"Did you not get the letter?" the lead asked. Miles-Senior checked her inbox. Nothing. Then her junk folder. There it was: a notification sent at 2:15 p.m. on a Friday, informing her organization that its funding had been cut. No transition plan. No consultation. No warning

"I lost my mind," Miles-Senior says, plainly. "I was really angry."

She wasn't alone. Across Ontario, 22 Black-led organizations received the same news through the same broken system. Some didn't receive the letter at all. At stake were Student and Family Advocate (SFA) roles embedded in schools, wraparound family programs funded through the Innovative Solutions for Black Parents (ISBP) stream, and years of community trust that no government review can replicate. The government's explanation for the delivery failure? A glitch.

"If you had a glitch in your system, wouldn't it flag that all 22 agencies did not receive your letter?" Miles-Senior asks. "So, you need to fix it."

The work that was cut

Durham Family and Cultural Centre has been doing the slow, unglamorous, profoundly necessary work of keeping Black families intact for nearly eight years. Its SFAs navigate anti-Black racism inside school systems on behalf of parents who are too deep in the trauma to see the way out. Its Pamoja program helps families understand housing and welfare systems, short-term counselling, and referrals. Its Together We Are program gives Black parents tools and space around financial literacy and culturally grounded programming, while their kids learn what Black joy looks like.

By Monday morning, after that Friday call, Miles-Senior was telling her staff. Within a week, 90% of them were laid off.

"Most of our staff have been with the agency for four to five years," she says. "One of them was the very first Student and Family Advocate when we got the grant five years ago. He was the first, and he was laid off."

Some of those youth had nowhere to go. Durham Region already has disproportionately high numbers of missing Black boys, and the justice system navigation program was one of the few things standing between those kids and a bad outcome. "Some of the youth were like, 'How do you mean you're going to go? Where am I going to go?'" Miles-Senior recalls. "We built a relationship. And when kids are facing so many life challenges, trust is big."

For these kids, trust is the whole program. Without it, nothing else works.

"The impact is cataclysmic"

In North York, Shequita Reid, Executive Director of Delta Family Resource Centre, an organization that has served the community for 41 years, received her notification over the weekend. "Let's put this into context," Reid says. "It's a Sunday night."

The email informed Delta that $16.5 million in provincial funding had been "confirmed" but that a government review of how the funds would be structured meant it couldn't be released yet. Timeline: early summer, maybe. That's at least three months of zero operating funds, with no bridge funding, no contingency, and no plan for the hundreds of families currently mid-program. "Three months means programmatic dollars," Reid says. "And if they release it late in the year, we're never properly set up for success. We're always reactive."

Delta is a unionized organization. When layoffs happen, seniority rules trigger bumping across departments, meaning the impact ripples through the whole organization, not just the directly funded programs. "It's the whole organization being impacted," Reid explains. "By this singular process that didn't give us the courtesy of a transition."

Career coaching cohorts were cut mid-stream, the Kujistahi parenting program went dark, and SFA advocates were pulled from the schools where they'd spent years earning trust. Families already in crisis were left to figure it out on their own. "The impact," Reid says, "is cataclysmic."

Employment programs aren't a substitute for survival

The province's stated rationale is to align funding with employment and entrepreneurship to match its "Protect Ontario" mandate. That lands with a particular kind of hollow irony for the organizations being defunded.

"Employment services alone are not enough to support Black communities," Reid says. "What we're talking about are quality employment outcomes. Not part-time jobs that end quickly, but wraparound supports that are critical to ensuring sustainability."

Tiffany Gooch, Director of Strategic Operations and Partnerships at The Reading Partnership, put it plainly in a public statement: "You cannot expect employment outcomes without first addressing mental health, educational support, and systemic barriers."

Miles-Senior is equally direct. "A mom can't get to work if she can't feed her children," she says. "A Black child can't graduate if a Black child doesn't have the support to navigate the system. They both go hand in hand. One doesn't work in a silo."

Nothing about us without us

Heather Meara Thomas, Executive Director of HM Youth Foundation, said it directly in a public statement: "The relationships built with youth, particularly those who face systemic barriers, cannot simply pause without impact."

HM Youth Foundation has been running school-based mentorship, advocacy, and leadership programming for Black youth. Thomas isn't opposed to an employment focus. But she says continuity matters, and abrupt halts don't serve anyone's employment outcomes.

"Our hope is that there is a clear and timely direction that allows organizations to continue supporting youth without disruption," Thomas writes, "while also aligning with the evolving focus on employment and economic opportunity."

What every organization says is missing from that direction is the most basic thing: being asked. "Nothing about us without us," Reid says. "It is critical that we are always part of the solution."

Miles-Senior says it with the exhaustion of someone who has written two lengthy reports a year for eight years, documented every case file, every referral, every family served, and still found herself reading a funding termination in her spam folder. "Don't keep us out and think you know what we need," she says. "Ask us. What they did was not cool, and that's putting it mildly."

Flavour of the month

These women aren't advocates who go home and leave it at the office. They are the community. The cut lands twice.

Miles-Senior says: "When I spoke to the French agency in Ottawa, she was livid. She said, 'We have families and kids still coming into our building, and I had to let people go.' That broke my heart."

Underneath the logistics is something heavier. After George Floyd, Black organizations across Canada saw an unprecedented wave of funding, acknowledgment, and allyship. Corporations pledged billions. Governments created action plans. DEI became a buzzword that opened doors and loosened purse strings. Then the pendulum swung.

"Black people were the flavour of the month," Miles-Senior says flatly. "And now DEI is a bad word."

Reid suggests the government should be reminded that Black communities are taxpayers. “The investments are made with taxpayer dollars, and Black communities are part of that. It doesn't send a positive message when these halts are made so easily, so trivially."

The Durham Family and Cultural Centre moved to a new location on May 1st. Despite everything, Miles-Senior is building a larger youth space where kids can come and feel safe. She's asking the community to show up with paint, furniture, and whatever they can spare. "I strongly believe we have to keep doing the work," she says, "because it's our community and our lives matter."