Health Committee on April 21st, 2020

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to follow up with Ms. Gideon a little on the question I started earlier.

I don't think you really identified what criteria was used. Could you maybe clarify the criteria that was used for that?

Also, there has been some talk about maybe saying that this $50 million is just the beginning. Would it be your expectation that the application process be used again for any future funding for urban indigenous people, and would the same criteria be used to distribute that?

[Valerie Gideon]

In terms of criteria, there were some parameters laid out in terms of the RFP itself, which essentially set the stage in terms of addressing unmet needs, areas where there were no other support systems available to organizations and specific needs that had emerged as a result of the COVID-19 situation.

There was absolutely an effort to be as inclusive as possible, understanding the number of organizations that had submitted requests, and to try to balance those needs both geographically and across the different service delivery areas. It included things such as mental health services, food security, equipment and supplies to continue to run essential services, staffing and coordination with [Technical difficulty—Editor], the core elements that were part of the application process.

I certainly can't speculate as to what classes would be used if [Technical difficulty—Editor] were made available. Those would be decisions [Technical difficulty—Editor] the number of [Technical difficulty—Editor] demonstrated a significant need.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

In your presentation you talked about economic prosperity being an important determinant of health, particularly when you consider the younger age distribution among indigenous peoples. One of the things we've been talking about over the past couple of weeks is the idea that first nations business models, these models that are limited partnerships, have been excluded from the Canada emergency wage subsidy.

I raised that issue with your office back on April 7 and wrote a letter to Mr. Morneau last week. I know there was some funding announced on the weekend that is intended to help small and medium-sized indigenous businesses, but I can't seem to get any clarity from anybody that it will cover the hole that has been created by their not being eligible for the wage subsidy.

Can you identify why these limited partnerships were excluded from that? Is there some plan to make a change and include them in it?

[Valerie Gideon]

Unfortunately, I don't have that particular response, but I certainly can say, from the announcement this weekend, over 6,000 first nations, Inuit and Métis businesses will benefit from those resources through the aboriginal financial institutions with which they already have pre-existing relationships. However, I will follow up to ensure that a more detailed response to your specific question is provided.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

In my riding, I've been in close contact with the Prince Albert Grand Council vice-chief, and he's been doing some talking—like we've heard from other people today—about the shortage of groceries and baby supplies.

There have been some responses to that already, but nobody has asked you the direct question, Ms. Gideon, as to what Indigenous Services is going to do to address those shortages that we're starting to find in remote communities that, for example, are losing their winter roads and don't have access to supplies outside their communities. There are these remoteness issues. I'm curious about what preparedness actions your department is taking for those communities specifically.

[Valerie Gideon]

I'm just going to see if my colleague Chad, who has not had a chance to intervene from our regional operations side, would like to jump in on this question.

[Chad Westmacott, Director General, Community Infrastructure Branch, Department of Indigenous Services]

Sure. Thank you, Valerie.

I have just a few quick things on this one. First of all, in terms of the winter roads, there was every effort made, as there is every season, to make sure that the supplies needed for these remote communities got into the remote communities. In a lot of cases, if not all cases, the supplies that were needed got into the remote communities based on those winter roads. There is also the opportunity in some of those cases to use barges or air transportation to get additional supplies in.

You also raised the issue of shortages of groceries, etc. One of the things that are eligible under the indigenous community support fund is actually supplies: food, etc. That is one of the things that, if the chief and council so decide, the indigenous community support fund can be used for.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

I'm going to get one last quick question in if I can, and I'll leave it open to anybody in the department.

What is the department's plan to assist first nations in increasing testing capacity and tracing after the curve is flattened, so that communities can begin to adapt to the next phase of this process?

[Valerie Gideon]

As indicated by my colleague Dr. Wong, we are already making testing available across nursing stations, health centres with treatment, any community that has primary health care capacity on site and wishes to have access to testing. We will support them with access to swabs, training or whatever it is that they would require in order to be able to do that, and that will continue.

Dr. Wong is working very closely with the Public Health Agency of Canada and the National Microbiology Lab to ensure that rapid testing or point-of-care testing, once it becomes more broadly available, can be pre-positioned, particularly in remote and isolated communities, but also across indigenous communities where they have the ability to support it.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Vidal.

We go now to Mr. Fisher for five minutes.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As usual, I want to thank you all for being here. Again, one of the benefits that we have in this health committee is hearing from experts like you.

I want to thank you and welcome you to the committee, so hello from my dining room table in Mi'kma'ki, where we're fortunate enough in our city to have an incredible friendship centre, the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre over in Halifax. I believe it has expanded a little, bought some land in Dartmouth and plans to expand some of the services it provides.

Jocelyn, you talked about just a handful of the services that friendship centres across Canada provide. I've been somewhat fortunate to see some of this first-hand, and I want to thank you and all of the, I believe, 107 friendship centres and provincial-territorial associations from coast to coast to coast for what you provide.

During COVID-19, what have the friendship centres had to do to reorganize or change operations to continue to provide those services that you, Jocelyn, outlined in your opening remarks, and what does that do to capacity?

