Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 26th, 2018

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Yes, you talked about how a lot of the resources are on the back end, not at the front end where you can do some of the preventive work.

One of the things you talked about, Chief Peltier, is the family health team and how the provincial area has it but you don't have it. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like and what you see as the federal government's role in helping establish that?

[Chief Ogimaa Duke Peltier]

I had the Hon. Minister Philpott, who is also a physician, visit the community in July. She was well aware that our community should be serviced by a family health team. How that gets rolled out in collaboration with the federal government and the provincial government I'm not sure, but I believe there's probably a solution that could be made available.

Our neighbouring municipality is five minutes away from my village, and it has a full family health team that provides servicing to that municipality. We're being serviced by a family health team that's 45 minutes away. They come into our community to provide 15-minute appointment increments three times a week. That's what our community is serviced with.

Most times, if individuals are having complications with something and they want to see a nurse or a doctor, they go to our health centre, but they're just waved on through. They're told to go to emergency, to go to the hospital, which is a 45-minute trip.

Perhaps it's cheaper to run a medical transportation program. I'm not sure. I don't know who designed the system, but that's what's happening.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

The last thing—and I only have a few seconds left—is that it sounds as if the federal infrastructure funding would be really helpful to both of you in terms of your facilities.

[Chief Peter Collins]

That would be the major contributor for us right now. That's the thing we're looking for because, as I said, we're going to finance it. Fort William has the ability to finance a $23-million building, but when we're looking after people and dealing with our elders, the federal and provincial governments need to make a contribution to help build that facility, other than giving us that provincial licence right now and lifting that moratorium.

We also need the resources to help maintain it. We all know that long-term care facilities are marginalized. If we have to finance a lot of it, it's going to be even that much tougher to run it. Can I borrow some money?

[Chief Ogimaa Duke Peltier]

I want to say one piece on the infrastructure.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Say it quickly.

[Chief Ogimaa Duke Peltier]

Programs have been established in recent years for which my community and others across the country were not eligible because we are first nations. We were pushed towards Indigenous Services Canada and forced to apply through that process. Amounts were limited over there, yet there were billions of dollars that were allocated through this Building Canada fund, which we were not eligible for. Individuals with equity, like Chief Collins here, had the ability to fully access that program, but they were ineligible. That's a problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That is a problem.

We're going to wrap up questioning with MP Robillard.

[Yves Robillard]

Do you mind if I ask my questions in French?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We have a translator.

[Yves Robillard]

First of all, thank you for being here.

We know that across Canada, and not only in your communities, the aging of the population turns our minds to our seniors.

What immediate steps do you think the federal government could take to ensure that culturally appropriate practices are adopted in long-term care?

[Chief Peter Collins]

There are a couple of things, if I look at it from my perspective in Fort William. In our community and throughout our territories and partnering communities, how you can help us again goes back to the resources. If we look at the original signatories to the treaty, we're one of them. That treaty talks about sharing, and yet we're here kind of with our hands out looking for our portion of help. Share some of those resources that you have at the federal level. Those are things we look at on a constant basis.

Our community is a pretty dynamic community. We have a lot of different things happening, but we still struggle, and that's because we're an urban community. Unlike Ogimaa Duke, we've all but lost our language in our community, and that's one of the things that needs to be regenerated back, not only to our elders but from our elders into our young people, because we've lost a lot of our elders who used to speak that language. That's where the work needs to begin—at the elders level and from the federal level—to help us regain and make sure our folks stay at home, where it's most appropriate.

[Chief Ogimaa Duke Peltier]

I would just like to add that the existing funding envelopes are very prescriptive from a top-down approach. We're not allowed any flexibility to address the real trends that we're experiencing in our communities. In spite of the budgets that are provided, if there's no opportunity to provide that servicing because there are no clients, we have to send the money back because we can't use it any other way. That's one of the issues: flexibility in the funding approaches and the funding envelopes that exist.

[Yves Robillard]

Of course, if we had more time, I would talk to you about what you said earlier about the training you would like to give to your young and old, so that they can hold important positions in the community.

[Chief Peter Collins]

I guess if we had more time we could talk for hours. You could drill us for hours and we could answer those questions for hours, I guess.

Our young people are our most important assets in our community. We're starting to see our young people turning towards our culture and our language and starting to regain that. That's a great step for us, but we're also struggling with the opioid crisis in our community.

As I said, every community struggles—it doesn't matter what walk of life you come from. One thing we're proud of is that we had 100 or so students who graduated again this year. That represents great steps and great strides for our community. Our young people are the most important to us. Our elders likewise—we need to make sure they live a comfortable life at the end of it.

[Chief Ogimaa Duke Peltier]

Along the same vein, we've had a lot of graduates at the post-secondary level. We have 100 post-secondary graduates this year, four of them at the doctorate level.

I believe that as far as the prevention aspect goes, the use of language is a prevention tactic also. Because many of our people are walking around without an identity—they don't know who they are and they're struggling with their culture and looking for it—we've been initiating some work in our community on behalf of the territory to reinstitute supports for language.

I'm going to do a plug here for challengeforchange.ca. Check it out. Donate if you can. It's developing an online portal so that the grandmothers and grandfathers who don't speak anymore could be made available to a younger person who has that spark to relearn the language and the culture of our own people.

[Yves Robillard]

Thank you very much.

When you come back, we'll have more discussion on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Mike, you have about 30 seconds.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I have just one final thought.

To feed off what you've been saying about the federal government getting involved at the infrastructure level, do you feel it would be important in this report to make a recommendation that the federal government run a pilot project to fund a number of these? The Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte are in the same boat as you—they have the licence, they have the provincial commitment. Should we do a pilot project to fund these projects?

[Chief Ogimaa Duke Peltier]

Whether it's a pilot or not, the challenge we're experiencing is that a number of years ago, there was a 2% cap that was instituted on our first nations for funding. It's really had a detrimental impact, and not just on operations and maintenance of facilities: There was also no consideration for renewals of those facilities.

I think there's opportunity for some new type of programming and creative-type thinking, like a pilot project, that would allow some private investment, and some security from that private investment, to allow for those partnerships to exist internally.

[Chief Peter Collins]

Just to respond to that, as you've said, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte are like us. We have approval on the first phase, on the provincial side of the approval process. If you want to make a pilot project, use us both. Use one from the south and use one from the north. I don't know where I belong, because sometimes they tell me I'm from northwestern Ontario, and then when it comes to funding, they tell me I'm from the south.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That was a good lob from Mike, and a good closure from you.

[Chief Peter Collins]

Thanks a lot, Madam Chair.

I have a flight to catch back to Thunder Bay. It's been a long day.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Back to Thunder Bay—there's no place better.

Okay, meegwetch. Thank you for coming out; we appreciate it.

The meeting is adjourned.