Thank you for the opportunity.
The success rate, based on the new model that we have taken of doing community-based training, increased from less than 10% when a student would go off-community to study to more than a 70% completion in apprenticeship training programs.
That was very important, because in Labrador there are a number of major projects going on right now, and as part of the labour agreements they have, they are obligated to hire a number of aboriginal workers. Their problem was that there were none trained to do the work. You couldn't hire people who didn't have the skills.
They asked us to do the training for them on reserve, and we were very excited about that opportunity. We went in and said that we were going to approach this very differently from anything we had ever done in training before; we were going to ask the community what they needed. Rather than being rigid in things such as scheduling—“You're going to start on this date, and you're going to end nine months later”—we basically said. “You tell us what you need; if it's caribou season, we're going to break; we're going to give you the option of going to do your thing and come back when the time starts.”
Innu translators were made available. Also we made sure that the community was actively involved in the training.
I certainly could go on, but I won't delay your agenda, except to say that there is a model there to be followed, and I would encourage an open discussion at another time to talk about how it happened.
Thank you.
