Multi-year effort underway to build national picture of Indigenous employment
OTTAWA — A national, multi-pronged, multimillion-dollar effort is underway to figure out how Indigenous Peoples fare in the country’s labour market and fill a data gap that is woefully wide.
In some cases, the lack of data has meant federal officials have allowed businesses in the food and retail sector to hire temporary foreign workers near reserves even though there are Aboriginals who could fill the jobs, owing to the high unemployment rate in those Indigenous communities.
Federal and Indigenous agencies are trying to fill that knowledge gap through a series of surveys and outreach efforts that will take years to complete and cost some $12 million.
Internal government documents point to some conflict between officials about whether efforts are too costly or will yield robust enough data to ensure a new Indigenous jobs strategy reaches more workers and boosts economic outcomes on reserve.