Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Comité permanent des comptes publics

For immediate release

Ottawa, December 06, 2018 -

Employment and Social Development Canada’s (ESDC) management of the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy and the Skills and Partnership Fund was not sufficient to demonstrate that these programs increased the number of Indigenous people getting jobs and staying employed, according to a report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts presented to the House of Commons today by the Hon. Kevin Sorenson, Chair of the Committee. In the “Message from the Auditor General,” in the spring of 2018, the Auditor General opined that the lack of progress on Aboriginal files was an incomprehensible failure.

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) released a performance audit which analyzed the Department’s actions to implement, monitor, report on, and improve these two programs. ESDC did not collect the data or define the performance indicators necessary to demonstrate whether these programs were meeting their common overall objective of increasing the number of Indigenous people who had sustainable and meaningful employment. This is despite the fact that the Department has been delivering programs to support Indigenous employment for almost 30 years. These findings matter because unemployment rates for Indigenous people are markedly higher than for the general Canadian population and the Department has allocated significant funds to the programs.

In its report, the Committee made nine recommendations to Employment and Social Development Canada to ensure that its Indigenous training programs achieve their objectives.