Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. As departmental employees there is cultural awareness training and there are different kinds of activities that we do to understand our colleagues and the best way to work together with first nations partners. Also, we've established in the education branch an education data unit that includes a training stream.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The Inuit-Crown partnership table is a really important venue where we learn about the priorities, visions, context and culture of Inuit partners. That is what directly informed a lot of the post-secondary work. We know that elementary and secondary education are a priority there.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I could perhaps start with the tripartite. Our education partnerships program and streams of funding through the education branch of ISC support tripartite work with first nations, provinces and the federal government to look at the types of supports students need to transition between the systems, data sharing among provincial school boards and communities on their students' results, and participation of communities in provincial boards.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Attendance and participation are key parts of what we're hearing at regional education agreement tables. As I said earlier, those are the venues where partners can look at the needs and outcomes defined by their vision for education within their communities—one community or multiple communities.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The department looks to community well-being and different indices that link together some of the fundamental health, community safety and community infrastructure aspects, as well as education. That's the context in which we hear partners talk about tracking and reporting change year over year, because there's so much involved in it.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The graduation rate will be for students funded by ISC. Those are first nations students who are ordinarily residents on reserve and who attend either first nations-administered schools or provincially operated schools—meaning they travel off reserve to those local private or federal schools.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Education transformation and first nations control of first nations education on reserve for elementary and secondary are our driving mandate and our driving purpose. That transformation is attached to funding, the program structure, outcomes, reporting and data. The Auditor General's report really drove a lot of that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The main data we look at for attainment is the census data from StatsCan, which is what the minister spoke to in part. Some of the earlier questions dealt with the department's reporting. Again, those are very different facets of the population. The census is 18 to 24; there's voluntary identification, and its attainment level...with secondary being the highest level of education attainment.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. I'd add as well that with first nations on reserve, part of the education transformation funding includes an enhancement beyond the provincial comparability base, regardless of what provinces provide for indigenous language and culture. The department's funding formula in each region with first nations on reserve adds to that funding, because our studies and our partners tell us how fundamentally important it is for them to see their language and culture reflected in curriculum.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The departmental plans, which were referred to earlier with the minister and deputy minister, set a one-year deadline to set the targets. COVID has pushed those out. That's what's in our most current departmental plan. We're working with the AFN and partners at those tables that I mentioned.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's setting them for March 2023 for publishing in the next round of departmental plans and reports. The issue there is that co-developing them takes time and trust. What's emerging—what we're hearing—is that rather than a target, a year-over-year improvement or check-in is more representative of what our partners are facing and how they deliver their systems.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In the context of first nations' engagement in co-development for elementary and secondary education, that was a fundamental tenet of how education transformation for secondary was undertaken, which led to the implementation of a new funding approach in 2019. In the—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we are engaging in co-developing in a couple of different contexts. There are technical tables that look at the ongoing implementation of the elementary and secondary program. They exist in different formats, depending on who our partners are in each region. In Ontario, for example, there's a region-wide technical table that has education practitioners and administrators who look not only at the funding formula but also at what it does, the types of data and outcomes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The technical tables I referred to include both the implementation of the funding and the outcomes—the challenges, the hurdles, the objectives that our partners are looking for—that can then be tied to the implementation to get to those results. It starts with the money and gets the results.