Iqaluit Katimavik kids bemoan loss of program

Yanik Fortier helps paint the Inuksuk child care centre. That’s just one of the volunteer duties he’ll perform at the Iqaluit high school over the next three months as a participant in Katimavik. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Katimavik volunteers in Iqaluit stay in this Creekside Village row house. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Katimavik youth volunteers in Iqaluit sign up April 4 to help with Toonik Tyme as Janet Brewster (left), the president of Toonik Tyme’s board, looks on. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

After the Feb. 26 fire that ravaged Creekside Village in Iqaluit, you could find them organizing the donations of clothing that poured in from across Canada.

This past weekend, you could find them painting the Inuskuk High School child care centre when it was closed for the Easter weekend.

And during Toonik Tyme in Iqaluit, you’ll find them helping out with the annual spring festival.

You’ll also see volunteers with Katimavik, Canada’s volunteer youth service program, in the city’s schools, youth centre, child care centres and shelters.

But after this group finishes their three-month stay in Iqaluit in June, Iqaluit will seen no more Katimavik volunteers.

That’s because the Tory budget cut Katimavik from its March 29 budget to save $15 million a year.

This decision frustrates Katimavik volunteer Yanik Fortier. Fortier, a francophone who lives in Victoria, B.C., arrived in Iqaluit with eight other volunteers March 28, just in time to learn that Katimavik was cut.

The justification is that Katimavik, which puts 1,200 youth aged 17 to 21 into 52 Canadian communities each year, costs too much money given the small number of constituents.

But that’s not a representative of Katimavik’s influence, Fortier said.

One participant — like him — can directly help many others and save money during their six month term of volunteer community service focused on “Cultural Discovery and Civic Engagement.”

It’s not the first time that Katimavik has been cut.

Created under Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1977, former Tory PM Brian Mulroney then cancelled the program, which was putting 4,000 to 5,000 youth into the field each year. The Liberals revived Katimavik in 1994 with just 100 participants. After that, Katimavik, which takes its name from an Inuktitut word for “meeting place,” grew in size again.

And in 2009, Katimavik came to Iqaluit.

“Nothing but good to the community and youth comes out of it,” said Fortier, wearing Katimavik’s bright green T-shirt with its orange sun logo.

Fortier, a recent high school graduate, said he wasn’t doing much when he signed on with Katimavik this past December.

While serving with Katimavik in Calgary for three months, Fortier helped a group of non-profit organizations do maintenance in their office building— and learned about furnace boilers.

As for Iqaluit, it’s “pretty impressive” and “very cool.”

At Inuksuk High School, among other things, he’ll be helping with a shop class, preparing projects one week ahead of students so he can help them in turn.

By working all day for $2, Fortier said he’s seeing that happiness isn’t attached to money. And he said that living with the same group of people — four girls and three other boys — is teaching him about respect and giving him a sense of community.

Those comments comes from someone who admits he had no direction or ambition before participating in Katimavik.

But that’s Katimavik’s impact, which has “fast-forwarded” his development by 10 years, Fortier said.

“It’s a great program,” says another Katimavik volunteer Kirsten Horst of Hawkesville, Ont, who worked in a French-language school in Calgary for three months.

Now she’s at Nakasuk School, an experience that already leaves her eager to continue studies to become a teacher’s assistant or teacher.

Horst shares Fortier’s disappointment that they’re among the last young Canadians who will get a chance to participate in the program.

The cut to Katimavik’s funding stunned its regional director, Ann Boiteau, and board member Nick Newberry, a former teacher in Nunavut for 30 years.

Boiteau, who was in Iqaluit last week with Newberry to thank the program’s many supporters, said she learned about the cut while watching budget coverage on television.

There was no warning, she said, just news that the program would stop at the end of June 2012, although it was supposed to continue through March 2013.

Boiteau disputes the idea that Katimavik costs too much: the volunteer work performed by its participants is estimated to be worth nearly $12 million per year.

And the ratio of administrative costs in Katimavik is 12 per cent , which means that nearly all of its budget goes directly to projects.

A study of the social and economic impact of the Katimavik has also found that Katimavik spends an average of $65,000 a year per community where it operates, and that the volunteer contributions to each community average nearly $132,000 a year.

Those numbers would probably be higher for Nunavut, given the higher cost of living.

Boiteau said it looks as if it was a partisan decision to cut Katimavik.

But it won’t be easy to rally support from the private sector to start Katimavik again, as even a smaller-scale program would need about $10 million.

But the decision to chop Katimavik may lose some votes.

Fortier, who recently turned 18, said he’s never voted in any election but said he’s sure he won’t vote for the Tories in the federal election.