Evidence of meeting #144 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:30 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
We've tried different things. We've advertised in places like Ottawa, Toronto, Thunder Bay and Winnipeg. We've done special recruitment fairs in Toronto and Ottawa. We've been trying to be innovative in terms of recruitment.
The other thing that's a struggle is that in Sioux Lookout, for instance, housing is a huge issue. There's also the high cost of living here in terms of rent and food and whatever. Gas is probably higher than it is down south. That really deters people quite a bit.
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
How many mental health counsellors do you need? I see two job openings for them listed on your website. How many do you have?
10:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
The northern counselling agency used to have 16 counsellors who travelled into the north. Now, I think they're down to one or two.
10:30 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
I know. We're in a sad state.
10:30 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
Yes. In the meantime, we have contracted some agencies to come to do some services for us. We were able to contract a psychology firm when we got the Jordan's principle money. We had over 300 kids on the list for a psychology referral. All we've been doing in the last year and a half is to try to assess those kids and develop some sort of a treatment plan for them, which we hadn't been able to do before that. We had funding for only a half-time psychologist before that.
10:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
The other thing we did is establish what we call “trauma teams”. These are specialized teams of highly trained professionals, but they're from the outside. We had criteria that involved native people who spoke the language and had a lot of clinical experience, but that program is coming to an end because I can't find any money to do it. That was one way of providing excellent long-term counselling services for families.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you both so much for being here this morning and for sharing your experiences and the experience of the community.
I don't know if you remember that Member McLeod and I were up at Sioux Lookout and met with you as part of the youth suicide study we were doing at the time. You served us a fantastic lunch and we had a great conversation.
You were talking just now about some of the development around mental health and other areas that are starting to change, but it's been a long road. I mean, I look at you both right now and you still look very weary from the burden you've had to carry for a long period of time. I remember that during the lunch, when you were sharing your stories, half the people in the room were burnt out because of the extended hours you're constantly having to put in and the overwhelming burden that so many have in their communities. They're the only resource for the incidents of youth suicide, mental health and addictions. It just becomes overwhelming for one individual to have to carry that burden alone.
We just had another panel prior to yours, from the Saskatoon region. They had a shortage of manpower. There were skilled positions, and they had gone to one of the local colleges and said, “Look, we need to develop these skills very quickly, because we have a building boom happening, and some major projects.”
I guess I'm trying, like you, to identify some solutions. It is so difficult when you have so many remote communities to get the training to those communities, but it definitely sounds like it has to happen on site. It has to be hands-on.
Has anybody explored the possibilities of an institute like the First Nations Technical Institute or some other first nations college that could actually go on site with nurses hired specifically to provide training in those communities, on an ongoing basis? They could go from community to community throughout the year to provide that on-site training, so that over a number of years—it takes awhile, but over a number of years—you'll be able to get individuals fully trained. Are solutions like that that being considered?
10:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
The only example I can think of is Canadore College in North Bay. They've established what they call the centre of excellence for native education. Not only do they train people on site at the college, but they're also prepared to go to the communities to train them there, if people can't come out. That's the closest I have.
In our area, there's nothing. We have an institute in Thunder Bay that does some training, but they focus on everything, not just mental health. They have one program on mental health, I would call it, that's been in operation now for maybe two years. They're just getting started.
10:35 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
Yes, Moose Factory has a hospital there. They did develop and had a nursing program delivered right in Moose Factory, and it was very successful. It was a diploma program, but it did graduate quite a few local people who are now nurses in their communities. It does work if we can find.... To deliver something like that certainly requires lots of resources.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Sioux Lookout has a fabulous hospital. Could something like that be a potential opportunity there? Has anyone talked to Canadore College and the Sioux Lookout hospital to see if maybe they could coordinate a program together for Sioux Lookout?
10:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
I spent a lot of time talking to Canadore College about training mental health workers. We really need about two or three hundred mental health workers to work in the communities themselves, maybe two or three mental health workers per community, but we couldn't get it off the ground. There was just no money anywhere.
10:40 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
Yes. I know we have talked about it with Meno Ya Win Health Centre to look at how we could work together on recruitment and retention of nurses, and to look at how we can do mentorship as maybe new grads come in. We have started those discussions.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you both so much for everything you do for your community. It is to be commended.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
I would like to ask a quick question.
We had Elder George Kemp from Berens River who indicated that when they became a non-stranded community with an all-weather road, the suicides stopped. Is that maybe an issue for your regions? How many stranded communities have you got, or isolated communities?
10:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
We have 28 communities.
10:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
Now we've got one community in our region that has had a road since the late 1930s and it didn't stop anything. It increased social problems.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk
All right. The questioning now is going to wrap up with MP Cathy McLeod.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Out of your 32 communities, 28 of which are winter-road-only, I know it's not the answer to everything, but in how many of those communities is the broadband decent enough to accommodate telemedicine?
10:40 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
Most of our communities have telemedicine equipment, mostly for health in the nursing station. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it doesn't. There are some communities east of us that have increased broadband, but I don't think it has made a huge difference. We certainly have, for our physicians, OSCAR for electronic medical records, and they are challenged with being able to go into the system many times. It depends on the community and on what is being used in the community. It depends. Sometimes it's good, but sometimes it's not so great, and we have lots of technical difficulties.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Okay, it sounds like good broadband is needed. Again, I know it's not the answer, but I know for things like speech pathology, there are areas that provide support. Even, to some degree, mental health counselling is becoming.... With decent connections like we're talking about here, you can establish a rapport, etc., I think that would be one area.
It was interesting, I was talking to a group called Orbis yesterday, who do eye surgery. They have prevented blindness throughout the world. They said that they have not supported indigenous communities in this county. I can connect you with them.
They even have a flying surgical plane. They have a plane that they fly in with doctors from the eye institute in Ottawa and have done phenomenal work. If you're interested at all, I can give you their connection.
They were certainly indicating that they know there are big issues in Canada in some of our northern communities and are very keen in terms of working there.
What about dental? How are things in terms of dental?
10:40 a.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority
We recently did a dental report.
We have about 500 children from our communities who are born every year. At any given time, there are probably about 500 kids who are on the waiting list to go under general anaesthesia to have their dental work done, whether it's putting caps on or removing teeth. There is a guideline that if you have seven teeth that need to be worked on, that's when you need to go under general anaesthesia.
We have a dental program that is delivered from first nations and Inuit health branch. It's not based on need. Most of the work that is done is on people who are in acute pain, in crisis situations. A lot of the time it's pulling teeth and not restorative work, or any sort of cleaning. We do have dental hygienists who go up, but again, the service demands are not met by what is being provided to our communities.