49
Table 5 illustrates the difference between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participation
rates. The gap was the largest for individuals with a certificate above a bachelor‘s degree.17 In
contrast, Aboriginal individuals with trade certificates had a participation rate 6.8 points higher
than the non-Aboriginal population.
Chart 12 and Table 5 illustrate an important point. For a given educational attainment, the
participation rate of an Aboriginal Canadian is not particularly low compared to other Canadians.
However, on the whole, the participation rate for the Aboriginal population is lower due to the
fact that a larger share of that population is in the low educational attainment categories, which
suffer from a relatively low participation rate. In other words, because the Aboriginal population
is more concentrated at low educational levels, and because persons at lower levels of
educational attainment have lower participation rates, their aggregate participation is lower than
that of non-Aboriginal Canadians.
This also means that at a given level of education, Aboriginal Canadians are, in general,
at least as likely to participate in the labour force. As noted earlier, the difference in educational
profile between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations more than account for the
difference in aggregate participation rates. This is a key, if not surprising, finding: Aboriginal
Canadians appear to be as interested in finding work as non-Aboriginal Canadians.
ii. Change in the 1996-2001 Period
In general, participation rates were higher in 2001 than they were in 1996, both for the
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations. The overall rate for Aboriginal Canadians in 1996
was 58.5 per cent, 7.1 points lower than the value of 65.6 per cent for the non-Aboriginal
population (Appendix Table 13). Therefore, Aboriginal individuals have seen a larger
improvement than the non-Aboriginal population in those five years, reducing the gap by 1.9
percentage points. At this rate, the gap will be completely eliminated by 2016. In fact, Aboriginal
Canadians would participate at a higher rate in the labour force, due to their younger age
structure.
The largest increases in participation rates for Aboriginal Canadians between 1996 and
2001 were in the categories of persons with a collegial trade certificate or diploma (70.1 per cent
in 1996, a 8.7 percentage points increase), persons that went to university without completing
their education (only 58.5 per cent in 1996, up to 75.2 per cent in 2001) and bachelor‘s degree
holders (78.0 per cent in 1996 and 82.3 per cent in 2001). Persons who went to college without
graduating experienced a large decline in their participation rates (93.3 per cent in 1996,
compared to 69.7 per cent in 2001).
In terms of the gap with the non-Aboriginal population, Table 6 shows that nine out of
fourteen categories saw an improvement from 1996 to 2001. Aboriginal individuals with trades
certificates who, as mentioned above, had the highest participation rates relative to their non-
Aboriginal counterparts in 2001, saw a large improvement of 2.2 points in the gap. Individuals
who had a trades certificate from colleges also enjoyed a large improvement, from -0.9 to 3.2
17 In fact, the gap was larger for doctorate holders, but as explained earlier, the sample size is too small to make any
conclusion.