The operator of the French-language employment centre in Prince George is stunned by the statistics the government is using to cancel its contact.
College Educacentre will cease finding jobs for francophone clients at the end of January, even though their contract was to go on until Sept., 2011, and had been consecutively renewed since launching 10 years ago.
In a statement to The Prince George Citizen, minister Rich Coleman said the reason for the cancellation was the centre's small numbers. He said, "as there were an estimated six clients a month that used the service."
The centre's executive director Yvon Laberge said in a slow month there might only be six brand new clients come through their door for their first consultation, but that's the only "six" he can find in their records. In the slowest months, the centre has averaged six totally new job seekers, but in June that number was 16.
And that, Laberge said, is not the number any employment centre operates by.
"Our numbers show that in 2010, we have had between 50 and 77 open cases each month, so that's an average of 57 cases per month we are actively working on. Some of those would be carry-over files started the previous year, and we have added 70 new clients since January 1. "Some people, depending on their needs, could be with us a couple of weeks or a couple of years and the file stays open as long as they do.
"Our quarterly reports show that from Jan. 1, 2010 to Sept. 30 we have found jobs for 88 people," he added. "During that same period we have had roughly 750 utilizations of our drop-in services although some of those may be the same people more than once."
College Educacentre had a contract, Laberge said, which has stipulations in it to ensure the public is getting its taxpayers' money's worth. It started out 10 years ago as an agreement with the federal government but was transferred recently to the provincial government, but the contract conditions followed it.
"Admittedly we could have been doing more to find new clients, but we didn't know the government considered that a problem for us, and we weren't alarmed because the main expectation as stipulated in the contract was to get people jobs," he said. "We met those expectations and in fact we were exceeding expectations set out in our contract. We exceeded that target number in 2009 and were exceeding in 2010. In fact, we exceeded the expectations of our contract in each quarter so far this year."
While Coleman said there were employment service providers elsewhere in the city that provided French, Laberge said one was aimed at immigrants (most Prince George francophones are Canadian) and the others have part-time or inconsistent access to someone fluent in French.
"That's not to say these other service providers aren't capable people. Our objective is to ensure francophone people had quality of service, and I strongly feel we were doing that. If the province feels there is a better model to deliver that service I am open to discuss that, but this option I am convinced is only going to diminish quality of service for people with specialized language needs who might come from anywhere in Canada or anywhere around the world whose only commonality is their language."
The loss of College Educacentre strikes a blow to the menu of services available at Prince George's French Centre, Le Cercle des Canadiens Francais, will put three employees out of a job, but will save taxpayers about $90,000 per year in contract fees.
