The NWT government has announced the NWT Workforce Ready Program, offering grants up to $100,000 to community and Indigenous governments to help residents prepare for employment opportunities.
The funding program was created in response to concerns about how communities could benefit from and participate in major infrastructure projects raised at public engagements, the territory said in a Thursday news release.
“These aren’t just construction projects. They are community-shaping, future-defining opportunities that can transform the trajectory of the Northwest Territories, but only if we do it right and only if northerners are ready to participate,” said industry and employment minister Caitlin Cleveland at Industry Days, a GNWT event for industry partners.
“Potential doesn’t train an apprentice. It doesn’t grow a northern economy. It doesn’t create a career. Opportunity only matters when people can actually take part in it.”
A webpage on the program states funding can support costs including instructors, training materials, participant supports, travel and certifications. It says priority areas are the trades, construction, logistics, support services, and environmental and technical occupations.
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Cleveland stressed that the training will be “connected to real opportunities, real employers, and real work.”
“We want to make sure that any resident in the territory that wants to participate in these projects has the opportunity and the pathway to access meaningful employment,” she said.
“For this to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity and to see success, it is not about outfitting the North, it is about lifting the North.”
Cleveland said the program “empowers the community to really put together a creative and robust application for this funding that reflects what they need,” and encouraged communities to work collaboratively on proposals.
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The first intake for the program, expected to open in October, will focus on initiatives that support skill building related to the Mackenzie Valley Highway. Cleveland said the first intake will not be limited to communities along the proposed highway route between Wrigley and Inuvik.
The GNWT said more information on eligibility requirements, application guidelines and intake dates will be available when the program launches.
How are companies and education institutes preparing?
At Thursday’s event, a panel of business owners and education representatives spoke on the territory’s current state of workforce readiness and how they are trying to increase training and education opportunities.
That included Geoff Oldfield, president of the NWT & Nunavut Construction Association and an operations manager at Northern Industrial Construction LTD.
“In order for us to be successful, we need a northern workforce. So we put a lot of emphasis on apprentices and we will move apprentices from community to community to make sure that we’re offering them continued employment,” he said.
Oldfield said the company has been working in Délı̨nę since 2019, and now has a workforce composed 90-percent of local residents when they do jobs in the community.
“If you can execute a project with a local workforce and aren’t flying in as many people, you’re going to be better received in the community and your costs are going to be lower. So it really benefits everybody,” said Oldfield.
Nora Houlahan, interim president of Aurora College, said the college has developed courses in skilled trade essentials and professional development – like frontline supervisor training – to make sure “workers from the North have the access not just to the entry-level jobs, that they can be the ones eligible for promotion and moving up in the workforce too.”
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Houlahan said the college will soon role out a dual credit program that will allow high school students to take college-level courses and earn both high school and post-secondary credits. She said that would help students complete high school and give them a sense of post-secondary opportunities they may want to pursue.
Sarah Madsen, director of labour development and standards with the NWT’s Department of Education, Culture and Employment, said the territorial government is looking at ways to engage youth on opportunities related to major infrastructure projects. She said it is helpful to show students how they could tangibly be involved in constructing the Mackenzie Valley Highway or Arctic Economic and Security Corridor, which doesn’t necessarily mean a job in the trades.
“There’s a lot more to building a highway than construction,” said Madsen.
“So if they do choose to go to post secondary, they’re going for something that they can bring back and apply to the North. So it’s just making sure they see that pathway, making that pathway more clear.”
For the GNWT, building readiness doesn’t just mean training people to work on constructing major infrastructure projects, but also providing local services and infrastructure.
Caroline Wawzonek, the strategic infrastructure, energy and supply chains minister said that could include roles like project management or building cafés or hotels.
“We don’t just want folks who can come and get an entry-level position in construction,” she said. “You want someone that is moving through getting a red seal, getting a diploma, getting a degree, so that they’re moving through the different stages of potential employment that are going to be created, not only during construction, but beyond.”
