Ottawa urged to boost local colleges

BRANDON — Governments need to support local colleges to help Manitoba’s future workforce, Assiniboine College president Mark Frison told a Brandon Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Thursday.

Frison said it’s time for the federal government to step up, as the provincial government has added seats and programs for the college in multiple sectors.

“If all the dentists, architects and, unfortunately, physicians can be trained in Winnipeg, there is no reason why other occupations can’t be (trained) at other parts of the province,” Frison said.

“Just like we train all the apprenticeship welders and agricultural technologists here in Brandon.”

Frison highlighted the positive results of Assiniboine College and the growth of post-secondary education in Manitoba as indicators of young people heading into the workforce.

He said the college has a high rate of students who stay in the province after they graduate, which helps the local economy.

“Our longtime teammate the United States has decided that our interests are divisible. They no longer see us pulling together — they see our wins as their losses,” he said.

“Nostalgia is not a strategy for managing that relationship. We need to summon our competitiveness, our patriotism, our will to win,” Frison added.

As the U.S. market has changed, he said, Canadians need to develop relationships elsewhere in the world.

“We need to continue to strengthen economic integration, continue the spread of human rights to every corner of the planet, and understand that we have only one planet and one environment that needs to sustain life for ourselves and other species on this Earth.

“As a college, we know we have a role to play in this,” he said.

“Let’s keep working together and build a stronger Brandon, a stronger Manitoba, a stronger Canada and a stronger world.”

Frison’s presentation touched on the need for better health care in the province through training at the college and other rural post-secondary institutions.

— Brandon Sun