Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 5th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Gwen.

[Dr. Gwen Healey]

I was just going to add that I agree completely with what Jake said. It's unethical to consider four- to six-week contract counsellors as providing a service, because they aren't, and they're coming in without any orientation. That is a significant challenge in the system as it currently exists.

The other piece I would add is that it's also at the management level; it's not just on the front line. It's also higher up in the department or in the division. The entire complement of the mental health unit here in Iqaluit changed over in the last six months, and they're all new people, so it's just this constant rebuilding of connections and relationships and explaining what's happening. It's a challenge for sure.

[Dr. Margo Greenwood]

I can just add a very small anecdote from northern British Columbia. We don't live in the far north, but we certainly have challenges with turnover.

I totally agree with what Jake and Gwen have said about the challenge of practitioners coming in who don't know the context of what they're stepping into. One of the things we've done is we have small groups of communities across the upper two-thirds of British Columbia. They're almost like in traditional groupings. We engage with them, as the Northern Health authority. I also work with them. One of the questions we ask them as we prepare for these folks coming into community is, “If I was a new health practitioner coming to your community, what would you want me to know?”

Northern Health has supported them in developing resources, and we have all kinds of resources now: DVDs, elders speaking, and all kinds of teaching materials to start to mitigate some of that in-and-out stuff and give them some background before they actually get there.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you.

What types of resources do we require to ensure that we have a longer-term solution? We're looking at two, three, six weeks, and it's not working. So what can we do to get someone to commit to the community for a longer period than six months? Is there anything that could be done, or is this a reality we have to deal with?

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Briefly, if you can. We have just one minute remaining, I'm afraid.

[Jakob Gearheard]

First, support counsellor training programs, like the one I described that we're running that will train community members to be counsellors. Then you don't have to worry about flying anyone in and out.

Second, if we are flying people in, and there are reasons to fly people in, connect them to local counsellors and be colleagues. Be equal, be peers, don't treat them like “I have a Ph.D. and whatever, therefore I'm on a higher level”. No, everyone is a counsellor and needs to work together. That way, if that counsellor comes and leaves, the one who is a fly-in, fly-out, there are still people in the community who have a relationship with that person who is flying in and out, and they can continue to work with clients.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

We're out of time there.

The final question is from Charlie Angus, please.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

This has been absolutely fascinating. I'm not going to repeat the questions that have really laid out what it's like on the ground. We've heard it very clearly.

Ms. Greenwood, I was really struck by your comments about the effects where you have communities that are self-determining. The very first time I flew into Kashechewan, a woman came up to me and asked, “How would you like to raise your child in a prisoner of war camp?” I looked around, and suddenly I saw it in a different light.

I mention that because Allan Teramura, the president of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, called me. He wanted to come to Kashechewan because his mother was raised in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. She had seen a picture of Kashechewan and said, “That's where I grew up”.

We toured Kashechewan, and what he pointed out as an architecture specialist was that there was absolutely nothing in the community that allows the community to make its own decisions. This is a holding camp that was designed as a holding camp. When they signed Treaty 9, they put everybody in holding camps. Everything, from the architecture, to the community layout, to the decisions, and to the education, is decided by bureaucrats in Ottawa. Businesses that try to get off the ground are decided by bureaucrats in Ottawa.

So you have communities that have no ability for the leaders and adults to take control. It's all on the whim of someone, at someone's desk someplace. That sense of hopelessness is something we don't often think about.

Then you add the trauma of the residential schools, the trauma of the poverty, and the black mould in the houses, but there's the overall psychological damage of treating these communities as though they're holding camps.

I would like to ask what you meant in terms of the idea of communities having good health outcomes and the ability to be self-determining.

[Dr. Margo Greenwood]

When I think about that, I think about that from multiple levels. I think there are some things that happen at the individual level. I think there are things that happen at the community level.

I can't help thinking about an article in Maclean's on September 18 that talked about Bella Bella, youth suicide in Bella Bella. The fellow's name was Jorgensen and he came from Ontario and he went to Bella Bella, which is a northern community in British Columbia. He went there to try to try to make sure that students were going to school, young people were going to school, but it turned into much more than that. It turned into the young people going with him out on the land, having a reconnection to the land and the identity, and then it started to spread to the families. Then it started to spread to economic development. It's a really great article if you can get it. It's online too.

I see hope there. I see that it didn't take a huge big piece, but it took someone to recognize a small piece and grow it. And when I read stories like that, I'm hopeful.

One of the other things that we've put a lot of energy into is the arts. Sometimes when you look at architecture and sometimes when words don't convey what needs to be said, the arts do. I've seen a number of programs around youth suicide and child development that focus on the land but they also focus on the arts. How do you transform your reality? It may be local artists who do that, who take some of those dismal scenes and change them. I think it's things like that, and supporting the kinds of programs that Jake has been talking about. I think that's what gives us hope, and you're right, we can fall into a pit where there is no hope, and that is the question. How do we get it back? How do we find the pathways out of that?

I don't think there's a singular path, but I think I would believe in the community because there was health there and there will be health again. And that's what I mean by strengths and finding those strengths, and the avenues that are innovative are not just government-funded programs, because the community will know that. Then they'll use those pieces to build, and I think it's incumbent on us to put the structures and the systems in place that enable that kind of revitalization.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

That brings us to the end then of the meeting today. I want to thank Gwen, and Jakob, and Margo, and all the witnesses in fact who preceded you as well, for the thoughtfulness and richness of your remarks. That's going to be a great help to our path forward here.

Thank you so much.

[Dr. Margo Greenwood]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

I have a motion to adjourn.

We're adjourned. Thank you.