When it comes to government investment in education, Flin Flon has been lagging far behind other northern Manitoba centres.
Mayor George Fontaine thinks he knows why.
He was asked Tuesday why Flin Flon has seen only a small fraction of the high school and post-secondary dollars flowing into Cranberry Portage, The Pas and Thompson.
Mayor Fontaine said the common denominator among projects in those communities is that they are geared largely toward aboriginals.
Flin Flon, he said, has not pursued that opportunity in the same way, as “we have not catered to an aboriginal component in this community.”
Mayor Fontaine gave as an example the concept of an all-weather road to link the reserve of Pukatawagan with Flin Flon, which he said caused “a furor.”
“We haven’t had people say, ‘Open the road to Puk(atawagan), bring in more people to use our services,’” he said, addressing the Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce. “They’re careful not to do that sort of thing.”
Still, Flin Flon has not only a significant aboriginal population, but also strong ties to northeastern Saskatchewan reserves that rely on this community for services.
But because of the border, Mayor Fontaine said Flin Flon does not receive from the Manitoba government sufficient “recognition” as a hub for aboriginals.
“The recognition of all the (aboriginal) people coming in for services in The Pas and in Thompson (is) there because they’re all Manitoba residents,” he said. “We’re not (getting recognition for) most of (the aboriginals) coming to us because they’re coming from a neighbouring province. I think that’s the biggest thing.”
Mayor Fontaine said much of the post-secondary education funding going to The Pas and Thompson is for residences, whereas “we don’t have a nickel going into a residence” for Flin Flon.
He said he would welcome a dorm for students studying locally.
In recent years, the NDP government has pumped a combined $100 million or so into University College of the North in Thompson and The Pas.
Then last month, the province announced $23 million to upgrade the dorms and trades training at Frontier Collegiate in Cranberry Portage.
The biggest educational investment for Flin Flon in recent times has been the Northern Manitoba Mining Academy and revamped UCN regional centre.
Opening in 2012, those facilities carried a combined price tag of about $4.3 million.
Last week, the province detailed the new high school vocational training centre being built beside Hapnot Collegiate, and re-announced a pledge to upgrade Hapnot’s biology lab.
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Together those projects are worth about $1 million.
In addressing the chamber Tuesday, Mayor Fontaine stressed the need to increase cross-provincial dialogue, giving health care as an example.
He said at least half, if not more, of health care patients utilizing Flin Flon are from Saskatchewan.
And although Saskatchewan reimburses the Northern Health Region (NHR) for those raw costs, it does not help pay for capital expenses, the mayor said.
Mayor Fontaine said he wants to ensure Saskatchewan has proportionate representation on the health care advisory councils that will guide the NHR.
“You’re not going to be able to get people to decide they’re going to share (costs) with you if they have no say,” he said. “We’ve seen what that did with the schools and they just opened their own school.”
Mayor Fontaine was referring to Creighton’s decision to open its own high school after decades of sending students to Flin Flon.
The Creighton School Division paid the Flin Flon School Division to educate Saskatchewan students, but lacked representation on the Flin Flon school board.
Mayor George Fontaine addresses the Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday at the Friendship Centre Restaurant.
PHOTO BY JONATHON NAYLOR
