I should read into the record the actual motion that I'm moving:
That the Standing Committee on Health study the status of health and health care within Indigenous communities in Canada, including status, non-status, on-reserve, off-reserve and urban Indigenous populations, with the objective of better understanding the particular health care needs of this population and the gaps in service delivery, review the effectiveness of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada, and report its findings to the House.
We already heard a couple of disturbing things last meeting. We heard that it took two years for the department to present information to its patient groups about changes to a number of X-rays. We heard issues of a report that should have been done by Health Canada that wasn't done. We heard that even if they have nurses stations, they might not be able to provide the services. There are issues here.
I also was thinking about Mr. Van Kesteren's comments about diabetes and sugar. I have a feeling that issue will probably come up in the context of indigenous health. It will be wide open because I suspect that rates of diabetes, and diet, access to poor food and sugary drinks and that, will be part of what we will hear, as some of the causative elements of poor health in indigenous communities.
I think by just mentioning a target group, it allows us to touch on a number of issues, and maybe even explore issues like organ donation, if there's an interest in that. What is the status of access to organ donation in indigenous communities? It's very wide for us to look into different aspects of it. In terms of waiting, as I said, this was the third or fourth motion moved two years ago. It's been on the docket longer than anything else. It has the advantage of being prioritized by this committee. Again, I think we all agree that the state of health care in our indigenous communities is really disturbing. People's lives and health are at stake here.
Although every issue raised by my colleagues is important, this one is the most important in my view, because these are the people in this country who are most in need of health care, who have the poorest health outcomes of any Canadians. If we're not focusing our attention on them, then I don't know who we focus our attention on.