Participants provided many examples of insufficient emphasis on funding and programming at the pre-employment stage in northern Manitoba. Many Aboriginal job seekers are simply not employable by today’s labour market standard. Participant E provided a clear example of what is not working, “The way we’re doing it now is, here’s your ten months of programming, go off and get your training, and you’ll go and be a good meaningful employed person. It’s not happening.”
Participant F had this to say about the barriers to employment: “Our ability to create opportunities for ourselves and our people are limited, and that’s the way I see it on most First Nations.”
If linking programs and long-term supports are providing evidence of success, why is there not more movement in the systems to find ways to support this?
Rural and northern communities can only offer fractured services to job seekers in a nonexistent
labour market. Services need to be more integrated, as Participant E questioned, “I don’t know why the reserve boundary somehow eliminates that services are allowed?”
Participant E went on to compare Aboriginal programming with provincial funding for new immigrants:
They’re still bringing these … immigrants and giving them housing, giving them clothes, giving them training skills, giving them rent money … and people from [reserve] … can’t go there and be offered the same kind of a service, something’s wrong … and here is this high unemployment rate for First Nations people.
Participant C talked about how their organization responded to a lack of funds, “We double our training dollars because we partner up.”
Some have been working the system, and others have had the system working them. Leadership and advocacy in this area was not noticeable in the First Nations Community. Rural and northern ECs are not given sufficient supports to achieve more than a modicum of success helping job seekers attain employment. Participant D pointed out, “We do have resources in the north, but they’re quickly getting burnt out.”