Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Oct. 26th, 2016

[Leo Ashamock, Loone]

Yes, that's very true, Charlie, if I may call you Charlie.

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

Yes.

[Leo Ashamock, Loone]

I just got back from a medevac last week for my granddaughter, who needed mental health treatment. There was quite a confusion about where to send her. The main referral point is Timmins and District Hospital, where they have a mental health unit, and that's where her doctor is. Dr. Nuosu is his name.

She was told there were no beds in the health unit in Timmins. Then we went to North Bay and to Sudbury. All these places were closed. They said we had to take her to Moose Factory, but we had to do that tomorrow morning, not tonight.

Where did she end up? It was in a jail cell at the Fort Albany NAPS detachment. That's not a good place. The very least that could be done for those types of situations is to allow for a safe room right on site in Fort Albany. That could be considered, a place those patients or clients can be referred to while they're waiting.

Also this throwing around of “you're not in our jurisdiction”.... Those are the kinds of comments we get from the other hospitals. Even though their jurisdictional area puts them in the North East LHIN, they say, “You're out of your zone”. That's not true. I'm involved; I talk to these people, as chair. That means I have contact with them, and I know it's not true. We're sure we're within our jurisdictional area, even if we have to send them to Ottawa to the adolescent unit.

For those kinds of things there has to be better coordination for these youth who are being sent out with mental health issues. And there's more. Because of the issues with alcohol and drug abuse that they're undergoing, they suffer through withdrawal—hallucinations and everything. We really need help for them.

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

Yes.

[Greta Visitor]

May I propose—?

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

Yes?

[Greta Visitor]

Treating the individual is removing them from their situation temporarily. If you're not going to seek healing for the whole family, then you're bringing that child right back to the same environment they're wanting to escape.

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

I'm going to follow up on that. After the suicide crisis in 2009, when they were laying off the Payukotayno child welfare workers in the middle of the crisis because they said they had spent their budget, we had to shame the government, and they put the child welfare workers back. Then they fired 25% of them and shut the group homes down in 2012 and said, “You now have to live within your means”, and the cycle started over again.

Cindy Blackstock is talking about the broken child welfare system. We've seen so many cases of suicide of children who've been.... The only tool that they had was to remove the child and put them in foster care—to take them from their families—and it caused the breakdown of the family and they lost the young person. What's it going to take for us to actually put the resources in to support the family in the community so that we have the youth centre and the young people have some place to go other than to drugs?

I'm asking what the vision is to go beyond this reactive emergency. You shouldn't be running like a MASH unit in your community. You should be doing preventative, long-term, proactive health. That's what happens in other communities. In our communities it seems like emergency battle stations sometimes.

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[Leo Ashamock, Loone]

I agree with your statements, Charlie. Certainly those are very good comments—thank you, Greta, for reminding me of that—because the way that they coordinate the service sometimes, the family as a whole can be broken up.

There's even an issue about the escorts who are provided for these kids. They don't even invite the parents sometimes to go along with them. They need to be involved in that treatment plan; that's very important. This goes as well for all the patients who go out to the different health centres we refer them to. They have to have an escort who can support them.

I'm sure the doctors can agree to letting a patient have a family member close to them when they're suffering. It helps them heal. That's what the doctors are telling us, and we know it too.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

The next question is from Mike Bossio, please.

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

I'd like to thank you very much for the courage that you've shown by coming here to share your stories. I can't even begin to imagine the pain that you and your community have gone through for generations. Your historical and cultural souls have been torn. Your language has been taken away. Your family units are broken down. Where do you begin to pick up the pieces when you don't have anywhere to turn? Then you have the institutional environment of Ottawa coming in and saying, “This is what we think you need to do.” Well, it caused this problem in the first place, so where is the basis of trust moving forward?

All the way through this study, it just keeps coming back to the same thing. The system is broken and the funding model doesn't work. Ottawa keeps trying to bring in something new, a new magic bullet and again a new magic bullet, and we end up right back where we started, with families breaking down, with alcohol and substance abuse and abuse.

On one hand, part of the problem is autonomy. At first it seems you have autonomy, but no, actually, the funding grants and the funding model, the programming model, the way they works is that you are constantly having to battle to get new funds or to get reoccurring funds and they can only be spent in a certain way. Do you agree that the funding model is broken?

[Leo Ashamock, Loone]

Very much so.

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

Would you agree that it's time the autonomy is there, and that self-government and long-term sustainable funding is the approach that needs to be taken?

[Leo Ashamock, Loone]

Yes.

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

If that was there, if you had the autonomy to establish your own priorities, what would be the things that you would prioritize?

I know it's not a fair question. You're living it, right?

[Leo Ashamock, Loone]

Yes.

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

You've gone through the hell and come through the other side.

I'm just curious as to where the priorities should be.

[Greta Visitor]

That's a loaded question. I can see why Leo would be reluctant to respond.

It is a loaded question. You ask where our priorities should be. I think it's in restoring the spirit of first nations people, restoring their identity, and that can't be done in a silo or on an individualistic basis. We talked about the family. That's our foundation, our connection to the land. More and more with all the encroachment of development in northern regions, we're losing more and more of our space that we used to hunt and trap in.

I'm not really sure how to answer that question.

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

Actually, it's exactly the way that I would have thought you'd answer. We have to start right from the family culture. These are the things that have been torn and we need to find ways to rebuild them, but we need to give you the power to do that.

[Greta Visitor]

The thing is that nobody has the authority. It's like taking a God complex, if you say, we give you the authority. People have to claim their own autonomy and they have to be able to empower themselves. It means getting down to the basics of what those people do. I think about the member's first question. He asked about isolation. People who are suicidal have a tendency to isolate themselves. I don't know if breaking our isolation is the answer. It will certainly help in terms of the economy in our communities but I feel that the basics that we look for is relationship building, restoring the family in terms of learning to communicate with one another as we are today.

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

I was fortunate enough to have recently visited Haida Gwaii, and I met with Miles Richardson, and I've met with Steven Nitah from the Northwest Territories, and with Valerie Courtois. Miles founded the watchmen program. Steven Nitah was involved with the rangers, and Valerie Courtois, an Innu, is now trying to start the guardian program across the country. It's this whole getting back to the land aspect.

On the cultural side—the language, the art, the traditions, and the land—do you think that is really the base level of what we need just to get started on the road towards establishing the pride and a sense of hope within the communities?

[Greta Visitor]

I think it's a basic start. I think about my own challenges that I faced and the resilient spirit I know I have. It's from having lived through some of those rites of passage shown to me by my parents, by my grandparents. Because when they did those rites of passage, like the walking-out ceremony or the new snowshoes ceremony, they instilled some pride in me and made me feel that I was important as a person.

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

Leo, I don't know if you'd like to add to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Mike, we're out of time there, I'm afraid. We'll have to hear it in another question.