Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much for being here today, on what I think is clearly a national emergency. I'm not sure we're hearing today from the Government of Canada a response that is commensurate with the urgency of the situation.
I'm not here to criticize Shelagh Jane Woods. I am here to say that I don't think a strategy developed in 1992, which is only now under review and sitting as a blank page on the Health Canada web page, is appropriate. We're almost at the same rates we were at in 1992. I think the real question here today is, what the heck has the government been doing? What has FNIHB been doing? What has Health Canada been doing? What has the Public Health Agency of Canada been doing?
In fact, we are at earth-shattering numbers. As many have said, rates of tuberculosis are higher than in third world countries like Bangladesh. We're here today because of the groundbreaking research of someone like Jen Skerritt and the Winnipeg Free Press, who went up to Lac Brochet, talked to Chief Dantouze and others, found the grave of Catherine Moise, and helped to focus our attention on the human issues involved. We're hoping today to get some answers. I don't hear much from the government except that the strategy is under review.
I would like to know from all of you what we can do to get this government working for all of us with standards of care and a focus on the determinants of health. As Chief Toulouse said, look at the money being spent on a per individual basis for an Inuit or a first nation person. It's $17,000, compared to $47,000 for a non-first nation or a non-Inuit person. There's a huge gap. Somebody is not doing their job. I think it's time we get a strategy in place to address it.
First of all, Kimberly Barker, you have told me in the past, and so has Chief Toulouse, that when first nations have requested assistance from Health Canada or FNIHB in terms of something as simple as a mobile X-ray unit to test people, in fact, you can't even get that. I want you to use that as a jumping-off point, and then I would also ask you, as well as Gail Turner, Chief Toulouse, and Chief Dantouze, for other recommendations.