Assiniboine unveils $24M med lab project

Assiniboine College announced plans Monday for construction of a medical lab space that will host two new programs starting next year.

The project, worth more than $24 million, will see a long-shuttered mechanics shop at the Victoria Avenue East campus transformed into classrooms, learning spaces, an auditorium and several labs.

Assiniboine College is putting $10 million into the project, while the provincial government is contributing $9.13 million in capital funding — about $4 million for equipment and $5 million toward construction. The college plans to secure the remaining $5 million through fundraising.

The two new programs — the medical laboratory technology program and combined laboratory and X-ray technology program — were originally announced as part of the provincial budget last March.

“This is a significant investment and improvement for us, and we look very much forward to seeing the first graduates come through,” Treena Slate, CEO of Prairie Mountain Health, said at a press conference in the shop on Monday.

“We cannot operate an emergency department without nurses, without trained lab and X-ray personnel and physicians,” Slate told a crowd of more than 50 people.

“We need those three things to be able to keep our emergency departments open in rural Manitoba.”

Slate said hospitals rely on specialized professions to provide timely results.

“This new learning space is not just an investment in facilities, it’s also an investment in people and communities and in long-term health and well-being of the region and the province,” she said.

Assiniboine College president Mark Frison said the post-secondary institution already has 650 people on an interest list for the programs, which he called “unprecedented.”

“The programs we’re going to offer here, well, they’ll have a tremendous impact both locally (and) will have a tremendous impact across the region, especially the combined X-ray medical lab technology,” Frison said.

Advanced Education and Training Minister Renée Cable said the NDP government was elected on a promise to help fix health care, and these programs will help make that happen.

“We know that there’s a lot to do in health care, and it is a bit of a perfect storm,” said Cable, the MLA for Southdale. “A lot of things happened, a lot of decisions were made in the past that weren’t the best for our communities, and we are doing all we can to help fix that.”

She said she can’t wait for the first class to graduate and for Manitobans to “be able to reap the benefits of this.”

The programs will start in the fall of 2027 and will add new cohorts on an alternating basis in subsequent years.

Each program will have 20 seats and will be two and a half years long.

They will feature an “integrated learning experience,” including practicum placements in rural communities, the college said in a news release on Monday.

The ongoing operating cost for program delivery will be about $2 million to $2.25 million annually, the college said.

Cable, after the press conference, said it’s important for people to see the progress being made in health care.

“There’s a lot of work happening to help repair the damage that was made, and this is one of the great examples of where we’re expanding more training opportunities and ensuring that rural, northern and all regions, that Manitobans are closer to getting the care that they need,” she said.

Cable said having people graduate from the programs in a few years “will absolutely be a game changer.”

She also stressed that having the training taking place outside of Winnipeg will be a way to keep people working in rural areas.

Frison after the press conference said the shop, which has mostly sat vacant since 2010, is the “crown jewel” of spaces to be redeveloped.

“It’s going to allow us to do things like this incredible program, but also those large learning spaces, which this campus has never been blessed with,” he said.

“When this program came along, it only made sense that given the space (required), that we’d be in here.”

Programs that originally used the space moved to the North Hill campus in 2010. It was later used as a drive-through COVID-19 testing site during the pandemic and served as a city bus depot after the Civic Services Complex was closed due to an explosion in 2023.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said he’s “very happy” about the programs and renovations at the college.

“This is fantastic. In particular the rural regions are so desperate for this, and so (it’s) great the province is backing it up,” Fawcett said.

» alambert@brandonsun.com