New school will be built by Manitobans: Kinew

The new K-8 school in Brandon’s southwest corner is going to be built by Manitobans, Premier Wab Kinew pledged on Tuesday.

Kinew said keeping construction jobs in Manitoba will “grow the economy,” especially in the face of tariffs from the United States. He made the announcement at a press conference in Winnipeg.

Kinew’s government signed a Manitoba jobs agreement (MJA) with Manitoba Building Trades, which will start with the construction of four new schools announced earlier this year.

“We’re focused on local, we’re focused on people here who’ve got the skills, we’re focused on doing the job right, doing the job once, and the best way to do that is to work with the building trades,” Kinew said.

The combined cost of the four new schools will be “a little north of $200 million,” Kinew said.

Education Minister Tracy Schmidt told the Sun that the agreement for the four schools will create a total of 600 “well-paying, good, unionized jobs for Manitobans.” About 150 of those jobs will be created for the Brandon school project.

The province will prioritize the construction of the Brandon school, along with two schools in Winnipeg and one in West St. Paul, with Manitoba union members.

Second priority will go to other Manitobans, then Canadian union members and then other Canadians.

“This is about making sure that there’s a framework in place so people get decent pay, pensions, benefits, health and safety rules on the work site,” Kinew said.

“This thing is going to be open for everyone to come work on these school projects, but the first priority is going to go to Manitoba union members.”

The schools MJA is the first step toward a policy of all major public infrastructure projects worth at least $50 million to be built with local labour, the province said in a news release Tuesday.

Tanya Palson, executive director of Manitoba Building Trades, said at least 10 per cent of the work will be done by local apprentices. Another 20 per cent will be earmarked for equity deserving groups, including Indigenous workers, women and newcomers. Those figures are specifically for the school projects.

“That’s thousands of hours of hands-on learning for young Manitobans creating pathways into good, paying, stable careers in the trades,” Palson said during the press conference.

The schools agreement is just the beginning, she added.

“We have a framework to deliver upcoming major projects with the same confidence, whether this is hydro, hospitals, transportation and the infrastructure that anchors our economy,” she said.

“These will be built by Manitobans, built to the highest standard and built in a way that strengthens our workforce and our communities.”

Every new project will have its own agreement, which could change how the 10 and 20 per cent commitments for specific workers are made, Palson told the Sun after the meeting.

“We expect that there’ll be something really similar to that. That’s kind of like our baseline as we do the first one,” she said about future projects.

“New projects will be a new agreement where we might be able to do something a bit more targeted.”

Agreements could include hiring local workers in certain areas of the province, she said.

“It’s important to hire local, especially for your apprenticeship hours, where we can maximize the number of hours and then justify bringing a lot of the training programs to the Westman area. We could work in collaboration a lot more easily with the colleges too, to justify (programs).”

She pointed to the City of Brandon’s contract for the wastewater treatment plant as an example of a project not utilizing Manitobans. The $127.9-million contract is with Ontario-based NAC Constructors Ltd.

She said when agreements aren’t in place, “we do miss opportunities for local workers.”

A provincial government spokesperson confirmed the two new Brandon schools are on schedule. The schools include a K-8 Brandon School Division school west of 34th Street in the southwest corner of the city set to open in September 2027, and a French language K-12 school on Maryland Avenue, which will be part of the Division scolaire franco-manitobaine.

The DSFM school, which isn’t set to open until the start of the 2028-29 school year, isn’t part of the agreement yet, but there’s a “good chance” it will be once construction nears, the spokesperson said after the press conference.

A DSFM spokesperson denied an interview request with division Supt. Alain Laberge.

» alambert@brandonsun.com