The Lower North Shore is one of the least known regions of Quebec and is often forgotten. A territory which has 15 small isolated villages, which extends over 375 kilometers. The 138 stops in Kegaska and starts again in the village of Vieux-Fort, up to the Labrador border. Air transport and sea transport are often the only means of transport available. It is a place where athletes face adversity and many obstacles due to their isolation.
Treated like second-class citizens, our young people do not have equal opportunities like the rest of Quebec. The training is difficult, no weight training center is available. On average, each athlete in Quebec participates in a minimum of five competitions per year. In Basse-Côte-Nord, at the start of the school year, coaches must sort things out to decide who will participate in what, because transportation costs are enormous with a deficit budget.
Charters are often the only option, depending on the availability of a company. The preferred sports are volleyball, badminton, cross-country and athletics. Hockey is also a very popular sport in the Lower North Shore, however, no funding is available for it, so we have to compete outside the province, because it costs less to go to Newfoundland than competing in our own province!
We have a total budget of $210,500 annually, which the MRC raises from the following organizations: MAMH, MTMD, CISSS Côte-Nord, MRC Golfe-Saint-Laurent, URLS, CSSL and Caisse populaire Desjardins. In the fall of 2023, we spent $90,000 in transportation costs for the Côte-Nord regional cross-country, provincial cross-country and a local volleyball tournament, three charter flights, $55,000, 27 $000 and $8000.
The MTQ offers a 60% refund on plane tickets to residents to help with the sky-high price of plane tickets, but reimbursement often takes several months. The CSSL paid for either the scheduled flight or the chartered flight, and the parents reimbursed the CSSL with the MTQ check, which covered at least 60% of the transportation costs.
In December 2023, the MTQ sent a letter to the CSSL refusing to continue the 60% reimbursement, saying that the reimbursement program is aimed at residents and not organizations such as the CSSL. However, this use of the PAAR program still benefited the residents, our young people. The CSSL was only an intermediary so that parents would not have to put such large charges on their credit card for several months.
Imagine parents who have more than one child traveling. A ticket from Blanc-Sablon to Sept-Îles, the cheapest, costs $1,507 for the regional volleyball weekend. Following this decision by the MTQ, all sporting or cultural activities are put on hold. The local badminton tournament as well as two regular RSEQ volleyball tournaments have been canceled. We don’t even know if primary school students will have a sports event this year due to lack of money.
Whose fault is it ? I’ll give you an example, the Ministry of Education offers a budget for school trips in a cultural environment, this budget for an amount of $31,205, for a total of 398 students, therefore $78.40 per student. A Sept-Îles–Blanc-Sablon round-trip plane ticket costs more than $1,000 per person. So, obviously, the government does not know our reality.
The MTQ offers the air access program, i.e. 60% reimbursement on plane tickets. As this budget is never used 100%, what does the ministry do with its budget surplus each year? In the meantime, our young people are being denied equal opportunities, whether at the sporting or cultural level. What about the importance of access to these events for the physical and mental health of our young people? Training several times a week, without ever being able to measure yourself against others, or participating in competitions? Motivation drops quickly.
And yes, fundraising campaigns are possible, for accommodation or meals, but not for charter flights which can cost $55,000.
We have elite athletes at many levels who cannot develop to their full potential because of their geographic location!
Currently, the MRC is in discussions with the MTQ and several political levels, but the young people are still without a solution, and the competitions and activities continue… without them. Who will be able to help them? Who will be able to give them hope and the desire to invest again? Let our young people play, let them participate in competitions like others in their region.