Letter to Sponsor

January 2006

Dear Sponsor,

Since the official launch in September 2005, Service Canada has been consulting with community partners and working with sponsor organizations, to streamline and simplify administrative processes for grants and contribution agreements in the area of employment-related programs. This letter provides your organization with information about a first round of changes that will be coming into effect in January 2006. The changes include:

• Standard eligible costs list;
• Simplified cost structure to support greater budget flexibility, as well as expanded choice in budget calculation options for new Employment Assistance Services projects;
• Reduced approval wait times due to a streamlined internal review committee process; and
• Fewer information requests related to banking practices and proof of other funding sources.

These changes are effective in the new calendar year, and will be applied to all new agreements starting January 1, 2006 or later and to agreement renewals starting January 1, 2006, or later. They apply to the following employment-related programs:

• Employment Assistance Services;
• Job Creation Partnerships;
• Youth - Partners in Promoting Summer Employment;
• Youth Information - National Labour Market Partnership;
• Youth - Career Focus;
• Youth - Skills Link;
• Labour Market Partnerships (includes Youth Awareness);
• Community Coordinators - Self Employment Assistance, Skills Development, Targeted Wage Subsidies; and
• Enabling Fund of the Official Languages Minority Communities Program.

Note that the National Homelessness Initiative is currently assessing the impact of these changes on their programs and will be looking at a potential implementation of these changes in the near future.

Due to the extensive nature of these changes and the many programs involved, it will only be possible to apply them to agreements dealing with 2006 activities for which no payments have yet been made by Service Canada. However, we are confident that a significant proportion of current agreement holders will soon benefit from them.

Standard sponsor forms (e.g. applicant packages and claims forms) have been revised to reflect these changes, and general information sessions will be offered to sponsors in early 2006 by local Service Canada Centres. We also invite you to contact us (TEL. NUMBER) to find out how you can become more involved in the local business planning process for 2006-07.

In the coming weeks and months, Service Canada will continue to work on ways to streamline and simplify how we work with community partners. Our goal is to reduce the administrative burden so you can focus more of your time and energy on doing good work in the community rather than paperwork. Among some of the additional changes planned are streamlining audit requirements and further refining the Call for Proposals selection process applying to larger dollar value agreements. We will make details of these changes available to you as soon as we can.

As this first round of changes is implemented, we would appreciate your feedback. We need to know if these modifications are working, and if not, why not. These administrative changes will be noted on the Service Canada Stakeholder Engagement and Call for proposals for Employment Program Web Site at http://www1.servicecanada.gc.ca/en/epb/lmd/sc/call_for_proposal.shtml.

Thank you for your interest, and we look forward to working with you in 2006.

SCC MANAGER NAME