THUNDER BAY – Confederation College president Jim Madder says implementing Bill 148 will have a huge impact on the school’s budget.
In a memo sent to staff outlining a task group being formed to study ways to offset the cost, school officials estimate they could be facing a deficit of between $9 million and $11 million if the province can't provide more funding to make up the difference.
Options include cancelling programs, closing campuses and possible layoffs.
“We’re looking at everything,” Madder said. “Could it mean those things? Absolutely. As a former vice-president of academics, I’d love to keep our programs, but if we don’t get funding from the government to cover that deficit, we’re going to lose services.
“We could easily lose campuses and we could easily lose programs.”
Bill 148, which has received royal assent in the Ontario legislature, is better known as the Fair Workplace, Better Jobs Act.
The new law, which came into effect on Jan. 1, is best known for raising the minimum wage to $14 an hour, with a scheduled increase to $15 an hour to begin 2019. Lesser understood are requirements for equal pay for part-time, casual, temporary and seasonal employees.
Madder said this is the main cause of the forecasted shortfall.
“Because we are small, we have a significant number of part-time people who actually are paid a lower scale than full-time people. We can’t do that anymore, according to Bill 148,” Madder said.
“It would almost double the compensation for the people who are part-time. That’s wonderful. In fact I love the idea of paying people more. The problem is we don’t have the revenues to do that.
This alone is an $8-million increase in expenditures, Madder explained.
“It’s huge,” he said.
The school's entire budget for 2017-18 is about $80.2 million.
The task force, which reports to the school president, began meeting on Jan. 12.
The memo presents three reduction scenarios - $9 million if the province contributes nothing, $6 million if they get 50 per cent additional funding for Bill 148 costs and $3 million if the province gives them 100 per cent more.
Key steps include assessing the impacts of any changes, followed by recommendations to the board of governors.
If the first two scenarios play out, the memo says it will take a multi-year plan to right the ship.
Madder added the province must realize the economics of running a college in Ontario's north are vastly different than in other parts of Ontario.
