It also retraumatizes. With residential schools people were taken from their communities and placed in other locations. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation offered healing in their community. With the Health Canada programs, if you have to leave it reinforces that you're being taken out of your community again. It's not contributing to your health; it could possibly retraumatize, and that's what we are trying to avoid.
In Nunavut, at least in the Baffin Island region, the money from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was used very wisely at some smaller healing centres to build a one-stop shop where community members can come in. For example, in Iqaluit they have over 4,000 people dropping in. That's a lot of people for Iqaluit. They would provide counselling to around 500 individuals in an Inuit language, by a traditional elder, or in a traditional way that was very familiar and healing.
It built a centre where community can come together. That's how they used the money very wisely.
But if you look at the Health Canada program, which was complementing these types of services, it's more of a southern-based program that is one-size-fits-all. It's rigid and it's based outside of the community. If you have to call a 1-800 number, a lot of people won't do that. Your phone lines may not be working. There are a lot of technical limitations in a rural, remote, isolated Arctic community. Then if you have to bring people up north to do counselling, flying into communities delays the healing when healing is better served in the community.