A new report says Saskatchewan is falling behind both Alberta and Manitoba in terms of First Nations employment and the provincial government is partially to blame.
The report is called Employment of First Nations People: Saskatchewan Lags Behind.
It shows that in 2009 the province lost 100,000 First Nations jobs – or about 25 per cent of this workforce.
University of Saskatchewan professor Eric Howe, the report’s author, says the province did three things that exacerbated this trend – the cancellation of the Aboriginal Employment Development Program, the opening up of the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program to non-skilled workers and hardening attitudes of the public towards the province’s First Nations people as a result of the hardline trend the province had taken with the First Nations University of Canada.
The report, released this morning in Saskatoon, also says if the province employed First Nations people at similar rates to Alberta and Manitoba, the Saskatchewan economy would have an additional $7 billion by 2031.