July 3, 2008

Canadian Apprenticeship Forum

Aboriginal workforce offers solution to looming labour crisis, delegates hear

SHANNON MONEO

correspondent

Victoria

Encouraging aboriginals to enter the trades was a topical and crucial aspect of the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum’s 2008 Conference recently held in Victoria.

Canada’s Aboriginal people represent the fastest-growing group in this country, their population increasing by about 22 per cent since 1996, six times faster than the rest of the country, according to Statistics Canada.

Of Canada’s almost 1.4 million aboriginals, about 435,000 are of working age. Their median age of 27 compares with 40 for the national non-aboriginal average.

“Aboriginal people could make a true difference to the labour shortage across the country,” Craig Hall of the Aboriginal Human Resource Council (AHRC) told about 450 delegates.

In the last decade there have been tremendous pockets of success amongs aboriginal communities. In Saskatchewan, the Lac La Ronge Band’s Kitsaki Management Limited employs hundreds of aboriginals and non-aboriginals, many of them working at trades.

B.C.’s Osoyoos Band has parlayed some of its 32,000 acres of land into a successful vineyard.

But the good news stories and practices aren’t making their way to other bands.

“A knowledge transfer is needed,” Hall said. “We need to replicate what’s happening at the community level to the country.”

The AHRC is proposing a national framework that would work with all three levels of government, industry, unions, educators, First Nations, Metis and Inuit to produce more tradespeople.

The grand scheme would define roles, generate investment, devise business solutions and handle training and recruitment, said Kelly Lendsay, AHRC president and CEO.

“It sounds easy, but how do you do it? I think the trades sector can,” said Lendsay, a Métis who last year was recognized as one of the University of Saskatchewan’s 100 Alumni of Influence.

But there are substantial obstacles.

Large amounts of financial and social capital are needed. And aboriginals’ poor understanding of trades needs to be addressed, Hall said.

Those misperceptions aren’t being dismantled by employers who don’t understand aboriginal communities and don’t know how to approach bands. Employers need to be encouraged to hire aboriginal tradespeople to celebrate diversity, Hall explained.

A national framework would provide rapid employment of aboriginal tradespeople, assisted by a national aboriginal job board.

Common issues, such as mobility and credentialling would also be addressed by the framework. National hiring targets will be set, based on each region’s multi-year economic forecast. Unions and industry will have to co-operate to build a coalition of the willing, Hall said.

But the payback will be worth it. If aboriginals, working in all sectors, fully contributed to the economy, by 2017, Canada’s gross domestic product would increase by $162 billion, Lendsay said.

Manley McLachlan, co-chair of the Vancouver Aboriginal Strategic Employment Partnership as well as president of the B.C. Construction Association, said busy employers are looking for a single window when it comes to hiring aboriginal tradespeople.

But the single biggest impediment is getting the dollars, he said. Bands across the country devise good ideas but they’re all competing for funding which comes from a central source.

The co-ordinator of Ontario’s Sioux Lookout Area Aboriginal Management Board didn’t endorse the national framework.

“It must come from the grassroots first,” Bob Bruyere said. “Take it from the ordinary red-skinned man or woman to the corporations. It doesn’t work from the top down.”

When “urban Indians” administer programs there are winners and losers and the losers typically live on remote reserves.

“A central pot of funds create a lot of mistrust,” pointed out Bruyere, an aboriginal.

His band doesn’t want to depend on provincial and federal programs, opting instead for industry, he said.

Hydro One (owned by the Government of Ontario) has given the band $125,000 to hire a person to encourage band members to work for the utility.

Lendsay said that if the national aboriginal trades framework does nothing more than unite groups to find ways of working together, that would be a useful success.

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