I must say that our staff, even the volunteers, suffer from burnout. The turnover rate in our communities is horrendous. In 2008, in some communities, the turnover rate was approximately 68% for a period of less than two years. It must not be forgotten that the community development cycle is from five to ten years. If we have to renew our staff every two years, we will get to the point where we will no longer really be able to make any headway. You are talking about an individual who is working for a salary of $18,000. However, small centres employ only one person, and this individual, in addition to doing community development, must look after accounting, promotion, volunteer coordination, social activities and, in many cases, cleaning the bathrooms of the community centre. Because of all these tasks, there is very little time left to do community development.
Some small centres have only one employee because they do not have the means to pay for any more. Indeed, they do not even have the means to pay the person they have hired a suitable salary. The individual who has to perform all of these tasks cannot do so in 40 hours. Our employees put in a lot of unpaid overtime. They are offered time off as compensation, but they wind up either not being available to provide service to the public or volunteering for their organization. And I am not counting the volunteer hours that they do for other organizations in their community.