Adult education should be the foundation of the North

Major economic developments are, we are being told, coming to northern Manitoba, focusing on the port of Churchill and the railway system that leads to it, and the production and export via that port of various commodities. Many challenges, particularly environmental, lie along that path, and they deserve particularly serious consideration if any development is to proceed.

One aspect of northern development about which almost nothing has been said is: “Who will do the work in the north?”

For decades past and still today, great reliance has been placed on bringing skilled tradespeople and other skilled workers to northern Manitoba from the south. The result has been that not only has the bulk of corporate profits been drained south, but so too have wages. As a result, rates of poverty are higher and formal educational levels are lower in the north than elsewhere in Manitoba. This is obviously detrimental to the north and particularly to those who live in the north.

If northerners themselves are to benefit from economic development in the north by forming the skilled labour force that will be needed, then we will need more of those northerners to be educationally prepared to undertake training for skilled employment.

Steps are being taken to do just that. Innovative efforts, led by the University College of the North and including some other Manitoba post-secondary institutions, are well underway in northern Manitoba to “northernize” education to produce skilled tradespeople and other skilled workers from the population resident in the north, the majority of whom are Indigenous. This is a made-in-the-north educational strategy aimed at creating the skilled workers needed to build northern communities in ways of northerners’ choosing.

As one northern educator told me, “Flying people in and out for short periods isn’t working, so we have to grow our own.” As a result, some northerners are now being moved into skilled jobs.

There are promising developments at the federal level as well. Prime Minister Carney announced earlier this year that his government will be investing $8 billion to recruit, train and employ 60,000 to 80,000 Red Seal tradespeople across the country by 2030-31. Hopefully this will mean more skilled jobs for northern Manitobans.

These effects will be limited, however, by the missing piece in the process. The missing piece derives from the fact that fewer than 50 per cent of young people in northern Manitoba graduate high school. As a result, they are unprepared in most cases to undertake the educational programs that would move them into the workforce as skilled tradespeople.

To rectify this problem, the many people in northern Manitoba now lacking high school diploma need greater access to adult basic education. Adult basic education includes adult learning centres that offer the mature student high school diploma for adults who had not previously completed high school, and adult literacy programs that bring adult learners up to high school entry level.

Adult basic education works well in Manitoba. It builds the self-esteem, self-confidence, and sense of optimism about the future that is needed by adults who have been struggling because of low levels of education.

Further, adult basic education is cost-effective. A recent study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba found that enough graduates move off employment and income assistance, saving the provincial government money, and enough move into full-time employment, increasing the provincial government’s income tax revenue, that the program pays for itself over a 10-year period.

To its credit, the provincial government has recognized the many benefits of adult basic education and in the spring 2026 budget, increased the budget allocation to that program by $2.5 million. Much of that increased funding went to the north.

However, if that investment in the essential foundation for the skilled trades is left as a one-time-only investment, the gains will be lost. We need ongoing investment in adult basic education so that northerners can benefit from the investments that are likely to be made in northern Manitoba. The long history of seeing both profits and wages drained away to the south needs to stop if the planned economic development initiatives are to benefit those who live in the north.

Adult basic education is the basis of a northern economic development strategy that benefits northerners. It works. It’s cost-effective. And its expansion would mean that, for a change, it would be northerners themselves who would benefit from northern development projects.

Jim Silver is professor emeritus at the University of Winnipeg and a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba.