THUNDER BAY - The Wequedong Lodge of Thunder Bay continues to tighten their belts and will be downsizing their workforce further, after failing to secure additional federal funding.
In a letter to communities dated Dec. 9, executive director Donna Kroocmo said that the difficult decision was made following countless meetings with Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) as well as the Lodge’s board of directors.
In an interview with Dougall Media earlier this week, Kroocmo said that the number of clients has outgrown the physical capacity of the Lodge.
“We hit an all-time record of over 500 people per day, and that's caused a whole lot of problems and the funding has not been stabilized,” she said. “[When we] started laying off [people], we decided to go with management personnel first and made a very painful decision to lay off four very good people.
"We crunched numbers again and we're continuing to see 350 people per day; we made another round of cuts, [laying] off an additional four excellent people. We have now put the Public Service Alliance on notice that we're also going to need to look at frontline staff.”
Kroocmo noted that those cuts began this week and will continue into March of next year.
Wequedong Lodge leadership has concluded that the number of people that they can serve without incurring a deficit would be 155.
The organization is projecting a $6-million deficit this fiscal year.
Longtime kitchen worker Candice Stewart is sad for what is to come.
“This is going to be really hard for the clients, they depend on us,” Stewart said. “I love what I do [and] I have done this for a long time. I think that this is going to be a big blow to them, having a lot of us gone.”
Wequedong Lodge, according to Kroocmo, ended the last fiscal year in the red by $380,000 and have been promised by ISC that their financial needs will be looked after.
“[Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu] put together a team that was supposed to help us, but every meeting we have had the same results in terms of no [new] capital dollars. [We were told that] we have to get a handle on how many clients we are actually serving before [they] can tell [us] how much [they will give us] so that we can budget. It just became a circular talk, and we really got nowhere unfortunately.”
Dougall Media reached out to Hajdu for this story, but did not receive a response by deadline.
Going forward, Wequedong Lodge has been told that if there is not enough space for anyone that comes to the lodge, they will be given the phone number for ISC.
Kroocmo said that her belief in things improving has been diminishing with each week that passes, especially with future plans to expand on the existing facility.
