Killing Katimavik

In 1986, the author, publisher, world traveler and Liberal senator staged a 21-day hunger strike to protest the Mulroney government’s plan to eliminate funding for Katimavik, a widely-praised youth leadership and community awareness program Hébert had helped launch in 1977.

He won.

Jean Chretien, then a Bay Street lawyer in between elected gigs, and Walter Baker, a University of Ottawa professor, agreed to create a private, non-profit organization to raise money for the program. Nine years later, Chretien, by then the prime minister, restored public funding for the organization.

Each year, Katimavik chooses 1,100 young Canadians between the ages of 17 and 21 and fans them out, in teams of 10, to other regions of Canada to spend six life-changing months living together as volunteers with local community-based organizations. Among its 30,000 alumni: Patrick Bechet, the CFO of Google.

Katimavik Cuts: Lawsuit May Be Coming Against Feds For Scrapping Trudeau-Era Youth Program's Funding

An Ontario woman is hoping to launch a class-action lawsuit against the federal government for pulling funding from the Trudeau-era youth program Katimavik.

"The Conservatives left 600 youth who had been selected to participate in the program in a lurch as well as the non-profit organizations who were looking forward to the volunteer hours," St. Catharines, Ont., resident Colleen Cleve told The Huffington Post Canada Friday.

Heritage Minister James Moore has said the $14 million price tag for the program wasn't justified, leading the Tories to cut funding in their March budget.

"Katimavik had a cost of over $28,000 per participant and a one-third dropout rate," Moore said in the House of Commons in April. "As Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, I have to make difficult decisions and easy decisions. Ending funding for Katimavik is one of the easiest decisions I have ever made."

Katimavik is worth saving

I owe a lot – my very existence, actually – to Katimavik’s power to bring people together. My parents went to the same university at the same time, but didn’t meet until both, after graduating, went to work as group leaders with a new youth initiative called Katimavik.

It was 1977, and they attended a Katimavik orientation in Lac St. Joseph, Que., where they met briefly. My mom went off to Baie-Comeau, Que., and then Yellowknife; my dad went to work in Arundel, near Mont Tremblant. They worked for Katimavik on and off for five years, got married and had me. I’m told that makes me a “Katimababy.”

My mom told me Katimavik means “meeting place” in Inuktitut, and that she worked there, with kids, way up North after university. So my mom and dad met at “meeting place.” The serendipity was lost on me at the time, but my parents didn’t just find each other in the program, they started on a journey to find themselves, too.

I read last week that as government-funded youth initiatives go, Katimavik is too costly, that it’s not worth saving. I spent a few hours on the phone with my parents as they recounted their experiences there. My mom remembered the short Yellowknife days, and how she felt safer with a 12-year-old Inuit boy in the woods while playing a survival game, than she could ever imagine feeling with any city adult in the same situation. Mom, who has spent the past 20 years as a community co-ordinator in the non-profit housing industry, says she learned as much from those kids as she taught them.

Ottawa killed Katimavik – and missed boat on youth jobs strategy

Canada's youth are still waiting.

The 2012 federal budget not only missed the opportunity to create a youth employment strategy, it actually eliminated Katimavik, a program that could have been re-orientated, redefined and expanded to meet our labour market needs.

For every pessimist pointing out that the unemployment rate has yet to return to the 6 per cent prevailing before the onset of the recession, there are others quick to say that jobs go unfilled, that employers can’t find willing workers, and implicitly that there is something wrong with the unemployed – they are in the wrong place, with the wrong skills, or have unrealistic expectations.

In fact, it is a normal state of affairs for some job vacancies to go unfilled.

The labour market creates thousands upon thousands of jobs every month as new firms are born and existing firms expand; it also destroys thousands upon thousands as others die and contract. Statistics Canada recently reported that the economy created 80,000 jobs, but we should understand that to be the difference between a much larger number of gains and losses.

