Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I thank the witnesses for joining us this afternoon.
Just like my colleague earlier, I would like to take a few seconds to go over Canada’s record with respect to First Nations. It is not a good record.
Let me point out a few things. Life expectancy for First Nations is six years shorter than the average life expectancy for Canadians. The suicide rate for young Aboriginal people is five times the national average. Infant mortality for Aboriginal people is almost twice as high as for Canadians as a whole. Most Aboriginal people live below or on the poverty line. The unemployment rate for Aboriginal people is double the Canadian rate. On reserves, the rate can be as high as 30%. Finally, academic failure rates are higher in all their communities.
I think you are doing a good job and you are working hard, but a lot of things still need to be done. We still have a long way to go.
I have some numbers here from the 2012 Employment Insurance Monitoring and Assessment Report. The Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy (ASETS) provided services to 49,000 clients, as you call them. I would call them people or workers instead. Among those people, 12,000 people found a job and 6,000 others decided to go back to school thanks to your work. So, of the 49,000 people that received services or assistance, only 18,000 had results, meaning that they got a job or went back to school. The success rate is 37%. If we subtract those who went back to school, because we don’t know what the outcome will be, and we consider only those who found a job, the success rate is 24%.
In your view, is that satisfactory? Is that good? Does that compare well with what is being done elsewhere?