No. There's a huge international double standard around indigenous data collection, and it's in a shameful state in Canada in terms of actual health assessment data.
We can have both. We can have indigenous communities in charge of the governance of our data, and we can have high-quality data. The reason is that health is run by the provinces and the territories. In a place like Ontario there's an Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, where I'm an adjunct member, and unlike the rest of the people in Ontario, as aboriginal people we're hidden in that database.
I also need to remind the audience that 40% of the aboriginal population—30% to 40% actually—won't be identified by an Indian status card. There's no reason why in population health data we should be using only a federal registry that comes from a piece of legislation that's systemically problematic.
We do not have the health data. To get accurate rates of illness and death, you need to have vital statistics and hospitalization data. We do not have that in Canada for indigenous people. It's shocking.