Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on April 9th, 2019

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

That's the only thing that has been done to date. Have you been given any support with regard to the education component, or is it strictly, here's this Narcan or Suboxone to reverse the effects?

[James Morris]

Health Canada has provided funds for the Suboxone programs that have gone straight to the communities. The communities are doing this on their own.

There's been very little, if any, funds made available for education, but I'll ask Janet to expand on that as well.

[Janet Gordon]

We've been able to do a few things, again, through the public health resources we receive. We've done training around harm reduction. We've done training of community workers around naloxone as we're able to, because we're trying to do it within our existing staff and resources.

We're trying to do things as we're able to, with the resources we're able to pull from some of the program areas.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

Do all the health transfers go to you through Indigenous Services, and then you distribute those to communities, or is it more convoluted than that?

[James Morris]

No. The system that we operate more or less under the Anishinabe health plan is that if communities can do anything on their own, they do it themselves. In terms of naloxone programming, the money goes through to them. The health authority focuses on what we call regional specialized services, like providing doctors and other specialists, so that's what we tend to do.

If there is anything else that a community or a group of communities want us to do, they have to submit a background services request for it, and then we will go in and do it.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So—

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I'm sorry but we've run out of time.

We are moving on to MP Rachel Blaney.

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

Thank you both so much for being here today with us, and for your presentation. It was very informative.

One of the things you spoke of was the slow training process and the need to have people in the community actually engaged as health care professionals. You also said that it needs to be a homegrown strategy.

Could you just talk about what the challenges are in terms of what you mean by a slow process of training and what you want to see in terms of a homegrown strategy?

[Janet Gordon]

In terms of education of our communities, I think a lot of our communities have to send their kids out for high school, which sometimes may not be the most appropriate way of educating the young people.

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

Yes.

[Janet Gordon]

A lot of them end up dropping out because they're homesick or the situation they're in is not good for them, so they end up not being able to continue school.

There is some video and distance education provided. Again, as we have done some training, we have found that people learn better by doing and actually seeing and having face-to-face contact with people.

[James Morris]

I think that training, let's say up to grade 12, using remote or distance education or—what do you call it?

[Janet Gordon]

It's videos.

[James Morris]

Video is fine. If you want to get into the more specialized form of training, we have to come up with a completely different way of doing business.

Sending people out to urban areas for training has its own problems. One of the problems that Janet mentioned is that of young people getting lonely. But also, if people do succeed in becoming professionals, they have a tendency to stay there rather than going back home to work there.

We need to train people in the communities where they'll stay.

[Janet Gordon]

There is that. There are also the challenge of poor infrastructure in communities, in terms of such things as housing—it is a huge issue for people to move back home—as well as workplaces.

James talked about the nursing station model that our communities still access for health care. It's not the most appropriate model now with the high population and also the high burden of illness in our communities. People can't be accommodated because of poor infrastructure.

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

Yes. That's a big challenge.

You spoke about a regional nursing strategy with the first nations and Inuit health branch, hoping to see that provide some of those supports for recruitment and retention. You mentioned infrastructure and housing. I assume that those are the really big ones, but how is that working, and do you see some promise in that?

[Janet Gordon]

We are just starting.

Part of it is that our communities are really cautious about taking on services as is, because it's not working now. We need increased resources. It's not only a community health nurse we need; we need nurse practitioners in our community to deal with the high chronic illness in our communities. We need home care nurses. We have some communities that get a home care nurse visit maybe once every two months. We don't have any resources for public health nurses in our communities.

The strategy needs to address all those huge gaps in nursing. Again, even if we could have as many nurses as we identify, we would have no place to accommodate them and no place for them to work. We're in a hard place.

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

You're in a hard place right now.

Thank you so much for sharing that. It's really important that we hear it.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

The questioning now moves to Will Amos. He has very generously offered me the ability to ask a couple of questions, so we're going to share our time.

Can you tell me a little about graduation rates? How are your high school graduation rates, and how many of those young people want to enter post-secondary and move on into a medical career?

[James Morris]

I was recently provided with the graduation rates for our region. I didn't bring the statistics, but it's certainly much better than it used to be.

When I was counselling high school students in Thunder Bay back in the early 1990s, we would start off with 200 students. When June came around, we would have 90 to 95 students left. We were told that was good, that it was a good rate.

It has improved considerably now. We have two high schools in our area that are first nations schools: one here in Sioux Lookout and one in Thunder Bay. Those two high schools have worked to improve the success rate, but the number of people moving into post-secondary schools is still low. I don't get the impression, sitting here today, that we have a whole roomful of university or college graduates right now. They're just not there.

I know that Canadore College in North Bay has a good program. It trains a lot of health care specialists who focus on community needs. That seems to be working well.

Training young people in those things that are relevant to them and their communities is one way of attracting trainees. When you put them into a university or a college that doesn't reflect their way of life, it's not a good motivator to get people to stay in school and accomplish. Accomplish what?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That's right.

Of the professionals you see in your community, how many are non-indigenous? What's the percentage? Are they mostly southerners, outsiders, or are they locals?

[Janet Gordon]

There's probably a handful of nurses from our communities, maybe five, if I were being generous.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

That's five out of how many positions?

[Janet Gordon]

I believe there are around 60 positions.

[A voice]

It might be more.