It's interesting that sometimes we get asked how long it will take to turn some of these things around. I think there are a couple of perspectives.
First, a number of status Indians have finished high school and have been accepted at universities, but they can't go because of the cap on post-secondary funding. One of the things you can do very quickly to increase the number of first nations status Indians graduating high school is to fund those who are ready to go. They're there, and there are artificial caps. As you know, there's a 2% cap on growth, and there are more students ready to go than money.
In addition, if you're going to focus on one group within the aboriginal community it would be single aboriginal women, because you're going to help their children and entire families move forward. But aboriginal men have the lowest graduating rates in urban areas. Statistics show they have the most to gain from graduating. If they graduate, their jump in income is much more than for aboriginal women who do the exact same thing. So I think there is some disparity in the data.
It's going to take at least five years. If someone is coming into grade 9 right now and you want them to finish high school, you need the supports in place now to help them through. When they struggle through grade 10, at a lot of first nations schools, depending on the proximity to urban areas, the children have to move. I know in Ontario a lot of the kids from the north move to North Bay and are put in foster home-like situations. They go to school and end up dropping out of grade 10 because of the integration and all the challenges in leaving the reserve to come to the city--all those kinds of issues.
You want to put programs in place now to help those children finish school, get their high school diplomas, and move on. So the time scale at a minimum is five years. You'll need to have some turnaround time to get those programs up and evaluate and strengthen them across the country. So you're looking at a five- to ten-year window to seriously address the kind of education gap that exists today.