Thank you for asking.
Blood Ties is one of the organizations that support the outreach van. Blood Ties is funded both territorially and federally. We get AIDS community action program funding, which is under federal funding. We also get hep C strategy dollars.
Speaking of hep C strategy dollars, one of the things I would encourage the committee to look at is to make sure that hep C funding continues over the long term. It has been precarious from year to year. I think the federal government needs to reinforce its commitment to hep C strategy dollars and to funding agencies around it.
That's what the picture looks like for Blood Ties. One of the things that Blood Ties does is contribute staff to work on the outreach van as an “in kind” type of help. The outreach van has four different organizations, all NGOs, who work together to put the van on the road. Those four organizations work in partnership with the territorial government for funding. The outreach van up to 2007 was running on its own without any government funding whatsoever. We were able to put the van on the road for up to two to three nights a week. It was really on a shoestring. It was just organizations contributing staff in kind; it was relying on the donations of the business community and volunteers to put this project on the road. It was hard to maintain, though, so finally we worked in 2007 to negotiate with the territorial government to come on board as a funding partner.
The territorial government helps keep the van on the road. Now, the van is on the road six nights a week; four nights of that is through the support from the territorial government, and two nights a week it would have run anyway through the in kind donations. That's how it is spread out.
It also relies heavily on volunteers to prepare sandwiches and soup and stuff like that, so it's heavily volunteer-driven for the food component as well. And there are donations, for example, of socks and clothing and that kind of thing. The nursing services that are provided two nights a week are completely in kind donations from Kwanlin Dun First Nation, which is a first nation community here.
Without the volunteer, in kind donation of the business community and the other NGOs, it would be a service that couldn't be offered, and it's an essential service in Whitehorse. Unfortunately, it continues to be an essential service; it's very important.
As to funding, definitely there's always a need for a greater commitment to funding. Conversation came up earlier about why we continue to have some problems and why people are falling through the cracks, as Mr. Martin has been asking. I think that at a broader level we need to be more critical about the way we fund programs in Canada and how we address issues. I'm probably shooting myself in the foot here, but I tend to think that when we continue to fund on an issue basis or on a disease model we are missing the mark.
For example, our work at Blood Ties is funded under a hep C and HIV funding envelope; we're funded to address HIV/AIDS and hep C in the Yukon. The problem is that we really need to be funded to address the broadly defined social determinants of health, which go much beyond hep C. I can be giving out all the condoms I want in the rural communities of Yukon, but when we're talking to, say, women in rural communities who are not feeling empowered to negotiate condom use, for a number of reasons that are going on and that are very broad, I can be there saying here's your condom, because that's what I'm funded to do. But nobody is funded to address those broader issues. I think that is one of the real problems in Canada. It's a problem in the north especially, with the smaller populations. We all have our little islands and we're all funded around our disease models or our “one issue” model. We are not addressing the issue in the way it needs to be addressed, and I think we need to be looking at this in a really critical way.
For example, one of the themes coming up all the time is housing. Housing is very important because it's a broad issue. When I talk about needing a variety of subsidized housing models, it's because housing is so integral to so many other aspects of social conditions.
Basic housing is a human right. It has a direct correlation to people's risk of HIV infection; it has a direct correlation to substance use and abuse; it has a direct correlation to risk of hep C; it has a direct correlation to an ability to work through and resolve trauma and to move forward and to feel empowered and to feel that you have a status in your community. We need to be looking at it at a much higher level. Those are challenges that need to be faced at the federal level, and they need to filter down. I think we need to stop necessarily funding on a disease model and look more at how we empower organizations, NGOs, and other governments territorially and municipally to address the broader social determinants of health that can effect real change and that will have a direct outcome in terms of our seeing a reduction of substance use, of hep C, of HIV, as well as of other problematic issues for people.