employed close to 50,000 people.

The average annual unemployment rate for youth aged 15-29 was 9.5 per cent in 2006, according to the CSJ website. Manitoba’s youth unemployment rate was 7.3 per cent.

— With files from Nadya Bell, CUP Ottawa bureau chief