Urban organizations scramble as funding source in flux

There will be no transition period for organizations that use project funding from the Urban Aboriginal Strategies program as it is revamped.

The impact of no gap funding will be devastating, said Christine Martin, co-chair of the Metro Vancouver Urban Aboriginal Executive Council. Clientele will be losing out as community-driven programs close their doors because of lack of funding.
The council is made up of 20 member organizations representing the vast majority of off-reserve, urban Aboriginal people in Metro Vancouver.

“We’re really trying to push that they have a status quo for one year so they can figure this stuff out, because we’re not just dealing with programs, we’re dealing with people’s lives,” said Martin. “That’s why we’re fighting so hard for them.”

In early February, the federal government announced a wholesale change to the UAS program, not only consolidating the four funding streams offered through the UAS into two, but tasking the National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) to deliver the majority of UAS funding. That’s allowed only seven weeks for new terms and conditions to be set for both core funding and project funding.

“We are working as hard as we can to move as fast as we can and we know that everyone is concerned,” said Jeffrey Cyr, NAFC executive director. Friendship centres were the only organizations to receive core funding through the UAS program. Just weeks before the end of the 2013-2014 fiscal year, NAFC and the federal government negotiated an agreement-in-principle on the terms and conditions of the program, to be used by both parties for distributing funds. The government has allocated $53.1 million in UAS funding for each of two years with NAFC to distribute $43 million of that funding each year and the government to handle the balance.

The terms and conditions are not similar to the previous UAS program, said Cyr, “but they are to achieve the same purposes generally. The same sorts of organizations are able to apply for it.”

He notes that there will be a short transition period put in place for friendship centres as their applications are tweaked to meet the new criteria and then approved.

Now, the focus turns to structuring a call for proposals for project delivery funding. Cyr offers no timeline as to when applications will be called for or approved. There will be no transition period.
“It’s hard to transition a project when a project is new. The program is new itself. It has new objectives to it. So you can’t transition something that doesn’t exist,” said Cyr.

Martin said her council was aware of the program change, but was under the impression the changes were only administrative. They recently found out otherwise.

Vancouver Urban Aboriginal Executive Council’s social service provider members receive $1.2 million through UAS.  Martin said they are still determining the impact the loss of funding will have on their programs and have not been told by the government how much funding to expect.

Martin is also concerned with the top down approach that is being taken to determine the new process for UAS, which according to a government backgrounder is “to focus on encouraging partnerships and collaboration to help increase the participation of urban Aboriginal people in the economy.”

Martin said the council already has strong working relationships with the city, province, and private banks. That relationship has helped provide their members with additional funding for both programs and capacity building.

“We’re so far ahead of the game than other communities… and we’re willing to share that information with others,” said Martin.  “We’ve really built this amazing infrastructure that allows us all to work together and have amazing results. What they’re hoping to develop, we’ve already done.”

Erika Meekes, spokesperson for AANDC, said UAS funding was intended as project or proposal based funding.

“Therefore organizations should not have become dependent on the funding for their core operations,” Meekes replied in an email.