9 septembre 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
Marc Garneau, minister of Transport, on behalf of Navdeep Bains, minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and minister responsible for FedDev Ontario, announced a Government of Canada investment of up to $4.9 million over three years for the First Nations Technical Institute (FNTI). The FNTI is an Indigenous-owned post-secondary institute offering unique educational opportunities for Indigenous peoples. The First Peoples' Aviation Technology program at FNTI is the only Indigenous aviation post-secondary program of its kind in Canada.
With this investment, the FNTI will strengthen its aviation training program. It will double the number of Indigenous students training to become commercial pilots, enabling more Indigenous peoples to take advantage of growing economic opportunities in the aviation sector. The Government of Canada investment will support Indigenous students through the purchase of five new training aircraft; hiring additional aircraft maintenance engineers, flight instructors, dispatch staff, academic faculty and student support facilitators; and acquiring innovative safety maintenance software.
“The Government of Canada is pleased to support the First Nations Technical Institute in increasing its capacity while helping to break down some of the barriers currently facing Indigenous peoples in pursuing careers in aviation. This is an excellent time to help enable more candidates to enter this high demand field,” said Garneau.
“FedDev Ontario's support for the expansion of this vital training program is so important. With new and more specialized capabilities, FNTI will be able to offer more Indigenous pilots the chance to join a dynamic and growing sector of the Canadian economy. This will not only bring benefits to communities right across the country, it will also help create good quality jobs for many years to come,” added Bains.
“Today's investment in the First Peoples' Aviation Technology program is a game changer, and I share the excitement our friends and neighbours at FNTI as this program continues to grow. Programs like this are critical for the sustainability of Indigenous communities, particularly rural and northern ones, across Canada. The pilots and aviation experts trained by FNTI will have an incredible impact in helping deliver supplies to families, provide emergency support in times of need, and keep the communities reliant on aviation open and accessible when other forms of travel are unfeasible. With FNTI recently experiencing unprecedented student enrolment, particularly among women in the Aviation Technology Program, they are continuing to set themselves apart as leaders across Canada, and I am so proud that they are a fixture of our area,” said Mike Bossio, member of Parliament for Hastings-Lennox and Addington.
“Through this support FNTI will be able to create more educational opportunities for Indigenous learners, reduce our waiting list, and ensure pathways for Indigenous graduates into the aviation industry. More students and more graduates will assist with creating sustainability in remote communities across Canada and help increase role models for the next generation of Indigenous pilots in the aviation industry,” explained Suzanne Brant, president, First Nations Technical Institute, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.
“We greatly appreciate the financial support of the Government of Canada for this project. The Government of Canada's investment in the First Nations Technical Institute shows that our communities succeed when we work together. Our partnership with ministers Bains and Garneau is a strong one, and this initiative with FNTI will help increase labour force participation of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte community on and off the territory, and help Indigenous students across Canada, find good, well-paying jobs,” concluded Chief R. Donald Maracle, Tyendinaga Mohawk Council.
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By Tim Naumetz. Published on Jan 11, 2018 4:49pm Canadians don't have to wring their hands over whether the country should sign on to the U.S. ballistic missile defence system, says a former top defence adviser to President Barack Obama. Washington is paying more attention to bigger Canadian defence issues such as the long-delayed acquisition of a fleet of new modern fighter jets, Lindsay Rodman, former director of defence policy and strategy for Obama's National Security Council, said in a Canadian interview streamed earlier this week. Rodman, a temporary U.S. expatriate who now is an international affairs fellow at the University of Ottawa, said in a podcast interview with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute that the missile defence question is not a major issue in U.S. military and security circles. “The question of ballistic missile defence has been really surprising to me since I came to Canada a little over a year ago now,” Rodman said in the interview with Global Affairs institute vice-president David Perry. “It is just not on the forefront of anyone's mind in the United States, but it is one of the first things that any Canadian wants to talk to you about the U.S. American alliance,” said Rodman, an attorney who also served in the Pentagon as Obama's senior adviser for international humanitarian policy. “The U.S. is much more concerned with just making sure that NORAD is healthy, that the NATO alliance is healthy, that our homeland defence is being well supported, and we know that we don't depend on Canada for ballistic missile defence. “We do depend on Canada's fighter capability in terms of how we've planned our North American defence, so making good on the promises that Canada has made is going to be more important than new promises that Canada could make in the future, which would be something like ballistic defence.” The Global Affairs Institute offered the podcast up earlier this week, but the interview was recorded on Dec. 18, the same day U.S. President Donald Trump released his administration's first national security strategy. It was only two years after President Obama released his second national security strategy, which Rodman said should have been in place for four years under the normal U.S. four-year cycle for renewing national security and military strategies. While explaining U.S. views on Canadian defence positions — particularly the first Canadian defence strategy released by the Trudeau government last June — Rodman told Perry that while Canada's overarching defence positions have rarely diverged after a change of government, Trudeau's new personal and political approaches to Canada's role in the world may have made a difference. “I would say that Justin Trudeau, just by nature of his international sort of celebrity status, brought a new cachet to Canada, and that's pretty useful,” she said. “Certainly, being in Canada now and learning the ins and outs about the political system a little bit more, I can appreciate the nuances in Canada's position much better.” Canada's new defence policy specifically ruled out Canadian involvement in U.S. ballistic missile defence, even after the topic had been raised multiple times in four months of cross-country consultations that preceded the defence review in 2016. Still, by last December, even Trudeau signalled that the government has not yet ruled the possibility out, and several military experts have advocated Canada's participation in a series of House of Commons and Senate committee hearings. “For a very close ally like Canada, the most important thing is interoperability,” said Rodman. “We not only depend on Canada to potentially help us out in the world, but in terms of our homeland defence there's no one we depend more on than Canada. We really need everything to be interoperable.” The most important question facing the government as it slowly moves toward a 2025 target for acquiring a fleet of 88 new fighter jets could be how the most sophisticated warplane in the world — the Lockheed Martin F-35 strike fighter — fares as it goes through a competition that will decide which aircraft Canada will buy. Interoperability with U.S. warplanes has been a central part of the argument favouring the F-35 acquisition for Canada. https://ipolitics.ca/2018/01/11/u-s-isnt-worrying-canada-missile-defence-says-obama-adviser/