Thank you.
I was struck by the fact that under the Indian Act a first nations community can't get involved in any kind of economic development. Even if they struck oil on their land, essentially it isn't theirs to develop, the trees are not theirs to harvest, etc., until such time as a treaty is put in place and people can do their own economic development in their own communities.
Something has frustrated me for years, though. The Canadian Construction Association has been talking about skill shortages. We just built a new airport in Winnipeg using temporary foreign workers. Lebanese crews that came from Latvia, which was their last job, came to Winnipeg to build our airport. And my riding has the second-highest aboriginal population, with huge numbers of marginally employed, underemployed, or unemployed aboriginal youth. Somehow we haven't made the connection between the skill shortages and the human resource surpluses to make that natural match. Not that every young aboriginal kid wants to become a tradesperson, but there are jobs out there. We're bringing in 250,000 foreign workers a year, and we haven't put to work a generation of young aboriginal people.
Do either of you have any comment on how we might make that labour market match?