Thank you on behalf of KKETS, the Kiikenomaga Kikenjigewen Employment and Training Service, more easily pronounced as “KKETS”. The Matawa employment and training service would like to thank you for involving us in this process on youth unemployment.
KKETS is the ASETS agreement holder for Matawa First Nations. Matawa First Nations is a tribal council that represents five remote communities and four road-access communities.
It is no secret that the aboriginal population is the fastest-growing and youngest segment of the Canadian population. In fact, between 2001 and 2006, the aboriginal population grew four times more than the non-aboriginal population and, with a median age of 26.5 years, it is 13 years younger on average than the rest of the Canadian population.
Over the next 10 years, 400,000 aboriginal Canadians will reach an age to enter into the labour market, which represents a significant opportunity to help meet Canada's long-term demand for workers. Matawa First Nations must take advantage of this unique opportunity by preparing our people through education and training that will see great returns in the near future.
In order to create, develop, and implement training programs for Matawa First Nations, KKETS has taken on the role of performing a number of research projects within our Matawa communities. One of the initial ones was the implementation of a skills inventory. The skills inventory was basically a snapshot of each of our first nations. It collected data that identified attributes such as registered membership on or off reserve, gender, age, level of education, training achieved, employment status, and number in household.
The empirical data from these surveys was synthesized and used to develop a skills inventory. From there, we were able to take a look at the skill gaps and educational gaps within our first nations and where we need to go from there: what do we have to do to fill these gaps in order to create a regional training plan?
A number of identified gaps in training and education had surfaced, to be a starting point for future planning. Within each of our first nations, it has become apparent that there are gaps in education attainment, leading to a lack of specific training certification. Although the nine first nations are all under the Matawa tribal council, they are also very distinct as individual communities, with similar training and educational demands.
Currently, Matawa First Nations has a population of over 10,000 members on reserve, with a 70% to 75% unemployment rate, approximately 65% of which, in our population of 10,000, is attributed to our youth. Within our first nations, the majority of employment for youth comes from summer student employment programming that prepares youth with job readiness skills and provides an income for the majority of the secondary and returning post-secondary students in our communities throughout the summer.
These jobs of course are focused on band infrastructure and community capacity building. These positions are minimum wage and last for the duration of summer break only. Other than that, there is no option for employment within our first nations for our youth in Matawa.
Another research study done at the same time as this skills inventory was the qualitative research that was done with Matawa youth. A session happened in each first nation in visits with a group of youths aged 16 and older. The whole purpose was to give them a voice to be heard and to have them become more engaged in their futures.
Discussion topics ranged from community politics and drugs and alcohol to what they desired for their communities' well-being. The report spoke to the reality of life in our first nations for the present youth generation. The testimonies shared were from groups of 15 to 25 youths. Recommendations coming out of this were based on categories that were prevalent through the report: training and education, cultural issues, and health and wellness.
Youths spoke about the challenges they faced when they tried to leave their community to attend post-secondary school. Even after graduating from high school, they encountered new challenges that school had not prepared them for, such as work at a post-secondary level. So KKETS has developed programs such as ASAP, the aboriginal skills advancement pilot program, whereby we were able to recruit clients from each first nation to get their OSSD. Since its inception in 2012, we have seen 63 out of 100 clients this year graduate with an OSSD. This week was their graduation.
Overall, we've had processes that we've been taking on, and things that we've been doing are the various studies in order to meet the demands of the labour market that's coming forward. We all know that Matawa First Nations are in the centre of what's going on in the north, which is the Ring of Fire, so right now we need to bring forward all of our resources and our partnerships with the various industries to create a workforce that's going to meet the demand.