If you missed the Town Hall yesterday or wondered what the CCFA’s response would be, happy weekend reading!
Watch for our Press Release after the election next week!
What we heard in the April 2025 Camosun College Town Hall was a scripted performance aimed at damage control — not a plan for fair, transparent, or good-faith labour adjustment. Lane Trotter’s remarks presented a sanitized version of events that downplays administrative responsibility and ignores the extent of campus unrest. His leadership is tone deaf, managerial, and non-collegial (no matter how much he uses the term colleagues), relying on technocratic language to justify austerity while ignoring the deep structural concerns raised by faculty, staff, students, and the broader community.
Lane Trotter repeatedly claimed that layoffs were only a “last resort” and that administration had exhausted all other options. In reality, layoffs were initiated before the full canvass process even concluded, undermining the legitimacy of the claim that the college would consider employee-driven alternatives. Trotter’s invocation of legislative constraints (Section 31) as an excuse ignores the broader failure to engage meaningfully with unions, staff, and students before moving to cuts. Moreover, the administration selectively used government messaging — invoking Premier Eby’s call for “restructuring” — while refusing to acknowledge the latitude other institutions have used to protect people over bureaucracy. The CCFA maintains that Trotter’s framing is damage control, not accountability.
Deborah Huelscher proudly emphasized the College’s “success” in balancing a $172 million budget. But they haven’t shared the budget with us to show us how! The CCFA points out that this “balanced budget” was built on deep cuts to frontline education, while senior administrative salaries and positions were preserved and even enhanced. Huelscher’s narrative omits the administration’s unwillingness to reallocate from non-instructional spending or reduce ballooning administration costs, opting instead to gut faculty and student services. Claims of rising benefits costs, which are negotiated and paid for through the Mandate, are just a diversionary tactic for explaining why the exempt administration received up to 6.75% in salary increases. This is not sound fiscal management — it is strategic disinvestment in education.
John D’Agnolo downplayed the human impact of layoffs by framing cuts as a “reduction in positions” rather than people. This rhetorical move is both inaccurate and callous. Every position lost represents a career, a family’s livelihood, and a community connection broken. D’Agnolo further claimed that voluntary severances and retirements were sufficiently explored, yet cost-saving canvass proposals have been ignored and rejected without meaningful review or counters. His insistence that Section 54 timelines require continuing layoffs misses the point: the duty to bargain in good faith includes seriously considering alternatives, not rubber-stamping predetermined outcomes.
Richard Stride asserted that “all student services are essential” and that impacts would be minimal, perhaps there’d be “longer wait times.” This is a gross minimization of the real harm this will cause. CCFA notes that faculty and staff reductions directly affect advising, counselling, learning supports, and classroom availability. Stride’s assurance that services will continue fails to account for the cumulative erosion of quality, accessibility, and support for students — particularly racialized and marginalized learners — at a moment when Camosun already struggles with capacity and retention. Further, Stride’s comments about school restructuring framing it as administrative “efficiency” betray the fact that faculty and students had no real input into restructuring decisions that directly affect their educational experience.
While Jen Stone’s role was primarily facilitative, her repeated framing of questions and pre-emptive filtering (“we may not get to all questions,” “please email your exempt leaders”) was a theatrical strategy that limited the administration’s accountability. By preemptively moderating live questions and steering faculty concerns into opaque bureaucratic channels, Stone shielded leadership from the full force of faculty and staff objections. Real transparency would have meant creating space for dissent — not managing it into invisibility.
How long are we going to stand for this? And I quote:
1. “We’re doing everything to avoid layoffs.”
Reality check: The College fast-tracked layoffs before canvass proposals were seriously considered. Lane Trotter’s claim that layoffs were a “last resort” doesn’t hold water when dozens of canvass submissions received nothing more than auto-replies. CCFA members stepped up with alternatives. The administration stepped around them.
2. “We’ve passed a balanced budget.”
What does that even mean if we can’t see it? A “balanced” budget built on broken commitments, eliminated positions, and eroded morale. This budget cuts the backbone of education — the educators and support staff — without showing us they’ve considered every alternative.
3. “We’re working with unions and listening.”
Telling isn’t consultation. True collaboration doesn’t look like withholding key information until mediation was booked, ignoring canvass proposals, flatly refusing to delay layoff notices pending mediation, or steamrolling Section 54 rights. CCFA has yet to see meaningful engagement — only announcements, not dialogue.
4. “Equity and reconciliation remain priorities.”
Then where’s the equity lens in these cuts? Where’s the recognition that the harm disproportionately affects precarious, term (non-regular) faculty — many of them Indigenous, racialized, and/or women — who are easiest to cut but hardest hit? “Advancing Social Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” appears to be a purely performative part of the college’s strategic plan.
5. “The timeline is out of our control.”
Let’s be honest: The college chose to treat government pressure as absolute. Other public institutions are using this crisis to innovate and protect people — not gut them. Blaming the province while executing top-down layoffs reeks of abdicated leadership.
6. “Layoffs are not people — just positions.”
This rhetorical sleight of hand is insulting. Every “position” eliminated means a person (sometimes more than one person) loses their income, health coverage, job security, and often their profession. Disguising the human cost doesn’t reduce it.
7. “We’re inviting feedback — just email us.”
Sure — into the abyss. The CCFA, the CCSS, faculty, staff, and students have all sent emails, attended town halls, filed proposals, and organized a rally! How can they not have heard us asking them to come up with A BETTER PLAN! (Sorry, not sorry that Richard Stride is now triggered by cocktail napkins.) If leadership wants to be invited in, they need to ACTUALLY listen to those who open the door — but, don’t try that with the Board of Governors, they’ll just ghost you, even in person.
The administration’s narrative of responsibility, compassion, and transparency doesn’t match the facts. The CCFA will continue to advocate for a real labor adjustment process — one grounded in respect, rights, and shared decision-making. Camosun College is not a corporation. It’s a public institution. And its people and the community deserves better than this!
Lane Trotter blames the federal government and BC laws, John D’Agnolo blames the process, Deborah Huelscher blames the budget — but the real blame is their broken leadership!
When will Lane take responsibility for getting this right if he genuinely wants to start the healing?
Lynelle Yutani (she/they)
ac.ytlucafnusomac@tnediserp
President, Camosun College Faculty Association
Lynelle is a queer, leftist rabble-rouser galvanized to guard the rights of union members and is on a crusade to convince you that you get out of your Union what you put into it. Lynelle serves on Presidents Council of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators (FPSE) and was elected to FPSE Executive as a Member-at-Large. She is on a number of FPSE affiliate committees, including the 2SLGBTQIA+ and Racialized Workers Caucuses for the BC Fed, and is active in the Victoria Labour Congress. Lynelle also serves as V.P. of her Strata Council & oversees a rooftop community garden which partners with Harvest & Share Food Aid Society to grow fresh produce for local foodbanks and community food security programs.
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