$500,000 a good investment

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This article was published 05/03/2015 (3871 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The leaders of the Aboriginal Centre of Winnipeg were as surprised as anyone when then-federal heritage minister Jean Charest cut a cheque for $500,000 allowing that group to purchase the old CP Rail station on Higgins Avenue in 1992.

Almost 25 years later, Charest and his then-colleague, former Tory MP Dorothy Dobbie, were invited back Wednesday to see what has been built from that initial modest federal funding.

Not only is it still in business — now called the Neeginan Centre — it has provided training, jobs, housing, child care and health-and-wellness services for thousands of aboriginal people in the city.

It’s absorbed a neighbouring building (a former auto-repair shop) and built another 20,000 square feet of training space as well as student housing for close to 100.

“I’ve been involved in bigger projects with much larger dollar values that have totally disappeared,” said Charest.

“It is amazing what’s been accomplished.”

A number of board members, including Wayne Helgason, current chairman Bill Shead and executive director Marileen Bartlett, hosted Charest and Dobbie for breakfast and a rambling tour through the facilities that house the Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development (CAHRD), the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre, the Aboriginal Community Campus and the Neeginan College of Applied Technology.

Under the charismatic leadership of Bartlett, the centre now breaks even on a $1.5-million annual budget. It recently installed new CNC training machines for its brand-new machining centre with the help of about $1 million from Western Economic Diversification, and plans are in place to build additional student housing.

Dobbie said, “The business model really works.”

Helgason said the challenges to renovate an old, vacant heritage building were immense, and most advice they received indicated it was very unlikely to be financed.

The unexpected original funding created a precedent — allowing aboriginal community organizations to own their own facility.

“At the time, all the (aboriginal) support organizations were looking for space… for training and health and child-welfare support,” Helgason said. “They were are running all over the place… our bus-ticket budgets were going through the roof.”

Now, the various training programs have up to 300 people in classes on any given day, and it’s part of a larger community redevelopment in a neighbourhood that was once a blight on the city.

Charest admits he doesn’t remember all the details but was clearly impressed by what he saw.

At a speech to the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce later in the day, he gushed about the accomplishments at the centre.

“It was very much driven by Dorothy,” Charest said. “She thought it was extremely important and had a great deal of potential. We believed in the people who were trying to persuade us to do it, like Wayne and Marileen. They had their act together. They knew what they were doing.”

‘I’ve been involved in bigger projects with much larger dollar values that have totally disappeared… It is amazing what’s been accomplished’

— Jean Charest

They may have presented a well-organized front, but the ongoing development and occupation of the sprawling edifice was a $6-million job. It took a lot of ingenuity, hard work and creativity, including more than 150,000 person hours of volunteer labour (and workers through the Fine Options program) to do some of the original demolition and cleanup.

Shead said one of the ways they succeeded was by making friends and not by protesting. But Helgason remembers gathering a few dozen supporters of the centre and crashing a constituency barbecue of then-Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy, which produced some fairly swift results.

Bartlett, who doubles as executive director of the Neeginan Centre and CAHRD, has boundless energy, which is probably required to operate a key training operation for a segment of the population that has significant needs in the area.

Kevin Chief, the provincial minister of jobs and the economy, got his first job after graduation at the Neeginan Centre and credits it with giving him the foundation for his career.

Bartlett works hard establishing partnerships with private-sector employers.

The first intake at the new CNC training facility has been entirely sponsored by Monarch Industries, which intends to hire all the graduates.

“We are doing lots of creative things,” Bartlett said. “We are hoping to become a college, then we can be even more flexible with how we work with students.”

Charest, who said he had virtually no exposure to aboriginal issues growing up in Sherbrooke, Que., made reference to a recent Maclean’s magazine cover story declaring Winnipeg the most racist city in the country.

“This centre is a very sincere response to very important issues in this city,” he said. “It has been going on for a long time. It is a testimony to its leadership.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca