Scott Rienguette, general manager for Sudbury-based Legend Mining, says he’s on a mission to show Indigenous youth that the only barriers they’ll face entering the skilled trades are the ones they build themselves.
The Sudbury-based mining company has partnered with Kenjgewin Teg, an Indigenous learning institute on Manitoulin Island, to help get practical, hands-on training to people outside Northern Ontario’s large mining centres.
It’s an effort to help stream Indigenous youth — one of Canada’s fastest-growing demographics — into careers that could help replenish a depleted skilled trades labour pool.
The goal of the partnership, Rienguette said, is to ensure that the first steps in the mining industry’s training programs — referred to as “common core” modules — can be more readily accessed by the region’s seven First Nation communities.
“For many reasons, especially on reservation communities, taking the time away to attend these programs makes it non-feasible and often very challenging,” Rienguette told Northern Ontario Business.
“There's various programs that are offered but [students] have to travel, or the courses are associated with high costs, or they aren’t conducive to their schedules,” he said.
SEE: Partnership will get more Indigenous workers prepped for mining roles
Common Core programs are offered at several places in the region; NORCAT, Workplace Safety North and Northern College in Timmins all offer programs, either on location or virtually.
But Rienguette’s involvement takes an extra step. Not only is he currently the program’s primary instructor, he’s also the person who’ll be doing the hiring at the course’s completion.
“This is long term. This is in real time,” Rienguette said. “We’re going to train these people, and I can literally say I'm the person at the end of it that's going to have a job for you should you be the right candidate.”
So far, the school has run one program in which 11 learners participated. More day-long certification courses are rolling out in early 2025.
The first class
Considering what’s at stake for many in the community — plenty of jobs, good salaries, viable futures — Rienguette admitted he was a bit nervous when he first walked into the classroom at Kenjgewin Teg.
“I wasn't sure what to expect,” Rienguette said, adding that the students’ ages ran the gamut — some fresh out of high school, a grandfather, people looking for second careers.
“But it was nice to see the fresh faces and get their questions. They were really genuinely interested in knowing what goes on underground.”
Rienguette said the students were engaged in the day-long class — Rienguette said he was honest, kept it down-to-earth and realistic — and all were intrigued in how mining has come a long way in terms of job diversity, skills required and career growth potential.
“It was neat for them to see that the mining is more than just what you picture with the person back in the '50s; you saw the picture with the pickaxe in the hand, and away they go breaking rock.
“There’s so many other jobs,” he said. “You can drive a truck underground, you can run a rail car, you can be a driller. Or you can work on surface, in the cage, the shaft area. There was one gentleman in the class that had some welding experience. I said, ‘We always need millwrights, guys or girls that can weld, people that can do those sorts of things.’
“I tell them that in my 20 years at Vale, I never worked the same job for more than three or four years. So they were interested in that.”
As for some of the barriers Indigenous youth face on entering the field, Rienguette said that part of his role is “breaking down” those beliefs.
“A lot of them in the class, I'd say half, felt they could never get into mining,” Rienguette said. “They thought ‘My dad's not a miner. My mom's not in mining. I don't have family in that.’
“So I think the thought, or the upbringing was, if the generation before me didn't work in mining, I'm not going to be able to work in mining.”
Rienguette said the prospect of spending time in a classroom at the M’Chigeeng school could also be daunting for some.
“School scares a lot of people, whether we want to say it does or doesn't,” Rienguette said. “It scares people, because nobody wants failure.”
Part of breaking that particular barrier is making sure that learners absorb the material at their own pace.
“At the end of the day, if it takes you a bit longer, or you're done a little quicker on certain modules, that's okay. I want to reassure them there's nothing to be afraid of,” Rienguette said.
Bridging the gap
Jade Peltier, Kenjgewin Teg’s Trades Apprenticeship and Skills Program coordinator, said the partnership with Legend Mining “meshed perfectly” with the school’s approach and mission, and comes at the right time.
“Not only are Indigenous youth the fastest growing population in Canada right now, but the amount of trade jobs hasn't been in a higher demand, at least in my lifetime,” Peltier said. “There's an extreme shortage of people taking on these trade-related jobs.”
And although he’s noticed a small uptick in the number of Indigenous people entering the trades, Peltier said the distance between the pool of working knowledge clustered in the mining centres and its potential workforce is vast.
“One of the major issues with this gap is the lack of mentorship or the lack of support — from ministries, trade unions, guidance counsellors at high school — there's a disconnect between those people and the students. And I certainly lived through that with my own journey through the trades.
“But now our vision is to try and bring training home locally, so that our local, Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities can access this training without leaving the Island,” he said.
As the program rolls out — Peltier said they’re “dipping their toes in the water” first to get a sense of how many people enrol before expanding into a full host of common core offerings — the plan is to eventually offer the more time-intensive classroom portion of the programs at Kenjgewin Teg, then turn it over to Legend Mining in Sudbury for the hands-on elements of certification.
“We’re taking it slow,” Peltier said. “We want to do it right. We want to make sure that the proper people are in place, the proper facilities are in place, that we have the interested participants weeks, if not months, in advance, so that we are not scrambling at the last minute to just try and fill a course.
“We put in the preparation now, so that when we have the students ready to go, they can go out and fulfill that course, complete it with zero hiccups.”
The challenge, Peltier said, will be creating an awareness of the opportunities available in the mining industry that to Islanders, might seem like a world away. He calls this “bridging the gap.”
“I would say the majority of people living on Manitoulin who travel to Sudbury on a regular basis have no idea what happens in those mines,” Peltier said. “They just know it's a mining town.
“With this partnership, my goal is to just bring that knowledge and that experience home, so that Manitoulin Island can benefit as a whole,” he said. “And to give people a chance, an option."