Future of NORTEP debated at meeting in La Ronge, Sask.

NORTEPstakeholders are debating the best course of action to deal with funding cuts at a meeting in LaRonge, Sask.,on Thursday.

In July, the provincial Ministry of Education announced it would be ending funding to the Northern Teacher Education Program and Northern Professional Access College by the end of 2016.

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The program allows northern students to complete a Bachelor of Education or Bachelor of Arts program without leaving the north.

The province is talking about consolidating post-secondary education in the north, something that people involved in the program have said would be a bad idea.

Today's day-long meeting in La Ronge, which is being attended by Minister for Advanced Education Bronwyn Eyre, is an opportunity for NORTEP to update its stakeholders on how it plans to proceed.

April Chiefcalf, who works with students in the program, said NORTEP had originally tried to work with the provincial government to choose a partner institution but it was not given enough freedom to do so.

Now she said the organization wants to keep fighting the change.

"Clearly we weren't going to have the lead role and the final decision and we wish we could go back to step oneand say, 'No, we want to fight thisand we want to be autonomous,'" she said.

NORTEP has six potential partner institutes to choose from: the University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina, Gabriel Dumont Institute, Northlands College, Northern Lights School Division and First Nations University of Canada.

Chiefcalf said if the change could not be avoided, NORTEP wanted to be able to choose which institution it would partner with.

She said uncertainty about changes to NORTEP had been stressful for the community, which has been working to find solutions to a suicide crisis.

"There are people in these communities who are strong and intelligent and they know what the needs are and they know what the answers are," said Chiefcalf,"and they feel that NORTEP and NORPAC was an answer to some of the problems that were already occurring here."

Eyre was not available for comment while the meeting was ongoing.