Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2016

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

The Provincial Health Services Authority, is that B.C. Health?

[Gabriella Emery]

It's one of the health authorities in B.C. We have a provincial mandate and then within B.C. there are, I believe, six other health authorities.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

So what's the mandate of the Provincial Health Services Authority in British Columbia? From my context, I worked for Manitoba Health in the province of Manitoba. We had Manitoba Health, which was essentially the ministry of health and then we had regional health authorities. So we had the Winnipeg Region Health Authority that covered Winnipeg. We had the WestMan region, which covered the western part of the province. We had NorMan and NorEastMan. It was divided up regionally. So is the Provincial Health Services Authority something that covers all of the British Columbia with a different mandate than say if they had a Vancouver regional health authority?

[Gabriella Emery]

Yes. We're provincial. There is Vancouver Coastal Health authority, Interior Health, Vancouver Island Health Authority, Northern Health authority, Fraser Health authority, and then the First Nations Health Authority as well. We have a provincial mandate. We provide more specialty services. Broadly we have B.C. Ambulance, B.C. Renal, B.C. Cancer, children's hospital, women's hospital. So we provide, I believe, more specialty services, maybe, than the regional health authorities.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

So you cover everything. You cover everything that Coastal Health would cover. You cover all the territory, so to speak.

[Gabriella Emery]

Yes.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

So if Vancouver Coastal Health has found a group of people who want your programming they can call your office and say can you come in and deliver it however they want it.

[Gabriella Emery]

Anybody can reach out to us and ask for a link. We don't really work within that much of the health authority structure. Again, we're mostly working with first nations communities and indigenous organizations that are interested in running our training. So anybody can ask us for a link to use our training.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Have you been advertising your services across the province? Does it get advertised by the government? Does it get advertised by regional health authorities? Does it get advertised by first nations? Does the information just disseminate out through emails or word of mouth?

[Gabriella Emery]

As of right now we pretty much have done a soft launch. We're looking in the coming months to do a more formal launch now that the programming has been completed. Right now our main sources of promotion have been Facebook and a YouTube channel. We have been relying on communities and networking, going to conferences really just talking to youth and people who are doing youth work in communities. In the coming months we're hoping to develop a more formal strategy for getting our information out there.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

How old are is the program?

[Gabriella Emery]

We started in late 2012. So we've been around for, I guess, four years.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

How many engagements, if you want to call it that, with different groups or how many things have you been doing around the province and has it covered all of the geographic area of the province?

[Gabriella Emery]

We try to be as provincially representative as possible. We always try to attend the conferences wherever they are if we get invited. If communities invite us to events, we go. It's hard to put a number on it but we do a significant number of engagements through events. The Gathering our Voices youth conference, I'm not sure if you've heard about that, is one of the biggest indigenous youth conferences that every year during spring break brings 1,200 to 2,000 indigenous youth from across B.C. We quite often host workshops at those events around video-making as well as promotional efforts.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

You mentioned some of the partner organizations. Are they founding partner organizations or...?

[Gabriella Emery]

The partnerships we have are communities that had expressed the interest in creating an indigenous youth wellness tool. Then to make sure we have provincial representation across the different health authority regions we put a call out to see who was interested or who the idea resonated with. The initial call for this program came from communities we were doing chronic disease prevention work with in northern B.C.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Do you have individual people for each region? Say that the Nisga'a Lisims Government has a request for information, would you have someone specifically for that region within your organization?

[Gabriella Emery]

Not specifically. We have a very small team. Right now we have three staff, two of whom are here today. It just depends.

When people send us an email, we'll just connect with them however they like. If they want to have a chat with us over the phone to find out more, or if they've already heard about us and are excited and just want a link, it's as easy as that. They just get the link from us. We'll send them the facilitator manual, and then they can use it how they like.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

With regard to the communities you've been working with, and the other organizations and partners, how have you been received so far in your brief four years of doing the work you're doing?

[Gabriella Emery]

We've had amazing community partners I think, really trying to do the work in a good way, and ensuring that we were working with them every step of the way. They're the ones who came to us looking for an idea, or wanting something around indigenous youth wellness.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thanks.

We're going to move into five-minute questions. We have time for a few of those.

The first one comes from Cathy McLeod, please.

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

Thanks to both of the witnesses.

Cassandra, you told us a compelling story. To the degree that you're comfortable sharing, what helped you through your path to where you are now? What happened in your life that helped you to get on a more positive direction?

[Cassandra Blanchard]

I just fell off the grid, but my stepdad, like I said, raised a stink. He went on The Bill Good Show a couple of times. He talked about it at conferences. He finally got a call saying that I could have an assessment now. It's just getting that assessment, and then the medication that comes with it. You throw the kitchen sink and it just stopped everything. It gave me a chance to get better.

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

It was really having that medical help, that psychiatric assessment, the proper medication.