City, SIIT collaborate to provide support to students

Saskatoon’s mayor says a new agreement with the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies will make it easier for graduating students to get good jobs and make the city’s workforce more representative.

City council unanimously endorsed signing memoranda of understanding with SIIT and the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research late last year. The city inked the first of those deals Friday.

“One of the most tangible things is to identify and make sure that … the qualifications and the training that students are getting here are going to set them up to be able to compete with anybody else for positions,” Mayor Charlie Clark told reporters after the signing.

In 2016, just over seven per cent of the City of Saskatoon’s roughly 3,000 employees — a figure that does not include the Saskatoon Police Service — were Indigenous. The city has said it wants to boost that figure to 14 per cent.

Clark said the city can also help SIIT students by improving access to basic services such as transportation, housing and leisure activities, with the aim of reducing stress and allowing them to concentrate on schoolwork.

According to the document, the memorandum “is not a commitment of a specific funding amount” but instead “a commitment to work together on the outlined objectives and continue a partnership.”

The city struck a similar deal, touted as the first of its kind in Canada, with the University of Saskatchewan last year.