I think it's absolutely critical. I've been reaching out to universities, to civil society, and will want to reach out to the associations of the likes we're sitting with here to suggest, as the member is, that we do need to work together to address this for this committee and the government. Previously in the pre-budget submission we identified a $2 billion investment that's required. In the area of education funding, this points to about a $1.2 billion deficit in education since the 2% cap.
So we're going to do our reach-out to suggest strongly that the growing aboriginal population has the potential to make a significant contribution to the labour force, but we've got to match these people with skills, with training, with education, and of course we're going to be looking to the government to support that. Right now we've got lists of people who would like to go to school and pursue these opportunities, but they're unable to. We hit a height of 30,000 in post-secondary in 2005, but it's declining dramatically. It makes no sense to have a significant decline occurring since 2005--it's 2009 now--when we've got the kinds of labour market needs that exist out there. So I agree with what the member was suggesting on this, that there needs to be a better match between first nation citizens and the needs of the economy.