Fleming College cuts CO courses

[MeghanOOD]

https://oodmag.com/fleming-college-cuts-co-courses/

Fleming College has cut several environmental/outdoor college courses which are necessary in becoming a Conservation Officer.

[Marker]

This course, along with the Police Foundations, Paramedic, and the Fire Protection courses are a money grab by the government at the expense of young people trying to start a career. These courses should be part of the training after hiring, not a pre-requisite to apply.

[severn don]

I agree Marker should be after hire

[Sam Menard]

Times sure have changed! I attended SSFC from 1979-81 and took forestry. It was a popular college back then and there were only a handful of foreign students - mostly from Nigeria. Many of the forestry students worked on fire crews or did timber cruising in the summer. Nowadays, the MNR can’t hire enough fire crew members and very few of them are studying forestry. After i graduated from college, it took me 8 years to land a full time job with the MNR; and i was willing to go anywhere in the province. Recruiting qualified employees in the MNR is a big challenge now, and its much easier to get a full time job except that young people don’t want to move far from home. Like I said at the start, times have changed.

[trimmer21]

This course, along with the Police Foundations, Paramedic, and the Fire Protection courses are a money grab by the government at the expense of young people trying to start a career. These courses should be part of the training after hiring, not a pre-requisite to apply.

Not only that,but,the fly-by-night courses offered by the "private" schools whose courses aren't worth the paper they're written on should be slammed shut,too. Not only are the courses not recognized by law enforcement agencies,anywhere,but,what they teach unsuspecting students can quite easily land someone in jail.

[Fenelon]

The Fleming College NR Law Program was highly recognized by MNR, Fisheries and Oceans, Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada for the past 40 years. If you checked a roster of CO names, Wildlife Officers, and Fisheries Officers, you will see a very high percentage of them were grads of this program. Many of the best officers held a two or three year Fish and Wildlife Technician/Technologist Program diploma prior to entry into the NR Law Program. The pile of crap statement issued to media by president Noreen for cancellation of 50% of Frost Campus environmental programs due to “difficult, but evidence-based” reasons is ridiculous. She sacrificed the Lindsay School Of Natural Resources but decided to keep and maintain Fleming's big red herring - the Haliburton School of Art. This campus has been a major lmoney drain and loss since its inception. It should never have been built. A $750 million dollar building kept open for a tiny handful of students and full time paid faculty to service classes of six students! . There combined tuition fees don't even cover the maintenance costs on the building. You chose the arts over the environment. Great job destroying the college Noreen! , and when there is no hospitable planet left in 50-70 years, we can all go up to Haliburton and take a diploma in glass-blowing, jewellry making, and blacksmithing.