Generally speaking--and I don't mean this in a negative way--the Métis population is better educated, has higher earned incomes, and has greater labour force participation rates than first nations, primarily because of geography. But we fall far below what the Canadian standards are, so we're somewhere in the middle.
We try to be as positive as we can about this. Rather than saying how badly off we are, we like to make a business case for investment in our population. Right now we have about $50 million in training money, and we probably need $50 million more. David Chartrand likes to say that we're essentially the working poor in Canada, for the most part. That leaves us just above the low-income cutoffs, and all the rest of it. So our ability to get post-secondary education is impacted severely. That's one area where we've had to work out a deal to use some of our training money for education.
The other thing we like to point out is that we are taxpayers. From the last estimate of our population, we comprise one-third of the entire aboriginal workforce. One-third of the people who are working are Métis—and it's about $1 billion. So we pay the freight. We pay the janitor here and the salaries here. As I was saying to Clém on the way over that we've been coming here for 30 years. We've gone through six prime ministers and I don't know how many ministers of Indian Affairs. We've come to committee after committee after committee, and at some point we'd like to have a longer conversation with you on a big issue, which is the land issue.
We've been to the Supreme Court on French language rights in Manitoba. We negotiated those. We got denominational school rights recognized. Now for the first time we take forward our land rights on December 13. That's going to have some implications. We'd like you to have a look at not only that issue but also the Dominion Lands Act, where the same process was used. That's throughout the entire northwest.
So we think it's worth your effort. We welcome an opportunity to discuss with you all those land questions. That's why we're here.