SaskatchewanThe Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union has confirmed 58 of its members have lost their jobs at Saskatchewan Polytechnic since January, with counsellors, IT workers and nurses among those laid off.Post-secondary school has cut 58 non-faculty, 66 faculty positions amid ‘substantial revenue shortfall’Chris Edwards · CBC News · Posted: Oct 18, 2025 12:35 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours agoSaskatchewan Polytechnic says post-secondary institutions across Canada are seeing a significant decline in international student enrolment due to changes to federal immigration policy changes, leading to revenue shortfall. (Matt Howard/CBC)The Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union says 58 non-faculty employees have been laid off from Saskatchewan Polytechnic since January, adding to the 66 faculty members who also lost their jobs at the school this year.According to Deb Zawada, a provincial bargaining chair for the union and a media technician at Sask Polytech’s Prince Albert campus, 48 of the non-faculty layoffs have come since August.”It’s turned to anxiety, depression, anger, hopelessness,” she said of the morale of her peers on campus, who worry more cuts are on the horizon.Zawada said a range of positions were involved in layoffs in the last few weeks, affecting everything from school bookstore workers to counsellors to procurement specialists. The union is now “working on strategies to get the word out and what action can be taken” in response to the cuts, she said.”We haven’t gotten that far yet because we didn’t know what the impact was going to be until this week, and it’s been significant.”In a series of internal emails sent to Sask Polytech staff this week that were shared with CBC, the school’s president, Larry Rosia, also indicated 71 vacant positions have not been filled and there will be “more painful choices ahead.”In a statement on Friday, Sask Polytech blamed the cuts on a roughly 40 per cent drop in international student enrolment, creating “a substantial revenue shortfall” for the current school year.Post-secondary institutions across Canada are “experiencing a significant decline in international student enrolment” due to changes to federal immigration policy changes, it said.According to its official census for the 2024-25 academic year, 4,604 of Sask Polytech’s students are on international visas, accounting for 23 per cent of total enrolment.The school’s international student population had grown dramatically in recent years. In its 2017-18 year, Sask Polytech reported that only 710 of its students, or four per cent of its student population, were on student visas.Student services changesIn an email to staff, the school’s associate vice-president of student services, Alison Pickrell, said the school will also be reorganizing its counselling services and laying off several employees.The school will be transitioning to a “stepped care” model for student counselling, and phasing out the school’s contact centre for student services.That contact centre “has served students well,” but “as service expectations and technologies evolve,” post-secondary institutions are moving to technology-based approaches for student services, Pickrell’s said in the email, which was shared with CBC News.As part of the transition, the school will hire five student services “outreach and success navigators,” who Pickrell said will help students with Sask Polytech’s “most requested services, including connections to resources, assistance through life transitions, financial aid applications, [and] coping strategies.”The change will allow educational counsellors to “focus on more complex student needs and one-to-one sessions,” she said, but because those services are used less frequently, the school will also cut the number of educational counsellor positions from 14 to five.The contact centre closure will come only a few weeks after the abrupt closure of the school bookstores at the Moose Jaw and Prince Albert campuses on Oct. 10.Union bargaining chair Zawada said she’s worried about even more closures.”A lot of people are concerned that it’s going to end up in campus closures. The two smallest campuses, [Prince Albert] and Moose Jaw, have been hit fairly hard,” she said.”And they’re a close-knit group. But they’re really wondering, is this spelling the end of two campuses?”ABOUT THE AUTHORChris Edwards is a reporter at CBC Saskatchewan. Before entering journalism, he worked in the tech industry.
‘Anger, hopelessness,’ as Sask Polytech lays off more than 120 staff: union
