Thank you.
To give you a quick recap, Syncrude has six key commitment areas where we engage and consult directly with the chiefs in the local region. They are shown on that first slide. They were developed in consultation with those chiefs. They will focus on the education and business aspects of those commitment areas.
Flipping to the next slide on achieving success, under education and training, our goal is to expand the available pool of aboriginal employees in our region. Because of that, we take a long-term view of our program in this area. We're working right from very early education, grades 1, 2, and 3, on enhancing literacy and numeracy skills. We're providing hot lunch programs in a first nation just north of our operations. We provide support for the University of Alberta to actually bring in student teachers to enhance the teaching capacity in the rural areas.
As well, moving into the deeper aspects of education, we support science and technology programs in high schools. We recently made a donation of $1 million to help build a new science and technology centre at a high school in Fort McMurray which has 20% aboriginal participation.
We support trades development for teens. One of our landmark programs is something known as the aboriginal trades prep program with our community college. It takes in young adults who have left the school system and gets them their GED and all of their pre-apprentice program. After eight months, they can pick a trade and Syncrude will give them a full-time permanent job upon their successful completion of the program.
Moving to the employment side of that, again, we make sure we have a multipronged approach to attraction, but also that we're creating a workforce that is conducive to retention of aboriginal employees once we have secured them. Obviously, that trades prep program with the college is a key part of our recruitment. Similarly, we have a fly-in rotational program with Fort Chipewyan, which is 250 kilometres north of our operations and is home to two of the first nations whose traditional lands we work with. Since 1980 we've been flying workers back and forth on a six-in and six-out rotation. We provide their accommodations and all of the costs of transportation back and forth. That program has grown over the years and now has about 30 full-time permanent employees working in it.
On the retention side, we have mandatory cultural diversity training for leaders, as well as aboriginal cultural training for all leaders who have staff of aboriginal heritage in their departments. Clearly, one of our challenges, which I think is true for the entire industry, is that we are extraordinarily successful at attracting employees in the more occupational and trades aspects of our business, and we all continue to seek opportunities to move aboriginal people across all aspects of our business into the more professional, technical, and engineering and sciences aspects of our operations.
Moving finally to the business development aspects, this also is another form of employment in our region. What we tend to see as a true definition of success is employees coming to work for Syncrude and then ultimately leaving and starting their own business and employing even more aboriginal people from our region.
Since 1992 we've been tracking our overall spend. We're proud to report that at the end of 2013 we crossed $2 billion in cumulative spend with local aboriginal peoples in our community. Syncrude has been a leader in this area. Others in the oil sands industry, I'm pleased to say, have followed our lead and now the overall spend is about $1 billion a year in the local community with aboriginal peoples.
We helped establish an aboriginal business group called NAABA, the Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association, and we're active participants in the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, as is Cameco.
To turn now to the benefits for Syncrude, there's a very strong business case for us. This is a local supply of labour and supply contracts and business contracts. They are far more cost effective than bringing in labourers or workers and suppliers from other areas of Canada and beyond.
What's particularly notable for us is that our aboriginal attrition of our full-time employees is lower than our overall corporate attrition. They live in the region. They're from there. They have no desire to move away from our community, which we find extraordinarily valuable.
We see the same business case for Canada. This is a massive pool of potential employment for our country, and a massive supply of business contracts from one end of the nation to the other.
Going forward, we would recommend Canada consider continuing to invest in aboriginal support and education. With respect to ASETS, the aboriginal skills and employment training strategy, and the skills and partnership fund, Syncrude would certainly like to encourage the Government of Canada to renew those funding programs when they expire next year.
Perhaps I'll leave my comments there and move it to my colleagues.