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What I try and do in this is a little kind of backwards look, a backwards look in
order to look forwards, talk a little bit about what we appear to be heading into
in the coming year. And the first thing, I do always talk about funding and our
finances and what the next year looks like and our Board certainly were quite
concerned as was I about what this year and even next year might look like. Last
year wasn't too bad, but government was throwing out a lot of money certainly in
terms of capital projects and you see what's happening in the rest of the world in
Europe, and Greece, and England, and elsewhere governments everywhere including
Canada and Ontario getting themselves into systemic deficits, which they must
correct and get out of. So our Board was saying if you think the recession is bad
just wait until government has to get out of these deficits, because the public
sector, I mean we didn't suffer any layoffs at all at Fanshawe College or in the
public sector during a recession, we never do. When we do, if we do, or have to,
it comes after because that's when the government has to cut back. You see what
the new Prime Minister of England in today's paper, they have the coalition and
their first thing is they have to cut six or eight billion out of their
expenditures immediately, the whole country is going to end up in bankruptcy. So
that was the concern. However, our Board was very prudent that I have good news
in that regard, in that we received, last year, three million dollars of one-time
only money, the government gave us. And usually we would take, and we get that
kind of thing from time to time, usually we would spend that on equipment or
capital things, can't spend it on operating because it's one-time only, but our
Board suggested don't do that at all in fact, save half of it for this year and
half of it for next year and that's what we did. So we have 1.5 million dollars
and in fact our budget that was just approved by our Board is technically a
deficit budget of 1.5 million dollars, because we used that that was carried
forward and that's why we didn't have enough with the severe problem this year was
a difficult budget but not a severe one and once again no real layoffs at all
coming from that budget. And we've got that same cushion for next year. Well the
good news is despite this recession, despite government cutbacks, this government
has been more friendly to education, and certainly post-secondary education, than
any other. And they are funding growth, if we grow our student body we will get
money for that. They're not funding continuing existence, they're not providing
for salary increases or anything but any new students over and above last year we
will receive additional money for that. But they gave another, I think, just over
three million dollars of one-time only money.