Certainly in the Kelowna accord there was lots of talk about investment, both on- and off-reserve, and so the benefits would have been broader than much of the focus that is primarily on-reserve. For us, because we know that a large number of aboriginal women are forced to leave the reserves for a variety of reasons, our area of expansion, our focus, is non-reserve or off-reserve.
Take housing, for example. They talked about shelters and transitional houses for the first time, and so there would have been benefits in terms of expanded supports that women could access as they were fleeing a variety of situations.
If you look at employment and training, there were lots of recommendations around learning centres and networks off-reserve or outside their original networks to build on the successes we see in studies. As we say, when barriers are limited or eliminated, aboriginal women lead the way in terms of successful graduates.
We are increasing graduates, but it does not result in higher-paying jobs, and so we see we need to focus at the time they are receiving their training and getting the skills they need. Why isn't this turning into jobs? That's part of the evolutionary piece we were talking about, and data is extremely important when we're trying to assess what kinds of changes need to occur to meet the new or current job market.
We find that many women are much more comfortable in home settings, so distance education was another area they were considering, so that women no longer had to leave communities, because we are finding that women experience the most violence when they leave the safety nets of their home communities. What we are finding in our Sisters in Spirit initiative is that women leaving for school are becoming targets because they are out, away from the safety of their home communities, and on their own, with little or no resources. This is why they talked about these learning centres, so they can begin to come together and talk about their common needs, how they can build those supports in terms of child care and helping each other that way, just that natural safety net that can occur.
The Kelowna accord had a number of those kinds of recommendations, and certainly we were hoping to have a lot more push or influence as it was implemented. We hoped there would be more gender-specific considerations or approaches and some of the standard recommendations you'd see in there.