Great, thank you.
My thanks to the witnesses for appearing. I thought it was interesting that all of your presentations had a heavy focus on aboriginal—first nations, Métis, and Inuit.
In the document entitled “The Business Case for Investing in Canada's Remote Communities”, the first recommendation was to review the funding formula for education in first nations communities to ensure parity with the provincial financing model. There have been a number of studies done that include first nations, Métis, and Inuit access to education. One was the 2007 study “No Higher Priority: Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education in Canada”, which came out when Mr. Mayes chaired the aboriginal affairs committee. In the 2010 report “Building the Pipeline: Increasing the Participation of Women in Non-Traditional Occupations”, there's a part that specifically refers to aboriginal women in trades. And then there was an extensive and thorough report called “Northerners' Perspectives for Prosperity”, December 2010, where the aboriginal affairs committee travelled to rural and remote northern communities and produced 35 recommendations on improving economic prosperity in the north.
In addition, the Auditor General has made recommendations on the inadequacy of education for first nations, which the chamber of commerce referenced. We have two pieces at issue. One is the 2% funding cap that's been in place since 1995, and the other addresses the inadequacy of the per capita funding that first nations on reserve schools receive. The average is $2,000, but in many communities, and especially in remote northern communities, the problem is much greater because provincial governments fund off-reserve schools in rural and remote communities at a much higher level.
I think there are two questions. First, what efforts have HRSDC or the Department of Aboriginal Affairs made to close the funding gap in K-to-12 education? There's no point in talking about post-secondary, technical, or trades if we don't actually have children completing grade 12. Second, what efforts have been made to address that 2% cap when we know that aboriginal populations have grown, on average, about 11.1%, according to the Auditor General?
I'm not sure if it's HRSDC or the Department of Aboriginal Affairs who would like to answer those two questions.