Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we spend a lot of time sitting here talking about how we are able to generate revenues and about the jobs we can create from the renewable/non-renewable sector.
I think the one thing that we really have to be aware of is the cost to this government when it comes to the other aspect of our society. When you talk about the health care costs, you talk about the cost in the area of justice and incarceration, where it is costing this government somewhere in the range of $80,000 a year to house an inmate in jail facilities.
Yet when we talk about students and housing students in other facilities, we are talking about $40,000, which is half the cost of what it costs to incarcerate an inmate. I think we have to change the concept that we have about the society, and the have and have-not cultural groups we have in the Territories.
I, for one, feel that unless we bring the standards of education and drop the statistics when it comes to illiteracy, a lot of our communities in my riding, in the population aged 50 years and over, it is 36 percent. That is a high percentage of people.
You talk about the unemployment rates in some of our communities. In some cases, we are talking 40 to 45 percent, compared to the national average, which is eight percent. We start looking at statistics and we start to wonder what is wrong with this picture. I think a lot has to do with we have to do more in the area of education by making sure the resources we do have, in regard to the $167 million that is in the department, is being spent in a way that we are earmarking where the problem areas are.
We see there are higher graduation rates in the larger centres. We see they have good standards in regard to where we are going in terms of job rates, where the unemployment rates are low in the larger centres, but very high in the aboriginal communities. Just by using those two statistics for literacy, unemployment, this government has to do more to focus its educational programs and services to those areas so we can see different statistics. That is telling us there is something wrong.
Yet year after year, we come to this House and we talk about the problems. We continue to raise the issues, yet we continue to do things the same way. I feel we have to change the system so it is flexible and we meet the challenges we have in front of us. We are talking about taking advantage of the opportunities we have in front of us, especially with regard to generating jobs through oil and gas or the diamond industry.
We have a large portion of our population that is illiterate, that do not have anything more than a grade 9 education. They will not really benefit from these large scale economic opportunities. I believe I raised the question in the House last Friday on the statistics, especially in my riding, where you have the population 50 years old and over who have less than a grade 9 education. In the community of Tsiigehtchic, you have 39 percent. Fort McPherson is 35 percent and Aklavik is 38 percent, with a Mackenzie Delta average of 36 percent.
Those averages are too high. I would like to ask the Minister how he intends to deal with this statistical problem? On one hand, we know it is a problem, but on the other hand you are cutting the ABE programs. You are doing away with those programs in our communities where people who are on income support, their only other alternative is to go find a job or take training. A lot of these people on income support cannot even meet the requirements to go to adult education because of the literacy rates. They are also not to fill out the appropriate applications to get into these courses. I would like to ask the Minister, what are you doing for those people in our society who need more than what is there right now? Are you looking at any new incentives so that we can deal with these large percentages in our communities?