With an estimated deficit of more than $1 million for the current year, the organization Les Petits Frères, which has been providing support to isolated seniors for over 60 years, is carrying out layoffs and non-renewals. of contract.
“It’s a difficult situation for all of us,” laments the organization’s CEO, Catherine Harel Bourdon, in an interview at Duty. Both in management and among employees, there is no one who is happy to see employees who had the mission at heart leave, but it was becoming a necessity in the current economic context. »
On Monday, employees received a letter telling them the organization would lay off workers and take other measures to reduce payroll. The employees losing their jobs were met individually the next morning. A virtual meeting took place with all 85 employees in 12 regions of Quebec on Wednesday morning.
In total, just over 20 people are affected by the cuts, or almost a quarter of the employees. Eight people were dismissed, others saw their contracts not renewed or modified. Vacant positions are not filled. All the measures are already in force.
“The following decisions, although difficult, were made with the constant concern to preserve our essential mission with isolated seniors in the communities we support,” we can read in the letter sent to employees, including Duty got a copy. It is stated that these measures must have “as little impact as possible” on services for seniors.
These announcements follow voluntary measures that asked employees to reduce their number of working hours, take unpaid leave and early retirement. However, these measures were not enough.
“The cumulative amounts remain largely insufficient to fill the anticipated deficit of the current budget ending July 31, 2025,” writes the CEO of the organization in the letter to employees.
Finding a balanced budget
In interview at DutyCEO Catherine Harel Bourdon specifies that the estimated deficit for the current year is a little more than $1 million. And that’s on top of even larger deficits in recent years, which total 4.2 million.
-For the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the organization presented an initial deficit of more than $700,000. The following year, it climbed to $2.1 million. In the latest financial statements, for 2023-2024, the chairman of the board of directors, Paul Noiseux, spoke of “encouraging results compared to the previous year”, but which revealed “still financial challenges”. The net deficit was 1.4 million.
Last year, revenue was nearly $6.5 million, about 80 percent of which came from donations. Expenditures totaled nearly 8.3 million, two-thirds of which were devoted to payroll.
During the last general meeting, in October, the board of directors gave itself the mission of returning to a balanced budget, because the organization could no longer continue to “dip into its nest egg” like this. “The board of directors was worried, because at this rate, in three years, we will have nothing left. We couldn’t continue like that, so that’s why we went to make cuts in our expenses and in our payroll,” explains Catherine Harel Bourdon, who arrived in office in August 2023 and who known in the past as president of the Montreal School Board.
The various recovery measures, which combine voluntary and non-voluntary measures, will allow savings of more than $770,000, which will reduce the estimated deficit for the current year to approximately $275,000. According to the CEO, the team is working to seek out more donations to get as close as possible to a balanced budget by the end of July. “We are reaching a balance, that’s the objective this year. We do not expect any further cuts,” she assures.
Donors are no longer there
According to Catherine Harel Bourdon, Les Petits Frères experienced a substantial increase in donations at the start of the pandemic, as people became aware of the isolation of seniors. During this period, the organization expanded in different regions of Quebec and made a lot of hires. “It wasn’t bad at the time, but my predecessors believed that revenues would continue to be there with the same intensity, which was not the case. » This explains, according to her, the abyss in which the organization currently finds itself.
It’s all the more difficult to seek out donations, she says, in the current economic context. “The postal strike was the icing on the cake, which came on top of a situation that was already not easy,” said Mme Harel Bourdon. It happened right in the middle of our annual campaign […] This led to a significant drop in our donations. »
In the 2023-2024 financial statements, the chairman of the board of directors maintains that “colossal efforts” are being made to seek government subsidies. “These funds will be essential to maintaining our services,” he wrote.
To watch on video
Related News :