When things are in flux it is no surprise that at any point in time some vacancies are unfilled. Jobs are created and destroyed in an instant, but it takes time to find them, move between them, and adjust to the associated changes.

Third-time gone

Katimavik has never stood a chance against a federal Conservative government, Progressive or otherwise. The demise of the 35-year-old volunteer youth program was guaranteed the moment Stephen Harper squeaked into a majority in the House of Commons. He’s not the first blue prime minister to try to kill the inoffensive program, but it looks like he’ll be the first to succeed once and for all.

The Conservatives’ persistent dislike of Katimavik has nothing to do with the cost, despite this being the excuse they are giving for using their 2012 budget to finally eliminate it altogether. A fair accounting of expenses and benefits would most likely conclude that the cost of housing and feeding small groups of young Canadians in hundreds of communities throughout the country is more than offset not only by the considerable amount of necessary work they do that would not otherwise get done, but also by the value of the enriching experiences they gain and the knowledge they learn.

In Labrador, as in every other region of Canada, Katimavik youth are providing free, yet vital and irreplaceable services to schools, hospitals, museums, animal shelters, municipal councils, aboriginal organizations, elderly citizens, service clubs, libraries, needy families, recreational centres and youth groups. In determining, according to the budget, that Katimavik “reaches a relatively small number of participants annually at a relatively high cost per participant,” one can only assume the federal government and all its MPs, local or not, are ignoring the thousands who benefit every year the program operates and how expensive it will be to pay for all the work the participants have been doing for free for so many years.

Cutting youth volunteer program a short-sighted move

Picture this: A national volunteer program - kind of a Canadian Peace Corps - that benefits young Canadians, communities and, arguably, the country as a whole. You could call it the Governor General's Youth Corps, say, or even the Royal Canadian Volunteer Corps. It's hard to imagine a federal politician who wouldn't eat up the idea.

Just don't call it Katimavik. The $15-million-a-year youth volunteer program, which was axed in last week's federal budget, was the right program, at the right time, with the wrong political lineage, at least for the Conservative government. Created under Pierre Trudeau in 1977. Reinstated after being cut under the Mulroney government when its founder Liberal Senator Jacques Hébert went on a 21day hunger strike to save it. Even Justin Trudeau has had a hand in Katimavik, as a board member.

It must have been one Trudeau too many for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. That is the only plausible explanation for why, at a time when youth unemployment in Canada is at 14 per cent, a program that does so much good at so relatively little cost and is, coincidentally, so apparently aligned with Conservative values of volunteerism and youth engagement, had to go.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty offered a succinct explanation in the budget, saying Katimavik concentrated funding "on a very small number of participants at an excessive per-person cost." (Katimavik sends 1,100 Canadians between 17 and 21 to various parts of Canada each year to volunteer with community organizations.) The government, said Flaherty, will continue to invest in "affordable, effective programming that engages youth -"

Katimavik killed for 'ideological' reasons, Trudeau says

The Katimavik youth program, which provides thousands of hours of volunteer service in vulnerable communities and gives young Canadians work experience, is being cut because it was created by a Liberal government, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau says.

The elimination of the program, created in 1977 under the government of Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, was announced in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's March 29 budget. The program sends 1,100 young people to volunteer with local partner agencies in communities across the country.

The budget said the government would instead continue to "fund programs that benefit large numbers of young people at a reasonable cost rather than concentrating available funding on a very small number of participants at an excessive per-person cost."

But Trudeau took aim at that argument Thursday, comparing Katimavik's $14-million annual funding to the $207-million Canadian Cadets program under the Department of Defence, which he called a "wonderful" program that had not been cut. Katimavik's cost of $2,000 per month per participant compares favourably with the cadets program's monthly cost of $4,000 per participant, he said.

Trudeau said the government's own review of the Katimavik program described it as valuable and a fit with the government's priorities.

An open letter from a Katimavik participant

My name is Gabrielle de Montigny and I am 20 years old. I currently live in Toronto, Ont. and I would like to share my story.

