Indigenous career fair hopes to find fits, fill gaps

Michayle Hay, an Inuk Ottawa resident originally from Igloolik, Nunavut, has been job searching for two years.

She said she’s gotten one call back for a six-month contract, which she plans to pursue.

Even if she gets that job, she said she'll still feel stuck in a long search seeking a more permanent position. 

“It’s a bit difficult,” she said. “It made me feel, I don’t know, hopeless, maybe useless.”

Hay volunteered at the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition’s career fair Thursday in hopes of connecting with more employers face-to-face.

The fair brought in hundreds of people for workshops and to meet more than 70 employers representing industries such as construction, government and Indigenous service providers.

Stephanie Mikki Adams, the coalition’s co-chair, said the fair and coalition's broader work can hopefully help address a problem many clients face.

“We hear about a lot of high unemployment [rates] within our Indigenous community, and so what we try to do is connect them with employers that are seeking certain types of skills,” she said.

“If they do not (have those skills), we provide them with the proper training or workshops so that they can become employable."

About 12 per cent of Métis and First Nations people living off-reserve in Ontario are unemployed, according to the latest Ontario government labour report from August.

That compares to about eight per cent for non-Indigenous Ontarians.

In August 2023, the rates were about eight per cent for those Indigenous groups and six per cent for non-Indigenous people.

“I believe it could be higher due to the barriers for Indigenous people to go to school, barriers to get funding to go to school, the lack of inclusion inside workplaces, a lack of understanding of the historical injustices that First Nations, Inuit and Métis have had to face in the past,” Adams said.

Ashley Stephens moved to Ottawa from Iqaluit last summer and her six-month job search brought her to the career fair.