The closure of the ISC office in Humboldt came as a surprise to most in the community. The office responsible for land title and corporate registry information has been a fixture in Humboldt since its evolution from the land titles office. There are four people currently employed in the Humboldt office. The branches in Yorkton and Prince Albert are also slated to close at the end of the business day on Friday, October 4.

ISC spokesperson Shae Haverstock chalked it up to a sign of the times.

“We adapt our services to customer trends, and we respond to changes in the business environment. With factors such as fewer customers accessing counter services, increasing use of online services, and the shifting economics of our business, we are adjusting our operations.”

Haverstock promises no change to the level of service that customers have come to expect. He says it’s simply a shift in the mode of that service. Customer applications can be done online combined with telephone support. There are no planned changes to services offered by ISC, according to Haverstock.

The surprise nature of the closure along with the loss of a valued operation and accompanying jobs was not welcome news to either the business community or to City Hall. Brent Fitzpatrick with the Humboldt and District Chamber of Commerce spoke to the closure.

“Any time you have a loss of that many jobs in a single go, that has an impact. These are relatively well-paid people, and that ripple begins to move out. They’re not buying groceries; there’s less disposable income. All of that flows out of the initial loss.”

Mayor Rob Muench is inclined to agree. The sudden disclosure came as a surprise as Muench received a call from ISC the Friday prior to the closure announcement.

“It was a shock and a disappointment that we’re losing a service in our community and more importantly, we’re losing six jobs that were important to our community.”

In a small community, the impact tends to be heightened given that people tend to know each other, and such is the case with the Mayor and some of those employees. Muench notes that the City has had many occasions to do business with ISC and the closure adds an additional distance to their service provision.

Haverstock added that ISC understands the actions that the move will have on its current employees stating, “With these changes in our business, our concern is certainly with our employees in the affected positions, and this is a business decision made with careful consideration for our employees, customers, and communities.”

When asked whether there would be opportunities for the affected employees to be reassigned within the system, Haverstock replied, “I wouldn’t be able to comment at this time.”