Peggy Revell
They’ve spent the past four years hammering home an anti-tobacco message, but Youth Action Alliances across the province will be shutting down at the end of August following the Ontario government’s decision to end the program’s funding.
“I was completely shocked,” Tiffany Whalen, a Northwest YAA senior peer leader and summer student for tobacco-free sports and recreation, said of her reaction when she first heard funding had been cut to the YAA, which was created under the Smoke-Free Ontario Strategy to establish youth-led anti-tobacco initiatives.
“I was just shocked because all the work we’ve put into it, and all those changes we’ve made,” she added. “It’s just a disappointment because of all the work we’ve done.
We wanted it to continue,” she stressed. “All the resources, all the future events, and policy changes we could have made—we don’t get to do it anymore.
“It’s a very, very good program and it’s a bummer that it’s just being cut.”
“I’m deeply discouraged,” echoed Jennifer McKibbon, tobacco strategy manager for the Northwestern Health Unit, which helped administer the YAA program in this region.
“As an organization, we were so tickled to have youth staff, and to have them work with us on some of the issues and then take the issues beyond where we might have thought of as adults.
“It added such a neat dynamic to our work, and not only that, but the work that they were doing was really critical public health prevention work, and so we’re really disappointed,” McKibbon lamented.
“With our program, we got a lot of experience about policy change and advocacy for change, and the program was just great to teach us how to make a difference in politics today,” said Whalen, expressing gratitude for the funding that was provided over the past four years.
“It gave us skills and tools to advocate for different changes in our province alone,” she noted.
Whalen pointed to the advocacy work YAAs across the province have done, including lobbying for a smoking ban in public places and workplaces, a smoking ban in vehicles carrying children, and the “Flavour . . . Gone!” campaign that originated from the local Northwest YAA, which has been lobbying the government to ban flavours like pina colada, cotton candy, and green apple being added to tobacco products like chew and cigarillos—products that specifically are targeted towards youth.
“The program is really important, why would you want to cut a program that’s doing so good?” she wondered.
“And it doesn’t even cost that much to fund in the beginning.”
“We receive a little more than $200,000 a year, and that’s what we’re losing,” McKibbon said of the cost for the health unit to run the program across the region.
“It was $115,000 a year per cluster—is what they used to call it—and the Northwestern Health Unit had two clusters, so that’s $230,000 a year.”
This funding covered all the costs for the program, including travel, training, program supplies, and employing one part-time adult staff and 16 part-time youth staff across the region.
Provincially, the cancellation of the YAA program means 50 adult staff in public health units, and more than 350 youths, will lose their jobs.
“The ministry’s position is that we take the fight against smoking seriously, but we know that we have to make changes to reach more Ontarians,” Ministry of Health Promotions spokesperson Gary Wheeler said in response to why funding for the YAA program will be stopped.
“So we are seeking to build on the successes of the YAA program, by taking a broader approach to engage greater numbers of youth who are at risk in Ontario communities,” he explained.
“We’re currently developing new programs with our partners that will build on the accomplishments of the YAAs,” Wheeler added. “Our plan is to bring in new youth-oriented programs this fall, and those programs are going to be developed in consultation with our partners.”
But since this new program still is in its development stage, details (such as if youths will be employed like they are with the YAA) are not yet available.
Meanwhile, across the province, supporters of YAAs have been organizing, including a Facebook group called “Save the YAA’s! Stand up and have your voice heard!” which has more than 700 members.
Rallies and letter-writing campaigns also were planned before MPPs go on summer recess tomorrow (June 4).
Local members of the YAA have been writing letters to politicians to express their disappointment with the program being cancelled, noted Whalen, who encouraged members of the public to do the same.
“Write letters, make phone calls, fax, e-mail, drive the government crazy and just help us get our program back,” she stressed.
“We want them to realize that what they’ve done has really put a damper on youth today,” Whalen remarked. “We were making such great headway, and we were making so many changes.
“We’ve been doing this for years, and now that we’ve really got the ball rolling and we’ve really got the youth engaged and ready to go, our opportunities have just been cut.”
This includes further work with the “Flavour . . . Gone!” campaign, said Whalen, because while the federal government recently introduced a bill that bans flavoured cigarillos, flavoured chew—whose use is much more widespread in Northwestern Ontario by youths—was omitted.
“I think the ‘Flavour . . . Gone!’ campaign that they launched last July is a really excellent example of youth doing things that we, as adults, might not necessarily think of doing,” explained McKibbon.
“They just have the energy to do that, and they can focus on those issues that are youth-centered.
“And it’s the kind of work that doesn’t get done as well if it’s adults doing it, and sometimes it doesn’t get done that way because the youth have this sort of unique perspective on the issue as it affects them.
“Some of the things they wanted to work on in the future was getting parks and playgrounds smoke-free for kids, so trying to talk to the local municipalities about passing bylaws so that playgrounds were smoke-free,” added McKibbon, citing second-hand smoke concerns, the butt litter that can be a dangerous to animals and young children, and to encourage adults to provide a good example to the children in those areas.
“Fort Frances, we kind of want to do a twist on it,” said Whalen. “Instead of banning the product in the open . . . we can put more cigarette cans, like the butt cans, up and more places to throw your garbage instead of just throwing it on the ground.”
Other areas that the YAA hoped to work on include asking municipalities to eliminate smoking around rec centres and pools, like Fort Frances already has done, noted McKibbon.
“They may get some work done on that this summer, but once the program gets cancelled, it’ll have to be on a volunteer basis and kids are busy, just like we are,” she added, referring to school work, social lives, and other part-time jobs.
And having paid staff, including the youth, running the program is one of the YAA’s strengths, McKibbon stressed.
“From my perspective, we value their work by paying them like we would pay adults to do that work,” she remarked. “Youth are great for volunteering, they’re great for that, but I’m not expecting the [new] program to be as successful.”
“The youth are going to listen to youth more than anybody else, that’s just my opinion,” Whalen said on why the YAA is successful.
“If you get, for example, some adult in there, trying to preach to the youth, ‘This is why smoking is bad or don’t do drugs because . . .’ they’re just going of kind of brush it off and skip the assembly at the high school.”
Another loss will come with the end to jobs for the adult staff, who are a youth advisor and support the involved youth in planning how to take action on issues the youth feel are important, McKibbon added.
“The difficulty of running a program like this—where youth are really engaged and have influence over how the program is run, really have a meaningful role—is that if you don’t have paid adult staff whose job is a youth advisor, the adult staff that are in the health unit don’t have that kind of time.
“They have other programs that they have to do.
“These are the jobs that we’re losing.”
“We’re going to continue the program as fully as we can until the end of August, until the funding ends, but it is a sad time,” McKibbon stressed. “We’re all feeling a little bit deflated about it because I cannot fathom why this is a good idea.”
“It just gave us a voice to make a difference, and now we feel like we’ve lost that voice,” echoed Whalen.
