—my understanding, unless I'm mistaken, is that no motion has been made before the indigenous affairs committee to study aboriginal health. We have an outstanding motion that has been here for quite a long time.
I wanted to mention one or two other things. Mr. Oliver mentioned a couple of concerns last time. He was wondering whether we were duplicating what the indigenous affairs committee studied up to now.
I have a copy of its report, “Breaking Point: The Suicide Crisis in Indigenous Communities”. The focus of the report was on suicide. I think the committee did look at some of the social determinants around that, for sure, but it was not looking at broad health indicators of indigenous people in this country at all.
The second concern was whether the federal government has jurisdiction over indigenous people when they're not on reserve. I could find the actual information, but my understanding and information is that absolutely the federal government retains jurisdiction over indigenous Canadians wherever they are in the country. So I don't think those are barriers.
The final question remains of whether we should do it.
I think I mentioned last time that the average life expectancy of first nations people in Canada is five to seven years less than the Canadian average. That is the number one health indicator: life.
Number two, the rates of tuberculosis are 37 times the national average. In terms of mental health issues, the suicide rate among indigenous people is five times higher. We know that there are chronic problems with diabetes, with obesity, and with a range of health issues that arise from living in poor housing and not having access to clean water.
The Prime Minister has said that no relationship is more important to this government than that with first nations. I would like to take him at his word on that.
I think that, as a health committee, if we're looking at studying health in this country, we should start with the single largest group with the biggest challenges facing their health and start to tackle the causes of this, broadly speaking, the real experience that they're having, and what recommendations we can make to the government to address them, as the health committee. I would respectfully suggest that it is our number one priority as a health committee, and we have many important issues that come up.
As I said last time, this committee has done zero travel. We have not left Ottawa. I don't think you can understand real health care problems in this country without actually getting into communities and experiencing it a bit. Particularly, that's the case in first nations communities.
Just at the last meeting, we had representatives of the health department tell us that the oral health of first nations is quite appalling. We know that studies were ordered to be done within the health department that looked at comparing services indigenous people have in remote communities versus other non-indigenous communities in remote communities. They weren't done.
I was really disturbed to see a report today of a young woman who committed suicide in Attawapiskat. She was 13 years old. Leaving aside the suicide and mental health component of it, when you read the story of this young woman, this young girl, it's an absolute microcosm of everything wrong with the health care system and indigenous people in this country. She lived in a house with 20 people. There was a mould problem in the house, and she had asthma. It was exacerbating her asthma. The sewage system backed up, so they were living in this house with the smell of raw sewage, which impacted her health in other ways. She was not able to access health care for her specific conditions. All of this led to a situation of despondency and depression, causing her to take her own life. I don't think that story is uncommon.
For all those reasons, this committee's prioritization, the priority the government has given to indigenous health, the crying need in this country to study....
Even if, by the way, the indigenous affairs committee does choose to study some aspects of health, I don't think that's a reason for us not to do it. Perhaps we can even join in some way. We could coordinate our services, because it's such a broad area that neither committee is going to be able to cover everything in health.
I'm sure the indigenous affairs committee will be looking at other things, perhaps the legal structure, perhaps constitutional issues, perhaps provincial or federal.... They could be looking at other areas that are specifically of interest to the indigenous affairs committee that we wouldn't be looking at as the health committee.
I'm going to ask my colleagues to support my motion that you've already read out, basically to study indigenous health in Canada as our next major study undertaken by this committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.