Report 6: Employment Training for Indigenous People—Employment and Social Development Canada

Program Results – April 2015 – December 2017

Employment and Social Development Canada did not collect the necessary data or define performance indicators as needed to determine whether its training programs met their overall objective

Overall message

6.16      Overall, we found that Employment and Social Development Canada did not collect the data or define the performance indicators necessary to demonstrate whether the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy and the Skills and Partnership Fund 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.

6.17      We also found that the Department allocated funding to agreement holders under the Strategy primarily on the basis of data from 1996 that did not reflect the current needs of the populations served. Moreover, the Department did not reallocate funding to the individual agreement holders who had been more consistently successful in training clients and helping them get jobs.

6.18      These findings matter because unemployment rates for Indigenous people are markedly higher than for the general Canadian population. The Department has allocated significant funds to the programs. Collecting adequate data and defining performance indicators would allow the Department to determine whether the programs are leading to meaningful and sustainable employment and whether changes are needed.

Program Management

The Department supported agreement holders to deliver services but did not provide sufficient labour market information.

Overall Message

6.60      Overall, we found that Employment and Social Development Canada supported agreement holders by providing them with guidance, information sessions, and administrative direction. It also worked with agreement holders to reduce their administrative burden. However, the Department did not provide agreement holders with sufficient labour market information to help them determine which services they should provide to clients to help them prepare for and find available jobs.

6.61      We also found that the Department did not consistently monitor agreement holders to know whether they fulfilled their obligations under contribution agreements. In particular, the Department did not ensure that agreement holders adequately monitored the other Indigenous organizations with which they had sub-agreements to provide services to clients on their behalf.

6.62      These findings matter because agreement holders need good labour market information to help them determine which services to provide to clients. Moreover, consistent monitoring of agreement holders can help the Department understand how it could further support agreement holders to deliver services.

List of Recommendations

The following link lists the recommendations and responses found in this report. The paragraph number preceding the recommendation indicates the location of the recommendation in the report, and the numbers in parentheses indicate the location of the related discussion.

Source: http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_201805_06_e_43038.html#p46