Part Two of a three-part series on indigenous–Canadian relations. Read Part One here.Terry Burton is a retired veteran of Alberta’s oil and heavy construction industry and a former member of the Alberta Apprenticeship Board.One of Canada's most difficult conversations today concerns indigenous employment.It is difficult because two things can be true at the same time.Indigenous Canadians have faced — and continue to face — real barriers to education and employment.And governments and private companies have spent enormous amounts of money and effort trying to create opportunities that do not always translate into sustained employment.Both facts need to be acknowledged.I have personal experience with the second.Beginning in 1980, I spent more than three decades working in an industry that employed thousands of tradespeople. We repeatedly tried to increase indigenous participation in construction and maintenance work.There were training programs. Recruitment initiatives. Employment opportunities. Efforts to accommodate communities and workers.And yet, in my experience, attracting and retaining indigenous employees was often difficult.That experience should not be interpreted as proof that indigenous people do not want to work.It is evidence that employment is more complicated than simply creating a job opening..Statistics Canada provides an important piece of the picture. In the 2021 Census, the employment rate for indigenous adults aged 25 to 64 was 61.2%, compared with 74.1% for non-indigenous adults. The gap, however, virtually disappeared among people with a bachelor's degree or higher: 82.6% for indigenous adults compared with 82.5% for non-indigenous adults.That finding should cause everyone to think carefully.Education matters.Skills matter.Geography matters.And access to economic centres matters.Statistics Canada found that employment and educational outcomes generally deteriorated as remoteness increased. Among First Nations people with Registered or Treaty Indian status, for example, the 2021 employment rate was 47.1% for those living on reserve, compared with 57.7% off reserve.Those are genuine structural challenges.But structural challenges cannot become an excuse for abandoning personal responsibility.A company can provide training.It can provide transportation.It can provide an apprenticeship.It can provide a supervisor willing to invest time in a new employee.It can provide a wage and benefits.What it cannot do is attend work on behalf of the employee.Construction is particularly unforgiving in this regard.A work crew cannot operate if people appear only when convenient. Heavy equipment does not wait. Safety procedures cannot be suspended because someone has personal difficulties. A project schedule cannot be rewritten indefinitely around absenteeism.This is not unique to indigenous employment..It is true for every Canadian employee.But it raises an important question when discussing reconciliation: Are we prepared to acknowledge that employment success requires obligations on both sides?A company must provide a genuine opportunity and treat employees fairly.The employee must show up, work safely, learn, improve, and accept responsibility for the consequences of his or her choices.The same principle should apply to education.Canada should spend heavily on indigenous education.But spending should be measured by outcomes, not merely by dollars spent.If a school receives more money but graduation rates do not improve, the question should be asked.If a training program repeatedly produces graduates who do not enter the workforce, the question should be asked.If an employment initiative has a high turnover rate, the question should be asked.Asking those questions is not racism.It is management.It is also respect.There is something patronizing about assuming that indigenous Canadians should be protected from ordinary expectations because of their history.Indigenous people deserve the same opportunity as everyone else.That includes the same expectation of achievement.A young indigenous person who earns a Red Seal trade certificate should not be viewed primarily as a beneficiary of reconciliation. That person should be viewed as a skilled Canadian tradesperson who earned a qualification and can compete on merit.That is equality.And merit should not be treated as an enemy of reconciliation..There is a growing tendency in Canadian institutions to speak about equity, diversity, and inclusion as though merit and equality of opportunity are somehow opposing concepts.They are not.A construction company can aggressively recruit indigenous apprentices while still insisting that every apprentice meet safety requirements.A university can increase indigenous access while maintaining academic standards.A government can create indigenous procurement opportunities while requiring businesses to deliver quality products and services.The objective should be expanded opportunity without abandoning accountability.That distinction becomes particularly important when we discuss social problems.Indigenous communities experience serious challenges with substance abuse, family violence, educational outcomes, incarceration, and poverty. The causes are complex. Historical trauma, poverty, remoteness, housing, discrimination, family disruption, inadequate services, and other factors can all contribute.But complexity does not mean that personal responsibility disappears.Statistics Canada reported that in 2023-24, indigenous adults accounted for 33.2% of the average daily custodial population across six provinces with available data while representing 4.3% of the adult population in those provinces. The adjusted overrepresentation index was 10.2. British Columbia's index was 9.4.Those numbers are tragic.But they should provoke a discussion about prevention as well as discrimination.What happens before a young person enters the justice system?What is happening in the home?Is the child attending school?Are parents setting expectations?Are drugs and alcohol destroying families?Are communities demanding accountability from those who commit violence?Are governments measuring whether their programs actually work?.These are difficult questions.They are also unavoidable questions.The same principle applies to employment.During my career, I heard from indigenous people who described being caught in difficult community circumstances. Some told me they felt uncomfortable returning home after working away because there could be expectations that they purchase goods for relatives who were not working.I cannot independently establish how widespread that phenomenon was, and I would never suggest that it describes indigenous communities generally.But if such pressures exist, they deserve to be discussed.A community cannot simultaneously demand economic development and discourage the behaviours necessary to sustain employment.Working five or six days a week is not exploitation.Learning a trade is not assimilation.Taking pride in earning a paycheque is not a rejection of indigenous identity.Building a successful business is not abandoning one's culture.Indeed, economic independence may be one of the strongest foundations for genuine self-determination.There is another lesson here for governments and corporations.Programs should be judged by results.How many people were trained?How many obtained credentials?How many obtained jobs?How many remained employed after one year?How many progressed into supervisory or management positions?How many businesses became financially self-sustaining?How much government funding produced measurable improvement?.Those are not hostile questions.They are the questions any responsible organization should ask.Indigenous Canadians deserve programs that work.Taxpayers deserve evidence that programs work.Companies deserve employees who are prepared to meet workplace obligations.And indigenous leaders deserve partners who believe their communities are capable of achieving more than perpetual dependence.That last point is particularly important.If we truly believe in reconciliation, then we should believe in indigenous capacity.We should believe indigenous people can build companies, manage resources, educate their children, run effective governments, employ their neighbours, and compete successfully in Canada's economy.But capacity comes with responsibility.Self-government without accountability is not liberation.Economic development without work expectations is not prosperity.Funding without measurable outcomes is not progress.And opportunity without personal responsibility is not equality.Canada should not lower expectations for indigenous Canadians.It should raise them — and provide the tools necessary to meet them.That is not a rejection of reconciliation.It may be one of the most practical forms of reconciliation available to us.Finally, reconciliation cannot mean one side permanently carrying responsibility for the past while the other side is permanently exempt from responsibility for the present.Terry Burton is a retired veteran of Alberta’s oil and heavy construction industry and a former member of the Alberta Apprenticeship Board.
