Although the number of Aboriginal people with a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree continues to grow, a significant education gap continues to exist between Aboriginal people and the overall Canadian population, in particular at the post-secondary level. This section provides an overview of the issues and trends in Aboriginal post-secondary education, with a specific focus on issues and trends of relevance to Canadian colleges and institutes.
The most recent data available from the 2001 Census2 shows that the Aboriginal people's share of Canada's total population is on the rise. In 2001, a total of 976,305 persons identified themselves as a member of an Aboriginal group. This count was 22.2% higher than the 1996 figure of 799,010. In contrast, the non-Aboriginal population grew only 3.4% between 1996 and 2001.
In 2001, people who identified themselves as Aboriginal accounted for 3.3% of the nation's total population, compared with 2.8% five years earlier. Statistics Canada has specified that about half the increase in the Aboriginal population can be attributed to demographic factors, such as their high birth rate. Increased awareness of one's Aboriginal roots likely accounted for another half, as more people identified themselves as Aboriginal and fewer reserves were incompletely enumerated.
The 2001 census found that almost one-half of the population who identified themselves as Aboriginal lived in urban areas. However, even though there has been a perception that there is a trend of out migration from reserves to municipalities, the reality, backed up by Statistics Canada and the Department of Indian Affairs Canada (INAC), is that the on-reserve population is growing faster than the off-reserve Aboriginal population. In fact INAC projects that the on- reserve Registered Indian population will grow from an estimated 60 percent in 2001 to 75 percent in 2021.3
The Aboriginal population is also younger than the overall Canadian population. The 2001 Census confirmed that this trend is continuing from the 1996 Census as the median age of Canada's Aboriginal population was 13 years younger than that of the non-Aboriginal population, a result of the higher birth rate among Aboriginal people.4 The median age for the Aboriginal population was 24.7 years, while that of the non-Aboriginal population was at an all- time high of 37.7 years. Children aged 14 and under represented one-third of the Aboriginal population in 2001, far higher than the corresponding share of 19% in the non-Aboriginal population. Although the Aboriginal population accounted for only 3.3% of Canada's total population, Aboriginal children represented 5.6% of all children in Canada. As these children move through the education system and into the labour market in coming years, they will account for an increasing part of the growth of the working-age population. This will be the case particularly in provinces with higher concentrations of Aboriginal people.