Thank you, Mr. Easter.
Good morning, honourable members of Parliament, and ladies and gentlemen.
I am the director of the Trout River Environmental Committee, which is a community-based, non-profit environmental organization on the north shore of P.E.I. We are focused on restoring the health of five rivers in that region that we manage. We also promote other sustainable use of the environment and restoration of other ecosystems across the landscape.
Today I would like to speak about delays in the announcement of environmental funding from the federal government, and the impact that has had on us and other groups on Prince Edward Island.
I have been the director of the organization for four and a half years. During that time I've submitted three project applications for federal funding. Two of those three projects have had a delay, and that has had quite an impact on our functioning and our ability to improve the environment on a community level.
In 2016, I experienced a delay in the announced approval of a two-year recreational fisheries and conservation partnerships program project funded by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We were notified of approval on July 18. Usually that program is announced in May. That was essentially in the middle of our field season, when we are out there trying to make a difference in the rivers.
To not know that we had that funding for an extra couple of months had a big impact on our ability to hire staff and get our work done. I was told that the lateness of the approval was caused by a delay in the ministerial approval of projects for that year. There was a change in fisheries ministers in early June of that year, I believe.
Also this year, we applied for funding through Environment Canada's EcoAction community funding program. That was delayed in 2017 and 2018 through a review of the priorities for the program. Usually applications are due November 1 and funding is announced in May. That's already quite a long period to wait for word on whether we have the funding, but this year the funding round was announced February 1, with applications due March 21.
We didn't hear whether we had the funding until the first week of September 2018. Essentially, we were waiting all spring and summer to know whether we did have this significant funding or not.
The realities of the situation for community-based non-profits are that we exist on a very small budget. We depend on our ability to bring in funding in a timely manner from a variety of sources to undertake our restoration work. Just to cover wages, because our student programs offer minimum wage, I end up topping that up with additional funding, and also trying to extend the eight weeks that we get through student programs to 12 weeks, say, so that we can get qualified university students and top up those wages a bit.
The table there shows you that we're using two or three programs each year to provide the wages for any one employee. This means that if a funding application is delayed, we can't tell that employee how many weeks we can hire them for and we have to go with a lower wage. Then maybe we find out a few months later that we actually do have the money, but it just wasn't available early in the season.
Our river restoration work is confined to June 1 to September 30, because that's when we have a minimal impact on the aquatic ecosystem. We're not able to work in the rivers at other times of the year. If we hear that we have funding for 2018 in September, we're really out of time to get anything done in the rivers that year. It has a negative impact there.
I don't speak on behalf of other community-based environmental groups on P.E.I., but there are 22 of these river restoration groups now across the province, addressing the serious issues we have in our rivers. From speaking to them, I know that many are frustrated by the same difficulties.
To go over the main points again, if we don't know what wage funding we have by April, we can't confirm the total weeks and wage amount we can offer employees when we're hiring in the spring. Students want to know in May that they have a job, so we need to be hiring by mid-May. That's when we'd like to know what funding we have for the year.
Also, it prevents us from understanding what we can accomplish in a year, if we're waiting for most of the season to know if we have funding. Then if we get the funding late, for a multi-year project, or not, we end up having to renegotiate the scope of the project with the funder, which is time-consuming.
As well, the lack of communication by the Department of the Environment or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, for example, is frustrating. We generally don't get any word about when we might hear whether or not we have the funding. We simply wait for months and then finally get an email notification. The lack of communication there about the delay and when we might hear about the announcement is difficult.
I would like to request that the government review this situation and make an effort to review program priorities well in advance so that it doesn't delay the handing out of funding each year. I would also ask that it make an effort to perhaps change the deadlines for applying so that funding can be announced in April for this type of work. That would help us to hire by early May and get out there and get more done each year to restore our environment.
With that, I'll thank you for your time.