Now, I realize that a lot of people are staying home. A lot of the folks who come into friendship centres sometimes don't have homes. Maybe, Jocelyn—or perhaps, Christopher—you could fill me in on some of the ways that you've had to reorganize or change the way you normally do things. I'm also interested in what things look like now in perhaps a city like Halifax where we know there are COVID-19 cases, but we only know them by region, so we don't know if folks who are coming into the friendship centre are actually struggling with COVID-19 symptoms.

[Jocelyn Formsma]

Thank you. That's a lot.

This is what we've been hearing from the ground. Immediately, the staff of some of the friendship centres had to physically shut their doors, but a vast majority of the friendship centres stayed open in some respect. Even if their doors are physically closed, they are still receiving calls, still doing referrals, still doing outreach and still doing service delivery in some capacity. We know that even though people say their doors are closed, they are open. They are fully open. They have just changed the way they are providing those services.

There are some friendship centres that have social enterprises, so the businesses they are running are losing revenue. They've had to shut down kitchens. They had people who were visiting from different communities or were there for medical appointments and were in hostels, and they were asking, “What should we do with these people? Should we get them a flight home? We don't know what to do.” There was some of that.

There was a shift to virtual contact as much as possible, with people getting at least some communication out, largely via social media. Some friendship centres have housing units, so they were worried about their tenants. Some of them have very crowded conditions, even within those housing units. Some friendship centres have homeless shelters and offer services for those who are unsheltered. There I think the big concern was for those community members, especially because when you're publicly saying to self-isolate and someone literally has nowhere else to go and is living on the street, the friendship centres are saying we can't just close our doors, because that's unethical. It is unethical for us to close. I've heard that from some of our executive directors, so we have to figure out how to do this safely.

They are worried about their staff, about having gloves and masks to be able to provide those services safely to community members. Eighteen friendship centres have been approached to be testing sites. It was about a week and a half ago that we collected that information. I don't know if that's been transitioned yet. They are going to have to physically manoeuvre and manipulate their physical space to be able to allow that testing to be done safely. We don't know what the cost is.

Some of the friendship centres have set up access sites through their windows. You need access to email to apply for your CERB benefits, but if you don't have a computer and don't have access to the Internet, friendship centres in Manitoba, for example, have set up two computers so that you can apply for your benefits through the window.

Some friendship centres are people's mailing address, so how do you close when somebody is relying on you to be open so that they can access their mail? The capacity piece has been huge, because now we're getting to the point in week six where the staff is becoming exhausted. We're hearing our staff saying, “We're tired. We don't know when this is going to end. We don't know when we're going to get help. We're doing the best we can, but we don't feel like we're doing enough.” The capacity piece is really huge.

What we are trying to do with the national office is to collect the information as to what is happening now and relay it to anybody who will listen, but we already have our eye to the future to say that if friendship centres aren't able to fundraise for themselves and can't do their bingos and can't do their fundraising events and their social enterprises are shut down, they are not only losing revenue but they are also spending more to be able to get those services and supplies to community members. We don't want friendship centres to be in financial difficulty six months to a year down the line, so we already have our eye on how to make sure that we have friendship centres in six to 12 months. We're looking already at the recovery process that we need to support friendship centres and ensure they are not going under because they did everything they could possibly do to save people's lives.

This is just to give you a little sense of what we're hearing on the ground.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I suspect my time is probably just about up—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

—but I do want to take a quick second to thank you for all the things that you folks do at friendship centres. I look forward to seeing a bright, shiny one in Halifax and I hope to be part of that some day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

We will go now to Mr. Thériault.

Mr. Thériault, you have two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Chair, it's my turn to speak, unless there's a procedural error.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Who just spoke?

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Champoux.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

According to the information I have, it's Mr. Thériault's turn, but he can give you permission to take the floor.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Chair, Mr. Thériault has already agreed to this.

I would like to thank the witnesses for the very interesting insights they have brought to the situation.

The current crisis makes us aware of several shortcomings in society, including inequalities in access to an adequate Internet network. Many families across the country are currently experiencing problems related to telework or distance learning, among other things. This is also a glaring problem in a number of indigenous communities, if I understand correctly.

Ms. Gideon, would better Internet access in remote areas have enabled you to be better equipped to protect certain indigenous communities from the pandemic upstream? What difference would that have made?

[Valerie Gideon]

Telemedecine networks have already been operating for several years in northern Manitoba, Ontario and Alberta. Telemedecine plays a very important role in improving access to health care services. In fact, many communities are visited regularly by physicians, who now offer their services more frequently using telemedecine networks. Manitoba and British Columbia have just announced a virtual service that will be coordinated at the provincial level.

We are in the process of financing the increase in costs related to telemedecine networks, since their use will increase because of COVID-19. We fully support access to telemedecine networks, especially since they are necessary in the current circumstances.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Obed or Grand Chief Jerry Daniels.

Are you confident that what is happening now will make us realize how urgent it is to resolve the problems and injustices that have been condemned for several years now with regard to the situation in several first nations communities in Canada?

Do you think the current situation is underscoring how urgent it is to resolve cases such as those in your communities?

[Natan Obed]

I'm sorry, but because of my trouble getting on I don't have access to translation like the rest of you, and I don't speak French. I apologize greatly for that.