Inuvik and Fort Smith say they need more Aurora College programs

The mayor of Inuvik says the town will formally raise concerns with Aurora College’s board over a lack of programming at the local campus.

Mayor Peter Clarkson said the municipality plans to write to the college’s board of governors highlighting the issue.

His Fort Smith counterpart, Dana Fergusson, told Cabin Radio her town perceives a similar problem. “It’s hard on a community like us,” she said.

Clarkson said the Inuvik campus currently offers programs such as office and business administration, upgrading courses and a personal support worker program, which has been delivered online and may move to evening classes.

The personal support worker program is a positive offering, he said, with demand for employees in both home care and long-term care settings.

But he believes information technology training is lacking despite growing demand for IT workers, while the town would also benefit from a recreation leadership program.

“Recreation centres and municipal governments are responsible for recreation, but it’s very difficult to find anybody that has education in the whole rec leadership field,” he told Cabin Radio.

“I think that’s important for healthy communities, keeping youth active, keeping adults active. We could save a lot on healthcare if all of our residents were a lot more active.”

Clarkson said student numbers have fallen sharply over the years – dropping, he asserted, from around 165 in the mid-2000s to about 25 recently – which he attributed to limited options pushing residents to pursue education elsewhere, including at Yukon University or schools in southern Canada.

He said while Aurora College had previously acknowledged the issue and indicated plans to expand offerings, little progress has been made.

“It’s been almost a year and half since those discussions were had and we don’t see any increases at all,” said Clarkson.

“We’re not serving the residents of the Northwest Territories with programs that they’re interested in.

“We know that the demand is there. It’s just the college is not offering the programs that people would be interested in.”

Aurora College has been approached for comment.

Angela James, its president since August 2024, resigned last month.

‘We need it to survive and thrive’

In Fort Smith, Fergusson described a steady reduction of in-class programming over the past decade.

“The college has been a central hub here in the community since the late 60s, early 70s,” she said, but now she sees low attendance and “huge pieces of campuses that are completely under-utilized.

Programs once offered in Fort Smith included teacher education, social work and two-year diploma streams that allowed students to begin their studies locally before completing degrees elsewhere. Fergusson said those programs attracted students and workers to the community and helped address critical labour shortages.

“We need teachers, and we need social workers, we need people in the health department,” she said, noting that those programs have gradually disappeared over roughly the past 10 years, while some aren’t offered at other regional campuses either.

The Thebacha Leadership Council – representing the town, its MLA and local Indigenous governments – has been in communication with the college, Fergusson said.

“It’s one of the major economic drivers for our community,” she said. “It brings in jobs. It brings in people. We need it to survive and thrive.”

Ex-MLA writes to prime minister

The town is also advocating for the position of college president to remain headquartered in Fort Smith.

Former MLA Frieda Martselos has joined that campaign, going as far as to write to Prime Minister Mark Carney last week.

In that letter, Martselos stated that Fort Smith must remain the college’s central headquarters as historically promised, she said, since 1967.

Carney would have been a Fort Smith resident in 1967. He was born in the town two years earlier and lived there until the age of six.

Martselos said any shift of leadership and programs to Yellowknife undermines longstanding political commitments, the local economy and community identity, which she said “is inseparable from the institution’s presence.”

She also called for federal support to replace Breynat Hall, a former residential school that still houses some college students, with a new student residence as an act of reconciliation.

The NWT government’s Department of Education, Culture and Employment said Aurora College’s operational decisions are handled by its governors.

A departmental spokesperson said infrastructure development – including student housing – has been identified by the governors and education minister Caitlin Cleveland as a shared priority.