The Community Futures offices across the nation, including Community Futures NewSask out of Tisdale, are asking the federal government to increase funding and modernize the program.
Jason Denbow, Community Futures Saskatchewan’s executive director, said out in the West, his organization’s offices haven’t had a funding increase in eight years, despite inflation increasing the cost of business each year.
“I know that Tisdale has, over the years, had to lessen their staffing component, just like most of the other offices out there,” he said. “Certainly I think they would be interested in receiving enhanced operational funding so they can try to restore their staffing component and keep supporting their community economic development work.”
Denbow said NewSask has a lot of noteworthy projects, like the annual Youth Business Excellence Awards and the 1000 Miles of Snow campaign developed to market the Northeast’s snowmobiling trails to tourists.
“They have a lot of good projects like that they’ve been able to undertake over the years, but they get more and more difficult to maintain with reduced funding.”
The executive director said Community Futures has two major functions: help finance new businesses and community economic development, which are activities aimed at developing entrepreneurs.
It’s not just funding that Denbow would like to see change. He’d also like to see the program’s terms and conditions updated to meet modern demands.
For instance, he’d like to see the maximum loan to new businesses increased from $150,000.
“We haven’t had an increase in the maximum size of loan that our office can make in 17 or 18 years now,” he said. “The needs of entrepreneurs have increased as inflation has increased over time, so we’re finding that our clients need more access to more capital.”
Denbow would also like to see more money aimed at community economic development.
“It’s something, again, with the decline of overall operational funding, that we’ve seen our offices have been less able to deliver those kinds of services.”
Finally, Denbow said he’d like the federal government to consider using the Community Futures network more to deliver their programming.
“Our network is currently 268 Community Futures organizations across the country,” he said. “We believe, at least in rural Canada, that is the second-largest reach the federal government has, second only to the post office. We believe as a delivery network, it has a lot more potential.”
As part of the effort to spur the federal government into action, Community Futures hosted a petition from mid-January to mid-February. The petition, which had 4,000 signatures, will be submitted to Navdeep Singh Bains, the economic development minister. Denbow said he believes the government is supportive, but they have to see if they take action in the Feb. 27 federal budget.
