Event explores opportunities in Métis reconciliation

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This article was published 08/11/2017 (3048 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reconciliation with Canada’s Métis gets down to business in Winnipeg for a one-day conference today.

The event is expected to bring corporate executives together with prominent Métis political leaders and economic experts to the University of Winnipeg. They will look at how to close gaps in education, training and economic opportunities with the Métis and the rest of Canada.

Métis reconciliation has everything to do with economic growth, said Dawn Madahbee Leach, the interim chair of the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, a federally appointed advisory board which is hosting the event.

“This is a time of reconciliation and it’s being promoted throughout Canada and our focus, being economic development, we really see so many opportunities related to economic reconciliation,” Leach said.

Themes under discussion included Métis rights, entrepreneurship, business development and youth.

Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) president David Chartrand issued a challenge to provincial and federal levels of governments ahead of this morning’s speech.

In the last decade the traditional Métis economic sectors from forestry to fishing to furs have crumbled and nothing has taken their place, Chartrand said on Tuesday.

Métis unemployment rates now stand at 70 per cent at the same time that population numbers are set to soar.

Yet rural schools are still on dial-up internet access, classrooms have no laptops and kids in school can’t compete against Canadians for good educations or the wave of new immigrants for decent jobs.

“It leaves our people behind the eight ball trying to catch up,” Chartrand said. “Our people want to work.”

“We’ve done well with no help. But one irony is we’re outperforming Canadians in general between the ages of 18 to 24 when it comes to the labour force in construction. We have the data. We’re outperforming Canadians by three per cent,” Chartrand said.

And that’s a symptom of the Métis economic disadvantage.

“What that tells me is that if my people are outperforming Canadians in that age sector in construction, my kids are not in school. They’re not in colleges. They’re not in universities. They driving the plows, the bulldozers, the oil rigs. That’s where you’ll find them.

“The problem is our kids aren’t fulfilling their dreams to become a doctor, a plumber, a welder or a lawyer. They’re stuck,” Chartrand said.

Métis in Western Canada contribute billions in taxes at both federal and provincial levels every year and they’re falling further and further behind, the MMF leader noted.

“The issue they (governments) should start to consider is if they’re not going to invest in us, the Métis nation, how do they expect to continue to collect taxes from us: $2.6 billion is nothing to cough at, that’s what they collect from us in western Canada,” Chartrand said.

Closing socio-economic disparities faced by Canada’s Indigenous people would boost Canada’s economy by billions every year, a board report posted online agreed.

“One of the things that (study) focuses on is the fact that if we employed Indigenous people at the same level, like if we had same employment and income levels as mainstream Canadians, that we would increase the gross domestic product by $27.7 billion,” Leach said.

That’s in the order of 4,700 jobs in Atlantic Canada, and another 20,000 in Ontario, which would allow both those regions to achieve employment equity.

“It wouldn’t even take that much to close the gap,” Leach said.

“We’re not just talking about corporate Canada, corporate Manitoba or corporate Ontario to develop these jobs. We’re talking about universities, health organizations, hospitals, clinics, all the education sectors and our own communities and our own businesses.”

“We could create those employment numbers in no time. But it takes a concerted effort and one of the things we learned is if corporate Canada, universities or the health sector created action plans that included employment of Indigenous people, we could address the whole employment issue,” Leach said.

The board will play host to a triad of reconciliation events focused on economic success by the middle of next year.

The first was held in Ottawa last spring and focused on First Nations. The second in Winnipeg is Métis and the third, yet to be announced, will focus on the Inuit Nation.

Board member and Calgary businesswoman Maria Delorme said the forums are material for a strategy the advisory body will submit to the federal cabinet by mid-2018.

“As a board we look for these forums to understand their perspectives and incorporate into our strategic plan and take forward to the federal government,” Delorme said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca