Employers that were left on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars of grants when CyberNB shut down will get their money through another non-profit tech organization, Lighthouse Labs. But they’ll have to jump through some hoops first.
As they do, many continue to question how CyberNB, its partners, and its funders failed so spectacularly to take care of them after CyberNB shut down.
A Month With No Answers
CyberNB’s shocking collapse happened on February 28, shortly after Opportunities New Brunswick (ONB) held back hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding.
The not-for-profit organization had been running the Digital Skills For Youth (DS4Y) employment program on behalf of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED).
When CyberNB folded, dozens of organizations that had hired (and paid) people through CyberNB’s DS4Y grants were still waiting for reimbursement.
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Many faced debt they couldn’t carry. They spent weeks seeking information about when, how, or even if they would get the money they were promised. No one involved, from CyberNB to ONB to ISED, seemed willing to give them answers.
Now, more than a month after CyberNB folded, those employers have finally got word they will be reimbursed—but there is a catch.
What Happened To The Records?
ISED has confirmed to Huddle that Lighthouse Labs will take over CyberNB’s contribution agreement for the DS4Y program. Lighthouse is one of several organizations already delivering DS4Y grants in other parts of the country.
Lighthouse is already in touch with employers waiting for their reimbursements. However, neither Lighthouse nor ISED will give Huddle details about how that process is unfolding.
That’s significant because several DS4Y employers tell Huddle they are being asked to re-submit all the paperwork for their DS4Y applications.
Reginald Tower is the president of the Greater Dorchester Moving Forward Co-operative.
Moving Forward used a DS4Y grant to hire a program director and was left on the hook for about $15,000 when CyberNB shut down. It was money Tower said could have brought down the entire organization.
Tower says both ISED and Lighthouse reached out to him after Huddle first reported on his story. Within 48 hours, Moving Forward was on the way to getting reimbursed.
But Tower says he must re-submit all of the detailed paperwork he already filled out. Even the director whose salary the grant covered will have to submit everything again.
“I don’t know what happened with the pre-existing paperwork, but they’re either not willing to use it or don’t have it—one or the other,” Tower says.
No Plan To Save Program
Since none of the organizations involved are willing to answer questions about the DS4Y program, it’s tough to know exactly what happened to the original information. However, former CyberNB employees familiar with the DS4Y program tell Huddle that it could have been lost when CyberNB folded.
CyberNB administered the DS4Y program on behalf of ISED, keeping track of nuts-and-bolts information about employers and interns.
CyberNB periodically updated ISED with specific details when reimbursement was required but, until one of those reports came through, the information lived at CyberNB.
So when CyberNB suddenly and unexpectedly folded, the former employees say some information was probably lost before it was passed along.
One former CyberNB employee says it’s tough to lay all the blame for the situation on one organization. However, they say Opportunities New Brunswick should have done more—especially since its decision to pull funding led to CyberNB’s collapse.
“As the entity that decides to shut down a business, and especially a business that runs in the province, particularly with DS4Y that funds employers in the province, I do think, if not them, who? Who’s responsible to make sure that these employers aren’t left scrambling?” they said.
The former employee said that, at the very least, the federal partners should have been alerted sooner and some sort of plan should have been in place to hand off important CyberNB programs.
“There was never a task force that was put in place, or an action team, to kind of wrap up all loose ends—which I thought was very short-sighted, especially where they might not have known the extent of what was on the line if it just all shuts down,” the employee said. “I wonder if it was just completely overlooked.”
Tower wonders the same thing.
He says the ISED contact who first reached out admitted the organization only knew about him because of media reports.
“Had it not been for them recognizing us through [Huddle’s] report, I’m not sure what would have happened,” he told Huddle. “We weren’t going to sit on our hands, we were going to keep on digging, but we were already doing that and we weren’t having any luck at all.”
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
