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Council approves funding agreement between Imperial Oil, Six Nations Polytechnic

Three men stand looking at a construction blueprint. The men all are wearing yellow reflective vests as well as hard hats. The men are standing in a construction zone with a partly constructed building in the background.
Six Nations Housing has been approved to begin construction on a second five-unit town home development to be located at 49 Harold Rd. in Ohsweken. The project will go towards addressing the current SN Housing residential rental waitlist of 251 applicants. Photo courtesy of Borko Manigoda from Pixabay.
Andrew Dow - CJKS - Ohsweken • ON | 12-01-2023
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Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) has approved the education and capacity building agreement between Imperial Oil and Six Nations Polytechnic (SNP) once again.

The agreement, which is negotiated every seven years, will provide funding to the Six Nations community to support education and employment opportunities.  The new terms will see $324,838 annually plus an Ontario Consumer Price Index supplement based on the average Ontario CPI.

Rebecca Jamieson, president and CEO of SNP, said since the inception of the agreement in 2002, the Six Nations community has received over $5 million dollars towards different initiatives.

"Over those years, there's been over $5 million dollars that has come into the community that the committee administers that money and makes sure it goes to initiatives that supports education, training and employment opportunities."

Jamieson said that SNP developed the Science Engineering and Employment Development (SEED) Committee when the agreement was first struck to help determine where the funds would go.

Jamieson acknowledged the work that SNP's STEAM academy has played in securing funding through the agreement. The STEAM academy focuses on science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

"That's one of the things that I would say has attributed to the funding that we've received because we've done a lot of promotional work, we run summer camps around science and technology. So I think that's one of the natural outgrowths that have happened, we've had an increase in interested students."

The group hasn't seen the same growth at the post secondary level, Jamieson said, but she mentioned that the community has more engineering students at the post secondary level than before, currently. She also said the plan for SNP is to continue to grow and educate students to help them obtain employment opportunities.

SNEC has had its legal counsel review the agreement and have stated that they have no concerns: SNEC approved the education and capacity building agreement Tuesday, with Chief Mark Hill signing the agreement on behalf of council.

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