Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Laurie Sterritt. I'm the CEO of AMTA, the Aboriginal Mentoring and Training Association. We just recently changed our name. We were formerly known as the British Columbia Aboriginal Mine Training Association.
With me, as you've heard, is Jeanette Jules, who is a founding member of the AMTA board of directors and a councillor with the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc.
Thank you for inviting us here to speak with you about opportunities to increase aboriginal inclusion in Canada's workforce.
Four years ago, a group of people and partners from industry, government, education, and first nations started AMTA with the goal of connecting aboriginal people to jobs in B.C.'s exploration and mining industries. AMTA was initially funded with $4.4 million under ASEP, along with financial and in-kind contributions from our founding partners. We also received a $10-million commitment from Canada under the SPF program in August 2012. In total, Canada has pledged $14.4 million for five years of AMTA programs and operations. In return, we offer a return on investment in the range of 165%.
With the support and input of our partners, we've created a business solution, and other resource sector industries are looking to adopt what we've created. What we have created is an education and training model developed by aboriginal people for aboriginal people. It challenges the assumptions about aboriginal workers and about how to prepare them for success and meaningful employment.
We've created a program that looks and operates very differently from what many people across all our stakeholder groups are used to seeing, a program built on the principles of flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness while still maintaining a very structured approach. It's a program generating positive results that align with Canada's commitment to increase aboriginal education levels and workforce inclusion.
We do this by removing barriers one individual at a time to ensure that every AMTA candidate gets what they need to make life choices that may not have been open to them in the past. We do our best to get rid of the things that hold people back, and consistently we've seen our approach generate new possibilities for our candidates.
In AMTA's short history, we've registered almost 2,300 candidates in a variety of education, training, and development initiatives, and we have placed more than 730 aboriginal people into jobs.
In a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study, which I have copies of—they are not translated into French, but if you want a copy of our study I have it with us—we discovered that our candidates earn on average almost 300% more than they did when they arrived at our doors. In aggregate, they are contributing more than $100 million annually to Canada’s GDP.
Our candidates have developed transferable job skills and are in demand because they are ready to work, qualified, trained, and certified to industry standards. They are finding employment close to home, achieving financial stability, and becoming leaders and role models within their own communities.
So what makes AMTA different? How is it that we've been able to achieve these results in such a short period of time?
From the start, everyone involved in AMTA has been willing to challenge their assumptions about education and training models, about aboriginal learners and workers, and about the makeup of their workforce. When we were able to challenge our beliefs and opinions, we were able to see that a new approach was not only possible but necessary.
We started by seeking out meaningful partnerships. Over the past four years, AMTA's industry partners have provided significant financial and in-kind support, and more than 200 companies have hired our candidates. In fact, AMTA has become a key part of the recruitment process for several companies, such as Acres construction, the Gibraltar mine, Graham construction, Ledcor, the New Afton Mine, and Sunridge Equipment, just to name a few.
Our industry partners don't only invest in AMTA to satisfy legal agreements or inclusion targets, though these are important benefits to many. Our industry partners come to AMTA because they are ready to challenge their assumptions about their hiring practices. They have specific hiring needs and they're ready to develop a local, loyal workforce. In short, we work alongside their operational teams to provide staffing solutions when needed and with workers that have the qualifications that are needed.
What else makes us different?
Our application process is unencumbered by the eligibility restrictions that many other training initiatives face, and we have a standardized intake process and assessment method.
For example, we work with all ages and all skill levels. Every AMTA candidate completes a test of workplace essential skills. In consultation with our industry partners, we've decided to focus on our candidates' reading, numeracy, and document-use levels. Through this assessment we find that about 70% of our candidates need to enter our pathways to success program. In order to improve their essential skills, pathways to success also includes many confidence-building exercises like life skills, coaching, workplace orientation, and getting special licences and tickets that will help our candidates become more aware of the requirements of entering into long-term employment. From here, we work with our candidates to identify their particular skills and interests, and then develop customized training plans for each and every candidate. Jeanette is going to speak to this very shortly.
At the same time, we work with our partners to develop cohort training initiatives that suit the industry need. We then contract local educators and service providers to deliver training solutions. We've built programs like underground miner training, environmental monitoring, human resources management, etc.
AMTA staff are involved every step of the way to ensure that we're delivering the right solution for our candidates and partners. That's an important differentiator for AMTA. We manage the process very closely so that our candidates get everything they need to be successful.
Now I'll pass it over to Jeanette.