The looming start of construction of the landmark Waasigan Transmission Line Project should create hundreds of jobs for Indigenous people in northwestern Ontario.
Thunder Bay’s Confederation College is gearing up for the drop of the green flag in teaming up with a locally based Indigenous organization that’s hot on the recruiting trail to find workers.
Last May, the college and Chi Mino Ozhitoowin (CMO) signed a specialized training programs agreement to work on the training opportunities that began rolling out this summer.
This collaborative venture is designed to recruit and train members of participating Anishinaabe communities to fill the workforce ranks in the construction of the power line as well as fill all the support positions.
Pending approvals coming from Hydro One, the start of construction of the Waasigan Transmission Line Project could begin by year’s end.
“Targeted training” is on the agenda for the participating communities of Lac Seul, Lac La Croix, Nigigoonsiminikaaning, Ojibway Nation of Saugeen, Eagle Lake, Fort William and Seine River.
Headed by CEO Peter Collins, Chi Mino Ozhitoowin, a Thunder Bay-headquartered organization, has been subcontracted by power-line builder Valard Construction to lead the construction staffing efforts and ensure that local labour from Anishinaabe communities is represented and is integral to the Waasigan project.
Valard Construction was tapped in 2023 by Hydro One Networks to handle all the engineering, procurement and construction of the 350-kilometre-long transmission line extending west from Thunder Bay to Atikokan and northwest to Dryden.
The proposed double-circuit transmission line will deliver 230 kilovolts of electricity to the region to feed the demand for more power and allow communities, businesses and the mining industry to grow.
In April, the Ontario Energy Board approved Hydro's application for leave to construct the transmission line at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion.
The Waasigan Transmission Line project has been in the planning stages for several years. The partnership between the college and CMO had been two years in the making.
Carol Cline, Confederation’s dean of workforce development, said the college has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with CMO’s CEO, Peter Collins, the former chief of Fort William First Nation, who was involved in organizing Indigenous participation by the First Nation communities along the path of the East-West Tie.
The East-West Tie was a transmission line expansion project, strung around the top end of Lake Superior, under the umbrella of Supercom Industries.
“We were significantly (involved). We trained over 250 folks in the workforce that came out at the end of that,” said Cline.
She expects a similar number for this one project and will be using the same training template.
“We’ve got the same model.”
In working with an industry partner in CMO, Cline said that organization will be in the communities, recruiting members and hyping the job opportunities.
Putting precise training numbers on a project that hasn’t started is only a guesstimate.
“We want to recruit to ensure that you have the right number of people coming out,” said Cline, taking into account, as with any training program, there can be a 40 per cent attrition rate.
But the college attempts to put its trainees in a position to succeed by tailoring training to match the individual’s abilities as much as possible.
“We always make sure we assess the individuals coming into the training to ensure from a literacy and numeracy level they’re where they need to be to be successful.
“We often have, in most of our training strategies, some kind of upskilling or upgrading around that, particularly around math in the trades, because people need to be at a certain level.”
In following the construction cycle, Cline said it’s a step-by-step training progression that begins with training people to do the early power-line prep work. It begins with brushing out a land corridor with a team of heavy equipment operators and mechanical harvesters before the assembly and transmission towers ever go up.
The training opportunities being offered involve: remote camp support worker, natural resources field worker, mechanical harvesting equipment operator, remote camp cook level 1, pre-trades heavy duty equipment technician level 1, power-line technician level 1, survey assistant, and introduction to energy.
The lessons learned from the East-West Tie Project revolve around the timing on how and when to start the training, Cline said.
For that infrastructure project, there were about 15 different training courses to juggle while constrained with a limited number of instructors.
“One of the lessons we learned was to stagger that so we could rotate the same teacher around through the training,” said Cline.
Delays in construction on major projects like these can often result in an exodus of trained workers. Once trainees finish their education and hit the streets, there has to be an available job to graduates.
That was apparent during the delayed run-up to building the East-West Tie in 2018, which stalled construction. Many newly trained individuals left for employment elsewhere, thus depleting the available workforce.
On the instructional side, Cline said the college has a small pool of part-time instructors involved in their contractor training programs, but they’ll be looking to recruit extra teachers in collaboration with Valard to find the right qualified people to teach these courses.
The actual training will be carried out in the communities as identified by CMO.
“They’ll be picking the training sites and we’ll be mobilizing ourselves to be in those communities.”
Upon graduation, qualified people will go straight into jobs. Valard is part of the training and will be observing, said Cline.
“If they manage to do well and they’re a good trainee they should have a job at the end of it for sure.”
Embedded in the college’s training is creating career pathways that ultimately give people choices and options. Many of the skills acquired are transferable to other industries once the power-line project is done. A food service worker can easily find employment in a remote mining camp.
“We always want to make sure when we do any training that we’re meeting industry and community needs,” said Cline, “but we’re also making sure, as an individual, they have a pathway to do different things should they choose to.
"You may end up as a heavy equipment operator on this power line, but you might actually be interested in being a technician. The pathway can lead you to that.
“We’re not just training them for the skill that’s just needed for that project. We want to make sure they have their own pathway and transferable skills to other positions.”