I will slow it down, Madam Chair.
Across the country, the difference in median income between the Métis and the non-aboriginal population was widest in Alberta and in the territories. In Alberta, the Métis median income at $22,839 was about $6,600 less than that of the non-aboriginal population at $29,501.
We believe the federal government must move on two fronts. First, it must continue to expand skills training and post-secondary educational support for Métis people. Second, it must expand its support for Métis families for child care and for early learning supports like Métis head starts.
Métis governments have been delivering skills training and providing educational supports for Métis for the last 10 years. We have worked with many organizations over the years, including the Canadian Council on Learning. We agree with them that education and learning make individual Canadians and communities as a whole more resilient and better equipped to adapt to economic turbulence, and I'll quote from a statement:
Evidence demonstrates that higher education and continuous skills training are protective factors during times of economic instability--such as we are experiencing today--and a competitive advantage during periods of relative stability... Conversely, less-educated Canadians are less employable. They receive less workplace training. They have lower incomes and little or no savings. They are more likely to lose their jobs and remain unemployed for longer periods of time.
Accordingly, we believe the federal government should continue to extend support for Métis governments to meet the skills training and educational needs of Métis people. This should include expanded supports for Métis with disabilities and for those persons who face multiple deficits in obtaining employment.
Métis governments should be provided with further support to assist Métis to obtain post-secondary education. As it now stands, the federal government does not cover the cost of post-secondary education for Métis students. Out of the federal aboriginal education funds, Métis students do not receive any. Métis government support for these funds is limited to providing funding for their last year of university out of our training dollars.
And what that is referencing--for people to grasp--is the aboriginal human resources development program. There is now a new program called ASEP, which has been approved by this government. In that particular program, if we meet all our targets and all of our interventions, any surplus dollars can be used in the last year of post-secondary education.
We lose too many students who cannot make it to the last year of their studies because of financial constraints. We recommend that Parliament build upon existing Métis bursaries and endowments and allocate funds so that every Métis in the country who can pursue post-secondary studies has the support he or she needs.
Our second major recommendation on the proper role of the federal government in fighting poverty focuses upon the need for the federal government to expand its support for Métis child care and early learners. It is now universally accepted that early learning supports, like Head Start, do make an enormous difference in improving educational outcomes later in life.
Simply put, it provides a better foundation for children to reach their potential. The federal government recognized this in 1990 in the establishment of the off-reserve Head Start program. While this program was very much welcome, and we commend the friendship centres, it has failed to meet the needs of the vast majority of Métis children within the Métis homeland.
Program developers bypassed Métis governments and implemented the program primarily through the friendship centres, which serve only a minority of the Métis population as a result of being located largely in urban centres. Moreover, the resources are too thinly stretched to meet the needs of the Métis population as a whole. Less than 50% of Métis children under age 6 had the benefit of an early learning environment.
Moreover, Métis do not have access to a child care component within the current aboriginal human resources programming. That, again, is the new program called ASEP. There is money set aside for Inuit and first nations for child care. We don't have any. We're on our own on that issue.
Métis, who have similar family structures to those of first nations, both having large young families, are denied child care supports, thus limiting our ability to meet the needs of these young families.
In both of these areas, provinces are not meeting our needs. Accordingly, we recommend that the federal government assume the role of supporting Métis governments in meeting the needs of Métis for child care in the area of early learning.
The Métis National Council has long acknowledged the importance of aboriginal labour force development programs that are respectful of Métis Nation governance structures. We are proud of our successes and recently sought an independent review of our results and the economic impacts of the work we are doing.
We are tabling here the Centre for the Study of Living Standards report, which I believe has not yet been given. I encourage you to take this study and read it. I know it's quite lengthy, but to grasp just a segment of that report...it showcases one small investment that I'll use as an example—and I'm speaking a little out of context here because I'm finishing off.
If the Métis were to actually attain the 2001 education level of non-aboriginal Canadians today, by 2026 we'd be contributing $81.5 billion into the economy--if we were just to put that segment of investment into our kids, put them into school, and get them into post-secondary education. It would average about a $3 billion rise in tax revenue, in fact a $7.5 billion rise in GDP, if that were to happen; and by 2026, it would mean an $81 billion rise in GDP in this country.
So I hope this study will enlighten you on some of the benefiting factors that would take place if the government would actually take a Métis-specific strategy and begin to invest in our needs.
I also want to table with you Métis Works—and I brought everybody a copy. It's one of our publications from the AHRDA program that we deliver for Canada. You'll note in the document when you read it—you can skim through it—the varying fields of people we train and jobs we create for them, whether it's in the police force, or heavy equipment and construction, or even the legal profession. The people we've invested in and the success we've had in attaining full-time jobs and maintaining those full-time jobs is quite profound in the sense of the moneys it's actually contributing back into Canada.
You'll also note our investments, when you read this document. We ourselves have started to invest through this program, in partnership with the universities, particularly in Manitoba, as an example. Through this program, as I echoed earlier, if we meet all our targets and interventions, the surplus dollars can be invested in post-secondary. We started that investment eight years ago in Manitoba. Today we have $9 million in endowment funds. The university has matched me dollar for dollar for every dollar I raise. We have now given $1.5 million back to our children who are going to university. So just a small intervention such as that, a little investment like that, has truly made a remarkable change. That's only $9 million. If it could be really well planned and well thought out, imagine what the true benefits would be.
I'll end with that. I know my ten minutes are up.
I usually like to speak off the cuff. I hate reading speeches. But I'm more than willing to answer any questions and try to give you the best snapshot I can of our situation as Métis people in Canada.
