Strong communities start with youths - CCAB president

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Helping young Natives become well adjusted, contributing members of society means taking preventive action, says George Lafond.

The new president of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business thinks communities need to take a new approach and start creating alternatives to futures that offer little more than drug or alcohol addiction and slim hopes of meaningful employment.

"We have to start looking at our communities from the front end and saying 'How do we prevent a lot of the stuff that goes on in our communities for the young people?'" says Lafond, the first Aboriginal to head the 10-year-old CCAB.

"How do we develop our communities so that kids grow up not to play with drugs, but to play hockey?"

If young people - who comprise 60 to 70 per cent of the population in Native communities in Canada - can look around their communities and see educated, competent Native professionals, they will see there is a reason to stay in school.

"We have to have access into the work force, or into the business side, for that population," Lafond says.

Gone are the boom days of the 1970s when a teenager could drop out of Grade 9 one day and land a well paying job the next.

"The only guarantee now is if you don't get a Grade 12 or an education, you don't get a job," says the former teacher from Muskeg Lake, Sask.

The non-profit Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business would help this process by offering training, job placement and business assistance at the community level, by working with tribal councils and bands. Other effective measures could include entrepreneur and leadership training programs.

At least, that's the direction Lafond would like to see the CCAB head.

The 36-year-old Cree has worked with the Saskatoon Tribal Council in several positions and for the Office of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

While working for the tribal council, he was highly critical of the CCAB for not really reaching down to the grassroots community level and for focusing too much on developing ties with non-Aboriginal businesses, he says.

Too often in the past, job placements and internship were just token positions, companies filling positions with Aboriginals so they could fill quotas. The result was Aboriginal people didn't get the real training and experience they needed to become competent professionals and they were never placed in positions of real responsibility.

When they went out into the communities to work, they may have held a professional title but they were unable to perform adequately. This let down the people who hired them and the young people who looked to them as role models.

"The new reality about today is that Aboriginal people are providing services for Aboriginal people. We have to be sure the people can really provide the service," Lafond says.

Using as an example the Saskatchewan Treaty Land Entitlement Final Framework Agreement, which saw 27 bands settle outstanding land claims with the federal government, Lafond points out the necessity for bands to be able to deal with the outside world. The government committed almost half a billion dollars over 12 years to the agreement and most bands used some of the money to buy land.

"The real world will come to the Native communities now," Lafond says. Bands have to be ready to decide how they will allocate funding for housing, roads and schools on a day-to-day basis while ensuring some money is invested to provide for the future.

"There will be a real premium on people who can provide those skills."

Bands need to work now to develop strong leadership to deal with future issues and to be ready for self-government when it's implemented. They have to learn to be rule-makers, not rule-followers, Lafond says.

Leaders have to be ready to stand up and say: "This is the way we do things. This is how we think, how we learn, and this is how we want to do things."

Lafond's most immediate task at the CCAB is to review the organization's pst performance. While doing this, he will examine the leadership objectives to see what's been done well and take steps to make sure it stays in his view. He will also assess what hasn't been done well and find out why.

With governments re-inventing themselves under the pressures of mounting deficits and new economic realties, all non-profit organizations are coming under public scrutiny to see how many services they provide and to whom.

For Lafond, this means assessing the revenue and profitability of the CCAB to make sure it maintains the ability to be an effective organization.