Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're extremely pleased to be here to give to you our experiences with aboriginal programs in the area of workforce employment and training.
No one has a crystal ball to accurately forecast what the Canadian economy will be like in the 2015 to 2020 time range. Historically, there have been forecasts that have painted a rosy picture of economic growth and stability, only to be revised after the fact to reflect significant downturns in the economy and changes in labour market trends. The current interrelatedness of Canada within the global economy has also created an environment in which economic models can no longer be forecasted in isolation.
Over the course of the past 20 years, the troubling socio-economic outcomes of aboriginal women have been well documented. The multiple barriers they face in entering and retaining employment in the labour market are numerous. When comparing non-aboriginal women with their male counterparts, the statistics all demonstrate that aboriginal women have lower income levels and work in lower occupational categories.
The most recent release of the 2011 national household survey revealed that gaps in the labour market outcomes between aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities continue to persist, and this is particularly heightened when aboriginal women are looked at as a separate category.
Highlights of these statistics as they relate to aboriginal women and the labour market are as follows. Nearly twice as many aboriginal women as men have a university education. This translates into women accounting for 65% of the university-educated aboriginal labour force, compared with 52% among non-aboriginal people. For the Canadian population as a whole, approximately 57% of total university enrolments were female. This share is likely even higher in the case of aboriginal involvement.
Although aboriginal women have higher educational rates, education and health care tend to be the predominant fields of study. This gender bias persists in the broader labour market as well, in which Canadian women are heavily over-represented in areas related to the public sector while men are concentrated in those high-growth industries related to resource extraction and construction, industries that have higher levels of income. Among aboriginal peoples, this gender divide is even more glaring. Females represent 82.3% of aboriginal employees in health care, education, and public administration, compared with 70.4% among non-aboriginal employees.
For aboriginal women, this high concentration of employment in the public sector likely points to other barriers that are impeding their access to the labour market. Since there is no concrete research, one can assume based on anecdotal information that some of the barriers could be lack of job opportunities due to geographical barriers, discriminatory hiring practices, and poor labour market choices for making informed career decisions.
Among aboriginal people aged 25 to 64, 28.9% had no certificate, diploma, or degree, while the proportion of non-aboriginal people in the same group was 12.1%. The proportion of aboriginal people aged 25 to 64 with a high school diploma or equivalent as their highest level of educational attainment was 22.8%. In comparison, 23.2% of non-aboriginal people in the same age group had a high school diploma or equivalent as the highest qualification.
The proportion of aboriginal women aged 35 to 44 who had university degrees in 2011 was 13.6%, compared with 10.2% of those aged 55 to 64. Aboriginal women have a tendency to go back to school in later years, and most of our programming is directed at youth. This poses a bit of a barrier for older aboriginal women, who aren't really that much older, when you consider that the category is for those aged 35 and upwards.
Among aboriginal men, there is no difference between the age groups in the proportions who held university degrees. It was 7.6% for men aged both 35 to 44 and 55 to 65.
In 2011, younger aboriginal women and men were more likely to have college diplomas than older ones.
Among aboriginal women aged 35 to 44, 27.1% had a college diploma in 2011 compared with 21.4% of those aged 55 to 64. With a proportion of 18.3%, aboriginal men aged 35 to 44 were also more likely to have college diplomas than those aged 55 to 64, where the proportion was 14.1%.
There's a shift that has been taking place over the past 20 years as we have more aboriginal youth and more individuals attending colleges, universities, and gaining degrees. It has been said that education is the key to higher incomes.
In some cases, it's not necessarily key to higher incomes because we have multiple barriers that do play into the whole process, namely being able to be mobile and move to different areas. We have those issues, and we also have the issue that despite your university degree, it may not be the one that's necessary for the qualifications that are being sought after within the Canadian labour market.
NWAC has been delivering the ASETS program, which is the aboriginal skills and employment training strategy, since 2011. As a national ASETS holder, we deliver the strategy through a network of provincial and territorial member associations. Located throughout Canada, these PTMAs, through subagreements with NWAC, deliver the program at the regional grassroots level.
Where we do not have a PTMA or where a PTMA is not ready to deliver the program, NWAC, through its labour market development department, delivers special projects or works with the PTMA to increase its capacity. We have done this with quite a few of our PTMAs. In one case in Saskatchewan, we delivered truck driving training to aboriginal women. In another, in New Brunswick, we worked with a reserve in terms of dealing with training in the area of early childhood education and health practitioners.
Our ASETS programming primarily provides funding to assist all aboriginal women, and when I say all, I mean that we are status blind. We work with Métis, first nations, non-status, and Inuit in employment and training initiatives. It is based on individual needs as well as the community needs reflecting regional realities.
The types of employment and training interventions we provide include individual training purchases where we will purchase for an individual education, such as college or individual training in terms of needing a course to finish their degree. We have job creation partnerships. We have self-employment benefits where we can assist an individual in creating a small business. We have targeted wage subsidies. We just recently signed a spirit of cooperation with a corporation that has offices across Canada and was looking at retaining some of their aboriginal workforce. They work both through the south and the north, and they work with Nav Canada in their training programs. We are currently in negotiations with them regarding targeted wage subsidies to ensure that they can retain the employees. We also do community and group training.
Since its inception, NWAC has worked to uphold the three pillars of the ASETS program. In the area of accountability and results, we have implemented tighter fiscal and financial controls with our subagreement holders in order to ensure our accountability to the Government of Canada.
In addition, we have transitioned to a more user-friendly database system in order to effectively track and report on our training and employment successes. Over the course of the past two years, we have sought out partnerships with a variety of educational institutions, federal government employers, such as Correctional Services Canada, and first nation governments to provide aboriginal women with enhanced employment and training opportunities.
As we enter the final year of the programming, we have stepped up our efforts to seek out private sector partnerships as we believe that partnerships are a stable ingredient in ensuring employment and training opportunities for aboriginal women. We also recognize that in order to develop the appropriate labour market matches, we must make employers aware that aboriginal women are a viable option to their employee requirements.
The linking of aboriginal women to demand-driven skills development has posed some difficulty for us, but once again we've recognized that in order for us to fulfill this government priority, we must develop partnerships with a variety of public and private sector employers. We must recognize, however, that although some aboriginal women can match these skills, we need training and employment options for aboriginal women who are facing multiple barriers to gaining access.
To date our program has assisted 463 clients. Of these, 111 have gained meaningful employment following their training interventions and 72 have returned to their studies.