Transportation careers forthcoming for First Nations

Transportation careers are at the centre of the industrial age and these careers involve moving the economy on rails, roads, ships and through the air. TransCDA is, “a conduit between industry and the the government,” says Russ Robertson, CEO of the association that establishes training standards for the transportation sector.
     

“We are promoting transportation careers and putting people into apprenticeship as heavy duty mechanics, aircraft maintenance technicians, machine technicians, deck hands on tugs, and professional truck drivers,” practically any of the 26 trades in the transportation sector.
     

TranCDA is based in British Columbia, and, “We engage other sectors and bring them into the training picture,” and the association works to accommodate national mobility of the labour force.
     

“We maintain the alignment of the regulatory environment in job qualifications, and make job recognition a priority in our policy discussions,” says Robertson. “We believe in the mobility of workers and fully support the Red Seal program that governs the national qualifications of trades people,” and Robertson notes the CCDA recently approved the Heavy Equipment Operator program as a Red Seal career.
     

TransCDA is relatively new as an organization, “We're a year old now, but we hit the ground running,” and they worked to develop a first-rate website to distribute up-to-the-minute career information. “The website is in phase one of the TransCDA communication strategy. Phase 2 will be complete later in 2010 and it will provide high performance management tools to put training and career development on a fast track in a company or industry.”
     

Robertson was hired from the ITA to bring a training culture to the organization, and the culture is growing, “We are reaching out to school students to make transportation careers an opportunity. We have developed program standards that secondary schools can deliver to provide 470 hours of training credit in Level 1 apprenticeship.” Rita Gunkel at TranCDA is developing the youth initiatives that deliver advancement toward transportation careers in the school system.
    

 Robertson has other personnel working on recognition of foreign workers who come to Canada with operational qualifications. The goal is for the website to answer questions about transportation careers and qualifications from around the world, and provide assessment tools to evaluate people in their qualifications.”

Strategy is there but WFCA wonders if regulations are disappearing

The Western Silviculture Contractors Association (WSCA) is delivering tree-planting training this year through the federally funded and provincially administered Community Development Trust Fund. John Betts, WSCA Executive Director, says, "First Nations are training in driving on resource roads, operating brush saws, running all-terrain-vehicles, and driving crew buses," on highways and resource roads.
     

"We delivered training last year in the Chilcotin and Blue Collar Silviculture's Mark Courtney instructed a class in the field. It was an opportunity for the First Nation trainees to experience the life of a tree planter in a forestry bush camp," says Betts. He believes training in these close quarters produces an excellent outcome for silviculture contractors. 
     

"The trainees get the inside track on the 'stocking' standards in B.C. forestry," which species of trees are used, and the spacing and placement requirements of the seedlings. Betts notes that the province of B.C. has been depending on nature to take it's course in regeneration of forests. 
     

"We have seen a lower priority given to stocking the forests with seedlings. We went from planting 250 million seedlings a couple years ago to planting 160 million this year," and even fewer next year. He says that 40 percent of the MPB ravaged landscape is not growing any new trees. 
     

"We have 18 million hectares of MPB degraded forests in B.C. alone," including forests eaten by the spruce bud worm. "We have many areas with bug kill, other blights, and forest fire burned areas where restoration is being ignored." Betts notes that arguments made by Keith Atkinson, CEO of the First Nation Forestry Council, correctly identify the problems in a sketchy funding regime.
     

"The FNFC recognizes that we have crushing regeneration issues and huge demands for landscape level replanting operations," including transmission line corridors, highways, and watersheds. Electrical grid failure is just one of the threats in the forest fire (inferno) scenario. Destruction of watersheds also demands more attention."
     

Meanwhile the province is overrun by environment lobbies that want to lock-down forestry operations, "They are not recognizing the problem. Leaving forests alone is perilous when fires are increasing in number and severity." Betts notes that historically First Nations used a lot of fire to manage forests and make them produce specific plants, trees, and ecologies.
     
"The so-called natural fires have been eliminated by suppression and fire is gone as a forestry management tool. In place of managed fires the unnatural fires we see are non-renewing events." The intensity of these unnatural fires wipes out water resources, aquatic plants included, and all the grasses and trees in an ecology disappear. 
     

Worst of all, the soil gets super-heated and destroyed as an eco-system. Unfortunately, says Betts, "We see no real strategy and the demand is growing to get involved with biomass reclamation and refurbishing of these provincial forests.
     

