The Trail Skills Centre announced last week that executive director Morag Carter will be leaving the organization at the end of March after eight years, due to reduced and eliminated government funding.
I imagine you were not looking to leave and the board didn’t want you to go. It’s just the circumstances of funding.
Yes. Obviously, I’d hoped to stay a little bit longer. It’s definitely not how I wanted to end my career at the Skills Centre or my time in the Kootenays. But yes, it is all about funding. This is one of the things that has happened over the last few years. It’s been the collision of a series of unfortunate events impacting not just the Skills Centre, but businesses and organizations across the country and throughout the province.
What do you think about the future of the organization? You are at the whim of provincial or federal policy and what money that provides.
Over the years, the Skills Centre has been able to reinvent ourselves several times. Things like funding crises happen all too frequently in the not-for-profit sector. One of both the realities and the fragilities of the sector is that we are subject to the perceived directions that funders want to drive things in. But we’re also subject to the realities funders face.
In this particular case, while we have over the years diversified our funding significantly and have many more funders than we did less than 10 years ago, the nature of the work that we do, which is to provide labour market supports both to community members and to businesses in the area, means that the money we need to operate flows through from federal transfers through the labour market agreement and then to the province and then down to us.
There have been some very significant changes over the last couple of years. The federal government reduced the labour market transfers to all of the provinces, and BC took a fairly significant hit. After that, less money flows down into communities to help people. So ultimately, these decisions, while they may be understandable because of the pressures that national and provincial governments are under, impact the community.
That’s the sad thing about this. Whether I stay at the Skills Centre, it’s not a bigger deal than how many people in community aren’t going to be helped as a result of the reduction in funding available not just for the Skills Centre, but for a lot of other organizations in the area and throughout the province.
What are you most proud of during your time at the Skills Centre?
I am so proud of the staff. They are absolutely incredible. They have done amazing work to serve the people in Trail and throughout the West Kootenay and actually over into the Central and East Kootenay as well. I’m so proud of the work they have done and I’m so proud of the community members that they have helped. I’m proud of the community members who have then gone on to build really wonderful careers for themselves.
The Skills Centre has made a fairly big difference in in Trail. We bought a building a few years ago and did a very significant environmental renovation to bring it right up to code. It served as a great talking point for how buildings can be reimagined for a longer future. Many not-for-profits survive on shoestrings and hopes and prayers. But what we’ve done with the building is to create a space where nonprofits can actually thrive. It has state-of-the-art technology. And that kind of change that we have helped catalyze not only for ourselves, but for other organizations and Trail, is something I’m very proud of.
What’s next for you?
My husband actually lives on the mid-coast, in a small island community. We’ve been doing the long-distance commute for the last couple of years. So I’m going to be going back to be reunited with him, which is going to be good for my own physical and mental health. I’m in the retirement zone, but I don’t feel anywhere close to being done. I’ve got hopes to continue doing work to support the not-for-profit community. That has been my passion for all of my career.
