University of Sudbury gets $2M from feds

It was a big funding day for the University of Sudbury, which is getting some help from the federal government as it starts to take the next steps forward as a French-language university.

On Friday afternoon, Official Languages Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor announced $1.9-million for the university, which will help the post-secondary school in its application to the province.

The money is for a study of its institutional and organizational capacities, as it looks to redefine itself after being severed from Laurentian University as a federated school during the ongoing insolvency crisis.

It'll help the institution prepare for its application to the Ontario Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board for an organization assessment where Sudbury University will need to outline how it will meet the training needs of students, the job market and the region.

"Our government is committed to supporting minority-language post-secondary institutions and providing them with the necessary resources to foster the development of the student population, which will then be equipped to succeed in the labour market," said Petitpas Taylor in a news release.

The minister made the announcement standing alongside both Sudbury-area MPs Marc Serré and Viviane Lapointe.

The project is being funded under the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Minority-Language Educational and Second Official-Language Instruction 2020-2021 to 2022-2023.

As another part of the fallout from the Laurentian insolvency, the Ontario government made two other universities independent as well, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and the Université de Hearst.

Ontario currently has two publicly-funded French-language colleges, Collège Boréal and La Cité, and 10 French-language and bilingual institutions that offer university programs.