This letter, signed by the management of the Energy School Service Center (CSS), announced the cancellation of the celebration of 25 years of service and new retirees, scheduled for September 25, due to budget cuts. There would be no meeting, no happy hours as was usual. No $350 gift card either, which we generally reserved as a going away gift. There would be nothing!
“With sadness and dismay, we noted that [les] These cuts leave us no room to maneuver in order to highlight, as we had planned, your professional development within your organization,” the letter said.
“We wish you a retirement that meets your expectations,” ended this letter.
There will be a few dozen of them, on April 9, to meet in Shawinigan. Former colleagues, all retired from the education sector, who have one thing in common: they retired last summer. They all, like Chantal Légaré, received this letter in the middle of summer.
Sometimes after 40 years of involvement in the world of teaching…
Half a billion…
We are still too aware of the budgetary cuts that were announced by the former Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, in 2025. Just a few days before the end of the school year, it was more than half a billion additional dollars that the CSS had to cut Quebec for the coming school year.
Faced with popular discontent, the minister made an about-face, reinjecting $540 million into the network, sums which should only be devoted to student services.
For the Energy CSS, all this resulted in the obligation to have to cut $3.6 million from its annual budget, just like that, in the middle of summer, when the budgets had already been completed for the coming year.
Choices had to be made. And sometimes even, choices that break our hearts.
“We were taken by surprise by these announcements from the ministry. This decision was taken reluctantly, among a series of difficult decisions that we had to make. But the basic premise was to maintain services for students.”
—  Amélie Germain-Bergeron, deputy director of communications at CSS de l’Énergie.
For Chantal Légaré, however, the decision has a sad meaning: that even the human aspect is not spared by budget cuts.
However, she knows a lot about these cuts. After 37 years in the profession, she has seen all kinds. Those years when she was allowed only 20 color photocopies, throughout the year, for her class of 22 students. All those times she wandered the flea markets to fill her prize box with her pocket or find story books a little less damaged than those in her class.
“We are teachers, we have been at the heart of the network and we understand the budgetary reality so much. But we could have done without the gifts, the meal… What we would have wanted is a last moment between us, with our colleagues, to mark our departure. Even in the middle of a gymnasium so that it doesn’t cost much, that we see each other one last time, that we feel that our contribution had been important,” she considers.
Because in the end, there won’t even have been that. No gathering for a few little speeches. Not even a greeting card. Only a letter announcing the cancellation of the activity, with the conclusion that we wish them a retirement that meets their expectations.
Staff who have reached 25 years of career in 2025-2026, and who were normally honored at the same time as retirees during these events, will have received their famous 25 years of service watch. The order was placed before the cuts were announced, it is said.
But again, no gathering either.
It is therefore on April 9, through their personal initiative, that the new retirees from teaching will gather together to mark, several months later, this important event in their lives. And it will be at their expense.
“The loop has not been closed, and we want to close it as it should.”
—  Chantal Légaré, newly retired and former president of the Mauricie Education Union
And she also hopes that this cry from the heart will lead to reflection for the years to come and the choices to make.
A reflection visibly already well underway at the Energy CSS.
“We can say today that this will be an exception. It is not our intention to no longer highlight retirements and 25 years of service. The decision had to be taken in an emergency context, but it is not our intention to continue down this path,” assures Amélie Germain-Bergeron.
