In order to support ECs to enhance their effectiveness in helping clients with multiple barriers achieve job success, this section addresses how rural and Northern Manitoba communities can contribute to solutions. The communities where the EC lives and works represent the third key stakeholder who will benefit from implementing recommendations from this project. The communities are primarily First Nation reserves, and these communities, like the province, have a dual role in supporting the EC position. The community leadership on reserves have responsibilities as the employers of the EC, as well as the overall health and well being of the band members in their charge and the ones looking for work. The sub question related to rural and northern communities was, “What employers and community agencies are available and most often effective in providing the needed services for Aboriginal employment seekers in rural and northern regions? ECs addressed the availability of resources and services and the impact the lack of services had on their ability to be effective. The following recommendations are directed toward the leadership in rural and Northern Manitoba communities.
Each independent First Nation needs to develop a comprehensive and integrated strategy to address the quality of life indicators in their communities. Community Leaders will be able to best lead their members when they have a clear picture of the life conditions for everyone.
Literacy is a pre-cursor to employment, and employment is a pre-cursor to quality of life for First Nations people. Cooke (2005) examined First Nations community well-being and told us that, despite a [Canadian] national pride in a high human development indicator, “Aboriginal people have not experienced the same high levels of human development”
(p. 2). The research on this topic supports participant comments about the lives of First Nations on reserves in Canada. The Canadian Human Rights Commission (2005) described a current appeal process for section 67 of the Canadian Human Rights Act and stated, “As a result of section 67, some actions carried out by the Government of Canada or a First Nation government (or by a related agency, such as a school board) can be exempt from human rights scrutiny”
(p. 2).
The Chief and Council on First Nations can come together and place more emphasis and urgency on the creation of a labour market in rural and northern communities. Planning and partnership development are the first steps to job creation. First Nations communities need to seek support from every available resource including INAC and local and provincial services, to develop business plans and long term strategies to address the economic and labour market issues in their neighbourhoods. The statistics from the Government of Canada (2007) told us that
the unemployment rate is the percentage of the labour force that actively seeks work but is unable to find work at a given time. Discouraged workers—persons who are not seeking work because they believe the prospects of finding it are extremely poor—are not counted as unemployed or as part of the labour force. (¶ 1)