Unfortunately, the number in Saskatchewan of indigenous people in corrections is 85%. It's quite the number.
One thought I did have is that our organization represents 70% of people who live off reserve, and the majority live in urban centres across Canada. They come to urban centres to change their life. They come for employment, for educational opportunities, those kinds of things.
For example, we just went through a provincial election less than a month ago, and the biggest issue to me was that indigenous people are not included in the economy. That can go right across the board in Canada. What happens is that when you don't have a job, things start to spiral. I found in a lot of cases that even people who went to school and have an education still have a difficult time getting a job.
We rely a lot on corporations to employ people within Canada. For example, Cameco in Saskatchewan is one of the largest employers. I'm finding that we're just not getting those opportunities the way other Canadians are. I believe that if we break those barriers down and focus on those areas, you'll also see the incarceration rate drop significantly in Canada.
Again, I stress the economy, because I graduated from the Gabriel Dumont institute in Regina a few years ago—I won't say the date and date—and I can't believe we're still talking about these kinds of issues 30 years later. I'm concerned that when I ride off into the sunset, we'll be talking about it another 30 years from now, and somebody else will be sitting here talking to another government.
I believe we can change things.
Government can play a huge role in that as well, whether federally or provincially. It can certainly happen. It doesn't matter what stripe of party you are, we can do these things if we roll up our sleeves and get to work.