First of all, I would like to state how deeply hurt and saddened I am by the Conservative government's decision to cut the Katimavik program out of the federal budget.

When I heard the news, I felt sad for those who would never experience what I have experienced. In this letter I would like to tell you specifically how Katimavik impacted me and those around me and how it has the potential to impact so many other youth and communities around Canada. I am not one to write letters personally but given the profound impact Katimavik has had on me, I strongly believe that you need to hear my story.

So please take a few minutes of your time during your busy workday to hear me out on the issue of cutting Katimavik out of the budget. I ask you to please give me that respect and common courtesy; it's all that I can ask for.

In my last year of high school, while my friends were gearing up for university, I felt lost in a sea of discomfort. I had no idea what I wanted to do and strongly felt that it just was not my time to go into post-secondary education as of yet.

Advocates slam Tory axing of Katimavik

A program that was lauded by the United Nations, modelled by other countries and designed to teach leadership and community awareness to young Canadians was a victim of Thursday's budget cuts.

Katimavik, a Trudeau-era program, annually selects 1,100 young Canadians between the ages of 17 and 21 and sends them to diverse regions of Canada to volunteer with community-based organizations.

While many programs offer similar objectives, what differentiates Katimavik is that participants commit themselves to six-month terms, giving them a much deeper understanding of the region that they work within.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, son of the former prime minister who began the program in 1977, has been closely involved with Katimavik, including sitting on its board of directors between 2002 and 2006.

"The decision to cut it is purely ideological," said Trudeau. "Because anything that empowers young people frightens these Conservatives, and second (Katimavik) has been associated with the Liberal party for all of its existence."

According to Trudeau, the money invested in the program is simply a way for the federal government to invest into communities.

Statement from Katimavik – reaction to budget

It is with extreme disappointment that we learned today that the Government has decided to end its funding commitment to Katimavik.

Today’s announcement comes as a surprise, since we are entering the third year of a funding agreement whose terms end March 31st, 2013. The decision is even more surprising considering that the recently made public Canadian Heritage summative evaluation of our programs makes very clear how Katimavik’s programs are not only relevant, important and valuable, but also how the organization attains its targets and the programs tie in with government-wide priorities and the department’s strategic objectives.

For the past 35 years, Katimavik has helped shape a civically responsible Canada by harnessing the power of our young volunteers to help those in need in communities across Canada. In that time, over 30 000 Canadian youth have made a difference in communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast. They participated in our program gaining valuable work, life and leadership skills all the while fostering community development and civic engagement. Their parents had peace of mind knowing that their sons and daughters were participating in a structured, time-tested program, while they navigated the transition from emerging adulthood to adulthood.

In the coming days, our Board of Directors and management staff will be convened to plan the next steps.

Katimavik Cuts: Trudeau-Era Youth Program On Tories' Chopping Block

OTTAWA — Katimavik, the youth service program championed by former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, is on the Conservative government’s chopping block, The Huffington Post Canada has learned.

“This has been coming for a long time,” Liberal MP Justin Trudeau said Tuesday of the program that his father established in 1977.

“It has been obvious that a program that empowers young people, that encourages them to get out and across the country and serve communities and discover how much they can make a difference in the world, and across Canada, is going to be cut.”

Sources told HuffPost the Tories have discussed slashing the group's funding completely but what the government has settled on hasn't been confirmed.

Heritage Minister James Moore’s office insisted Tuesday, however, that Katimavik isn’t on its deathbed just yet.

“No decisions have been made,” Moore’s spokesman James Maunder said.

Katimavik, which means “meeting place” in Inuktitut, is a national volunteer service program for Canadians aged 17 to 21 and involves placements in many communities across the country. More than 30,000 people have taken part in the program, which saw its federal funding killed in 1986 by the Brian Mulroney government, then revived in 1994 by the Liberals under Jean Chrétien. A registered charity, the program is currently funded the Canadian Heritage department and donations.