Thank you, Kim.
I'll try to sum up what Kim has presented as a result of the study GE did.
Essentially, the first point we would make as a recommendation is that there should be a much broader recognition across Canada of the importance of remote communities in Canada's economic development. This basic recognition issue is something that we tend to gloss over, but it needs to be looked at more seriously across a variety of government programs and business programs so that we recognize that prosperity is dependent on the efficient allocation of resources in these remote communities.
The second recommendation we would make is that we need to have an improvement in the high school graduation rate in remote communities, particularly among the aboriginal populations. We note that the Government of Nunavut recently brought forward a 10-point program to improve high school graduation rates in that territory. This is a good model for what needs to be rolled out across the country.
We also think—Kim referred to it—that for those students who do obtain a secondary education, there's a gap between their results and their competencies versus those of graduates from the south. We need to have a better focus on literacy and numeracy, so that all high school graduates have those basic skills—rather than graduating students that lack those skills.
Another recommendation relates to broadband connectivity. It's extremely difficult to do online training, including in a business setting, if you don't have online connectivity. Also, we think there needs to be better partnerships between business and government, and the suppliers and producers to improve broadband access in rural areas.
The fifth recommendation relates to developing and funding skills training programs. Here, we need to work with industry, government, and aboriginal bands to make sure we are funding skills programs that are related to jobs.
The sixth and final recommendation we make is that better community supports are needed for post-secondary students who leave remote communities and go to the cities to do post-secondary education. This is an extremely difficult task for them. The dropout rate is very high. There are social adjustment difficulties that students face, and we need to have community support there to assist these students to bridge that gap and meet that challenge.
I'll conclude there with the recommendations that flow from our work on remote communities.
Thank you.