Katimavik supporters rally to save youth-exchange program after Conservative budget ax falls

Katimavik, a legacy of late Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau, was among the casualties of this week's Conservative austerity budget.

But the youth-exchange program, set up in 1977 as a kind of domestic Peace Corps for young people, is not going quietly. The Montreal-based organization, which was getting about $15 million a year from Ottawa, posted a statement on its website professing surprise at the decision to kill the program.

It still had a year left in its three-year $45-million long-term funding agreement with the government. Now the money will dry up this June.

"The decision is even more surprising considering that the recently made public Canadian Heritage summative evaluation of our programs makes very clear how Katimavik's programs are not only relevant, important and valuable, but also how the organization attains its targets and the programs tie in with government-wide priorities and the department's strategic objectives," the statement said.

Katimavik chief executive Daniel Lapointe apparently hopes to start a grassroots campaign to save the program.

"I urge everyone who supports us to express their views," he told the Globe and Mail. "It's now or never."

The move has already generated an online campaign, including seven Facebook pages dedicated to saving Katimavik, the Globe reported.

Each year, the Katimavik program sends about a 1,000 young people aged 17 to 21 "to take advantage of an amazing opportunity to make a difference for Canadian communities and for themselves," the organization's home page says breathlessly.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, the late PM's eldest son, tweeted his anger at the decision.

"Terrible news. Katimavik empowers young Canadians," he wrote after word leaked earlier this week. "So CPC [Conservative Party of Canada] hates it."

But Heritage Minister James Moore, whose department oversees Katimavik, was unmoved. Katimavik has a high dropout rate, he said, and has not been aggressive in its own fundraising.

"Unlike the Liberals, we gave them a three-year funding agreement in order to give them financial stability . . . to demonstrate that they can stand on their own two feet and fundraise and organize and to show some reciprocity with taxpayers," Moore told Postmedia News.

The Trudeau government created Katimavik as a successor to its defunct Company of Young Canadians, which operated between 1966 and 1976.

After defeating the Trudeau Liberals in 1984, the Progressive Conservatives abolished Katimavik the following year. Liberal Sen. Jacques Hebert, who helped set up the program, went on a three-week hunger strike in a vain attempt to save it. Katimavik, which in its heyday had 5,000 participants a year, sputtered along with donations from a foundation set up by the Liberals until they returned to power under Jean Chretien and the government renewed its funding in 1994.

Calvin Horne of Halifax, who as a teenager worked as a Katimavik volunteer in small towns in 2005, said the program helped him and other participants understand the scope of Canada.

"I wasn't too sure about what I wanted to do with myself. It gave me great insights," Horne told the Globe.

"I am really disappointed with this decision. It deprives communities and young people of an opportunity to grow and build something together."