"Nature won't be fooled. Interior forests are being left behind, whereas these landscapes require a change in strategy." First Nations are blazing the trail in the pursuit of a biomass economy from these decadent forests. "They see perpetual employment and management requirements for the eco-systems in their territories."
     

Betts believes the existing proposals for use of biomass are too large, and should be made smaller than those seen in the BC HYDRO call for power scenarios, like the 40 MWh cogeneration plant in Gitxsan and the 60 MWh plant in T'silcotin. "Go smaller, scale back the size of the projects to 1 to 5 MWh and make more of them," because smaller plants make more efficient use of biomass to create electricity."
     

While restoration strategies are in place the regulations behind it are being deleted left and right, and, Betts adds, "The premier may say, 'Well I'm not getting any calls on this,' but it appears that overall he's not paying attention to a degrading public resource."

Increasing the management capacity of First Nations forestry stewards

Secwepemc communities in B.C. have state-of-the-art land-use management systems designed by First Nations for their own use. Chief Judy Wilson, Neskonlith Indian Band, learned about information management at the En’owkin Centre in the 1980s. En’owkin is a First Nations advanced learning arts and publishing institute in the Okanagan Nation.
     

"I have a librarian background," said Wilson, "I first learned about archives and how to store and retrieve research material." Later Wilson worked with Chief Atahm School to create a digital Secwepemc language and culture centre on Little Shuswap Lake operated by Adams Lake Indian Band.  Chief Atham School is western Canada’s only First Nation language immersion school.
     

These avenues of experience exposed Wilson to different systems and processes and ensuing projects with archivist Leona Lampreau led to an advanced career in archives management specifically designed around policy development. By that pathway Wilson came to apply information management to First Nation land use management.
     

"I come from a land claims background within my family," she said,  and learned important lessons from people like Jeanne Joseph, a Haida/Nisga'a woman who teaches information access and retrieval systems to bands for territorial claims. "Jeanne Joseph works with a lot of different data collections."
     

Neskonlith Indian Band, Adams Lake Indian Band, and Little Shuswap Indian Band own a collective history and share knowledge streams about land use within their traditional territory. To manage this knowledge is the purpose of entering high end media, growing the capacity to answer data demands. "Replies to Crown referrals can be delivered immediately."
     

She notes,  "Court decisions in northwest B.C. place the burden to directly on First Nations respond to Crown oriented land use referrals, "that are slapped together with mis-coordinated maps and no standards of reference to the maze of contents." It takes a Rosetta Stone to interpret or understand the Crown's referral demands.
     

Worse, the priority of reports includes no reference to First Nations; neither their importance nor depth of concern about their land issues is referenced. The level of Aboriginal interest must come from First Nations.  Yet financing is non-existent for First Nations to respond to Crown referrals for land use and very few industry or government agencies are willing to provide referral payments to First Nations.
     

Wilson partnered with D.R. Systems Inc to design, "an automated Referral Tracking System (RTS) which has been distributed via workshops at regional communities," she said, "The intent is to provide an forestry/land use management process, then we are adding capacity for multiple levels of response to Crown referrals."
     

Neskonlith Indian Band and Adams Lake Indian Band and D.R. Systems Inc have put the RTS on the market to enable First Nation communities responding to land use referrals, and dozens of Bands are using it around the province. Wilson said, "We outsource RTS software under license to First Nations depending on their own level of land-use management concerns, from Band office, to tribal council, to nation."
     

Wilson notes Secwepemc communities are, "innovators and leaders in many areas and a key concern for many Bands is land use management within their traditional territories." She said, "It really works because our land use planning focuses on community growth," and continuous reflection upon stewardship, "as the ancestors expect. We have the ability to monitor project encroachment in the nation down to the effects on a particular stand of trees."
     

"It is software that will also provide a wide array of other  service to community especially basic services like health, water management, emergency call centres etc," she said. A Comprehensive Community Planning Process is part what the communities are undertaking. The software is timely for this process and it will assist in making strategies to reconstitute stewardship of traditional territories.
     

"We know where we feel at home, in connection with the land and water that has been our identity. We keep turning to the Elders for teaching. We don't have the land base we used to, and it cut us off from spiritual from knowing our territory." The software fits the Tools for Success program offered by INAC and StatsCan.
     

"In future territorial demands upon data will add to the capacity for First Nation governance. We seek enhancement of stewardship over natural resources, our own health, and the technical capacity to stay in our roles as stewards of these lands."