Thank you, Mr. Julian, for the questions.
To the first question regarding the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, I have been in contact with Jonathan Vance. He's targeting not only the 96 first nations communities but the Inuit communities as well. We had one case in Eabametoong First Nation in northern Ontario. Chief Harvey Yesno has made the request for support, in terms of hospitals, to get up there. It's a community of about 1,600. I would encourage the Canadian Forces to make sure they have their plans in place to deal with the 96 first nations territories when this COVID-19 does hit, and that they be ready to go into action on a moment's notice to get up there before things spread drastically.
We did say, on the second point about the doctors and nurses, there are no hospitals in the north. They have nursing stations and they're inadequately staffed already. With COVID-19 and the cases coming forward, there is going to be a surge or an increased demand for proper health care, for nurses and doctors to go up there. I would encourage all levels of government, federal and provincial, to start doing the emergency planning to make sure that need is addressed.
Regarding the CERB, the universal benefit for all, I think at some point that should be investigated further to look at the pros and cons of that, because there are a lot of people who are going to be falling through the cracks regarding the CERB that was talked about initially.
For the $15 million for the off-reserve people, the question was whether it is enough. Of course it's not enough. We have 50% of our people who reside in urban centres, in terms of access to proper health care, issues with rent, issues of food security, all of the above. That's something that has to be kept in mind going forward.
Since this is the finance committee, I would make this last comment regarding the long term, and again stress that once COVID-19 is finished and it mellows out again, everybody needs to get their heads around some sort of economic development advisory team to kick-start the economy with the involvement of first nations people. We have to start thinking about that down the road. Yes, we're dealing with COVID-19 and the immediate health care needs and crisis right now, but we have to start thinking long term as well about how to kick-start the economy in a way that benefits all Canadian people, including first nations, Métis and Inuit.