I'm going to come full circle on this question, then. Part of the problem we're dealing with here is a lack of self-esteem. We've heard that across the panel and we heard that yesterday.
If the problem is a lack of self-esteem that is creating this sense of not being productive and not being able to provide for their families, and if part of that contributes to violence, or to addiction and substance abuse, which in turn contribute to violence against women, then it would seem to me that we need to come back to the very beginning. We need to ask what it is that we need to provide in order to help individuals develop the self-esteem and the self-reliance they need to feel that they are contributing members.
We heard yesterday from one of our witnesses that part of the problem they see with aboriginal people is that on the reserve there are people who are given certificates that allow them to do work on the reserve, but those certificates are not recognized as professional or formal certificates off the reserve. So a person may be working as a social worker on the reserve, but they can't take that same certificate or certification and go to an urban area where they might want to work with an urban aboriginal community.
Off the reserve, they're told, “I'm sorry, but your certificate is worthless here”. So there's no continuity. There is no ability for a person who moves off the reserve to make an adequate living when they're living in an urban centre.
What I heard earlier from Mr. Duchesneau was that with a population of 3,000 aboriginal people in your community, more than half of them are living in an urban centre. So if we can't take that level of service, that diploma, from those individuals and say to them that they can come into town and work in town with the community, then we really have not provided a tool that is useful.
Madame Desnoyers, as you said, the tool is useless because it's not transferable.
How do we help our aboriginal people gain that level of certification, that recognition, so that they are then able to parlay that into a job, into a resource that will provide for their families? In the process, we would see a reduction in substance abuse and also a reduction in violence against families, which clearly has to be addressed.