I wish I’d had an opportunity to read George Lois’ words earlier...“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” This elegant quote sums up precisely the attitudes we had to develop to survive yet another year of enormous change, both for our agency and the multicultural/settlement sector in general.

Federal Devolution of Training Responsibilities
Staff worked hard to prepare for the phase-out of the federal purchase of training programs. EI legislation amendments from 1995 removed the possibility for agencies like MOSAIC to offer skills training for immigrants past June 30/99.

What is the specific impact on our agency of the changes to the EI legislation? In a nutshell, the funding for our 4 training programs is eliminated. It affects about 160 of our clients, reduces federal contributions by some $760,000 and eliminates eight positions.

EI-eligible immigrants and employment-eligible refugees now qualify to be individually sponsored for training by partaking in a strenuous process of assessment and approval, often lasting up to 12 weeks or more. Each federal jurisdiction has now arranged for assessment and approval centres to be set up. Most were in operation by the beginning of the 1999 fiscal year.

Ultimately, the Provincial government’s new Skills Development Employment Benefits Program will assume responsibility for skills training. Since Labour Market Development Agreement negotiations are on-going at this point, however, it is still unclear when the provincial government will be ready to assume responsibility for the training process.

Throughout the year, staff from MOSAIC, ISS, SUCCESS relentlessly lobbied our collective funders–HRDC, MAETT, MRMI and MHR. We highlighted the need for greater program availability and improved client access and indicated how much these two factors could influence the degree of success that our clients would have in acquiring and completing suitable training.

Together, we co-funded “Transitions”, a report written by well-known researcher/ writer Martin Spigelman. It spoke eloquently to the difficulties our clients and agencies would inherit when the new approval system was in place.

The combined effect of many meetings and reports ultimately led to the willingness by funders and sector representatives to mutually explore issues of concern. At present, those issues include the availability of programming for ESL clients, operational difficulties of the new training approval process, and policy and legislative changes.

Projects and Programs
We were delighted to work on a United Way “Partners in Organizational Development (POD) Project” from January–May/99. The POD grant allowed us to examine current and prospective audiences for our services. Our examination revealed a unanimous response–the Board, staff, clients and funders of MOSAIC felt we should continue our mandate to offer programs and services to immigrants and refugees only. Our constituent groups would rather see the agency enhance its partnerships and collaborative projects rather than provide more direct services to mainstream clients.

Finally, we were successful in the two employment program competitions we entered this year–one with MAETT, the other with HRDC. Both programs were designed to be delivered in partnership with ISS and are still under negotiation at the time of writing this report. They represent new opportunities for our agency in a rapidly changing training environment and reflect our unflagging commitment to better meet client needs.

Elizabeth Honsberger
Director

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