The federal government is spending $5.9 million to provide training to Aboriginal students looking to cash in on the lucrative potential in Ontario’s North.
The Ring of Fire Aboriginal Training Alliance will cover specialized training for up to 260 students living in Matawa communities, near where much of the mining activity is expected to take place.
The program, a partnership between Ottawa, Confederation College and the Kiikenomaga Kikenjigewen Employment and Training Services, is all about creating economic viability in communities with little else going for them, said Ginoogaming First Nation Chief Celia Echum.
Echum said in her community, like in many other remote First Nations, most people are without work and don’t have the necessary training and skills to land Ring of Fire positions when the mining finally does get under way.
“We have an opportunity today to participate in a new economy that will develop as mining comes to our region,” she said. “For many years we watched the forest companies take the trees from our traditional territories and we got almost nothing in return.
“This time things will be different. This time our people will be part of that development.”
The program will be promoted in Matawa communities, and includes a number of different career pathways.
Among the courses being offered through RoFATA are mining essentials, environmental monitoring, basic line cutting, remote camp cook, heavy equipment operator, pre-trades carpentry and electrical and underground diamond driller helper.
Matawa CEO David Paul Achneepineskum said it’s time First Nations people got more than just job scraps on projects conducted on their traditional lands.
“Gone are the days when our people are just labourers on the job,” he said Thursday at Confederation College, where the program was launched.
The sky is the limit, he believes, once the education and training is in place.
“One day we our people will own the mines,” Achneepineskum said.
The announcement, the first by Kenora MP Greg Rickford since being named Minister of Science and Technology and FedNor, said skilled training is the best way to include First Nations communities in the Ring of Fire development.
“What we don’t want ... is a legacy project that is absent of a critical mass of homegrown talent and improving the economic fortunes, not just of community members in First Nations, but in cities and towns across Northwestern Ontario,” Rickford said.
“This is not a project we want outsourced to the rest of the world. Obviously we’ll invite their help and welcome it when it’s strategic and necessary. But for my part, as the minister responsible for FedNor and the Ring of Fire, is to ensure Northern Ontario’s footprint and face is on the Ring of Fire.”
Confederation College president Jim Madder said it’s a great start and he sees no reason why the program can’t be expanded to 1,000 or more once its first success stories are realized.
