College fights to preserve language rights for generations to come

“What makes it really tricky for us as a minority speaking institution is that we have to plan for generations to come- really because we’re trying to preserve the language, the culture and make sure that there’s going to be a continuum,” says Patrick Arsenault, executive director of College Nordique.

The college is the only strictly French-speaking school and Fracophone post secondary north of the 60th parallel, but finds itself running out of options and time to access the kind of long term operational funding base that other post-secondary institutions may take for granted.

Despite student registration numbers in the 600 range annually, the school’s funding was cut by over 40 per cent after the start of the fall term. The college has already cut four staff and is down to nearly half their staff levels this spring.

At a time when the school should be anticipating the launch of the new programs they have worked hard to create, they have found themselves in a struggle to maintain their operational resource base, but Arsenault says the school has not given up.

“What makes it really tricky for us as a minority speaking institution is that we have to plan for generations to come, really – because we’re trying to preserve the language, the culture and make sure that there’s going to be a continuum of education from pre-kindergarten all the way to University. Ideally, for our children and to children of our children. So we have a really long-term mission, that’s really important for our society and for our culture, but we are always stuck in short-term project-based funding, which makes it very difficult to plan in that way and to sustain our programs and support our communities adequately

Though there are potentially other sources of funding that the college can apply for, Arsenault said that the alternative funding sources make it difficult to realize the full potential of French language education programs.

“So they’re kind of meant to be a supplement to a core funding,” he explained.

“We don’t have a permanent annual –  stable, adequate source of funding to cover basic recurring costs like salaries, rent, the cost of internet, things like that. So that makes it very tricky to have to always rely on short-term based projects, but plan for generations ahead, it really makes it tricky.”

Arsenault told North Now, that he was not informed by Heritage Canada of any specific reasons for the cuts. He was told by representatives that the quality of the work the college is doing was good, but the problem had to do with the resources available.

“I didn’t get anything specific, but they shared with me that there were cuts kind of across the board right now in the federal government.”

Arsenault explained the school had to cut four additional positions in the fall with very little notice.

“And now we’re going through our three year plan, item by item to see what is realistic. What needs to be cut? For the fall semester everything is in motion. So there shouldn’t be too many disruptions, but there will definitely be programming cuts or reorganisation for the winter and definitely for fall next year, with only a third of that main funding. It’ll be extremely difficult to continue to move forward, particularly with the post-secondary section.”

Arsenault said he has heard a lot back from local members of the Francophone community, who have expressed their support.

“It felt really nice to see that the community was behind us and that they were worried about the future of the college, and worried about French-speaking services and trainings and courses offered in the community.”

Driven by strong determination, the college is pushing forward, said Arsenault.

“I’ve been trying to reassure them that we’re going to put things in motion and try to find additional sources of funding and try to recover from this in years to come. We’re still going, we’re still open, we still have our students, our courses are still going, So we’re going to try to damage as much as possible the impacts on students, but it’s definitely going to be a lot of work internally to reorganise and there’s going to be some tough choices ahead for sure.”

Aresnault added that he hopes the new federal budget may have some funding available that is specifically for the North.

“I think that’s also gonna really help us navigate what’s coming when we have visibility on that budget.”

Arsenault said the GNWT applies to the fund on behalf of the college and each year they have been working together, building the proposal and filling out all the forms. “They submitted everything in our name. So, they’re well aware of the fund. They’re actually our main point of contact.”

Arsenault said that the school found out through the territorial government about the funding cuts.

“They also had to financially participate in the application for us to even be eligible to apply for those funds. So we’ve definitely had a lot of support from them.”

The school is the only accredited post-secondary institution in French, North of the 60th parallel in Canada, but also in the world.

“There’s really not a whole lot of other offers or offerings out there. And we recently received this accreditation. Actually, it was September last year, a year before the cuts, so we are only just now structuring, building new programs. We submitted a few proposals back in June to the GNWT for new programs that we want to launch.”

Arsenault explained he is worried that these programs will not see their full potential in the coming years because the college may not have the resources to hire professors and to actually implement those programs.

“We do need to go through our three-year plan to make decisions and to prioritize so it’s hard right now.”

The plan forward will have to make some sacrifices to keep the programs afloat, said Arsenault.

“It will be a loss for the Francophone community since we are the only institution to deliver all of our programs only in French in the three territories. So, we’ll see what that means.”

“So we kind of have to take a hit for fall and readjust for winter and fall next year, and I guess for the next two years as well. But the timing was really not ideal for us, to find out as we were launching the semester that we lost a significant part of our funding made it really stressful and difficult. And then we lost four additional staff members at the busiest time of the year,” he explained.

Amidst all of these challenges, the staff and students are finding ways to make it work for the time being, but Arsenault worries about the impacts of that.

“It is very challenging. I think everybody, everybody is pulling through. We have people that are working above and beyond and that understand the value of what we do for the community. So I think everybody just kind of rallies up. I don’t know that this is sustainable for the next three years. That’s why we’re gonna have to make tough choices. But I think for now, people will understand that we have commitments, we don’t want to let the community down, and we have to pull through and find ways to make it happen and minimize impacts as much as we can.”

My North Now reached out to GNWT’s department of Education and Heritage Canada on Oct. 20 to ask about the changes to the funding. On Oct 24, Ines Akué of Heritage Canada, provided this response:  

“The Collège Nordique Francophone receives funding through the Canada-Northwest Territories Agreement on minority-language education and second official-language instruction, a federal investment of over $15.4 million over four years to help the Northwest Territories offer quality education in French as a minority language and French as a second language, from preschool to the post-secondary level. This represents an increase from the four previous years of the Canada-Northwest Territories Agreement, which totalled $13.2 million in federal investments,” said Akué.

“Under the agreement, the Government of the Northwest Territories may also receive funding for one-time projects designed to meet specific or emerging priorities. Between 2020-2021 and 2024-2025, the Department of Canadian Heritage allocated a total of $7,699,297 to the Government of the Northwest Territories for three one-off projects led by the Collège Nordique Francophone. This funding supports both the College’s operations and the implementation of one-off, fixed-term projects. The total amount of funding may therefore vary from year to year, particularly when certain projects come to an end, as planned,” added Akué.

Heritage Canada confirmed that under their “one-off, fixed-term” project based funding, the college saw about 60 per cent decrease in funding from their 2024 to 2025 term ($3, 258, 876) in comparison to the 2025 to 2026 term ($1,257,664).

“Education falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces and territories. Provincial and territorial governments are responsible for planning, determining objectives, defining content, setting priorities, and evaluating their education programs, including minority-language education and second-language instruction programs,” said Akué. 

Representatives with Heritage Canada asserted that the decisions around education programs are made at the territorial level, but representatives from the territorial government said that funding levels are decided by federal agencies. 

On Oct 22, Agata Gutkowska of GNWT’s department of Education provided this response: 

“These funding decisions were made by the federal government, and the GNWT cannot speak to federal programs or decisions. We also cannot speak on behalf of Collège Nordique. Questions about funding changes or future support should be directed to the Government of Canada or the institution directly.”