Yes, we have an inability to answer really fundamental questions and find fundamental data about indigenous education in Canada. For example, as we emerged from this whole idea of being kept out of the universities in the 1970s, etc., and you asked what our baseline was or how many students we had in university and colleges in 1980 and 1990, you would be hard-pressed to be able to find a number that everybody can agree on.
Those numbers were never kept in a uniform way, so they may reflect only first nations. They may reflect first nations and Inuit but not Métis. They may include trade schools, colleges or some universities. It depends on the reporting. I think there's a lot of wisdom in having a report like this drive the data gaps that exist and in establishing an organization that can give us the data we need in order to make good decisions.
We have a very good system of gathering the number of people who come in the front door of a college and university, but very little on gathering how many go out the back door when they graduate. This is simply because every organization and every government seems to collect their data in a different way.
There is a real need here to standardize data collection. I don't doubt that you will get 10 experts here who will give you 10 different answers. I don't doubt that a bit. I think they are all coming from their own place, and I think there's a real opportunity here for us to lead in this area, for us to have a uniform rubric for data collection.