High School Completion, Income Levels Increasing for First Nations Peoples: StatCan

Signage marks the Statistics Canada offices in Ottawa on July 21, 2010. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Status First Nations people in Canada have seen some improvement in several key aspects of daily life, Statistics Canada has found, citing gains in areas ranging from household income levels to internet access.

The agency’s report, produced in collaboration with the Assembly of First Nations and released on Wednesday, studied how on- and off-reserve First Nations peoples are faring in areas like education, housing and employment and noted several examples of significant progress.

It also examined how that progress compares to the outcomes seen by non-Indigenous peoples.

Based on comparisons of the 2016 and 2021 census, Statistics Canada found high school completion rates have increased markedly for both on- and off-reserve First Nations peoples since 2016.

About 41.9 percent of on-reserve status First Nations people aged 18 to 24 finished high school in 2016, but that figure had climbed to 53.3 percent by 2021. For those living off-reserve, the figure jumped from 68.4 percent to 73.3 percent in the same period.

Graduation rates for non-Indigenous peoples in the same age range stood at 87.7 percent in 2016 and 89.6 percent in 2021.

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The report found that nearly 60 percent of status First Nations people aged 25 to 64 living on reserve have a high school diploma, compared to 78.2 percent of those off reserve.

The proportion of people living in a low-income household also decreased since 2015, which Statistics Canada attributes to higher government transfers in 2020 that included COVID-19 pandemic relief measures.

About 46.7 percent of on-reserve First Nations people were living in a low-income household in 2015, compared to 13.6 percent of non-Indigenous peoples. Nearly 30 percent of First Nations people living off-reserve were living in a low-income household.

But those statistics had dropped across the board by 2021, with figures falling to 31.3 percent for status First Nations people, 19.8 percent for those off-reserve and 10.7 percent for non-Indigenous residents.

The agency also logged a spike in the number of Indigenous communities with access to high-speed internet.

Nearly half of households on-reserve had access to broadband services in 2019, up sharply from 32.3 percent just a year earlier.

Despite the progress in several key areas, Statistics Canada found status First Nations peoples 15 years or older were more likely to report they had fair or poor mental health than non-indigenous peoples, with those figures standing at 18.9 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively, in 2018.

Status First Nations peoples were also more likely to report experiencing homelessness in 2019—9.7 percent compared to 1.9 percent for non-Indigenous people.

And children remain significantly overrepresented in the child-welfare system.

In 2021, Statistics Canada reported there were 9,440 status First Nations children under the age of 15 in foster care. More than one in three foster children were status First Nations, despite making up just 3.5 percent of the total under-15 population.