Good afternoon, everybody.
I want to thank you all for the opportunity to present to the standing committee today. As mentioned already, my name is Amanda Meawasige. I'm the director of intergovernmental relations for the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat.
Today I'm addressing you from Treaty 1 territory, the ancestral and traditional territory of the Anishinabe peoples.
I would like to start my comments by acknowledging the Manitoba first nations leadership who have responded swiftly and very effectively to the growing threat of COVID-19, despite limited resources. Our leadership has been very proactive in preventing COVID-19 from entering our communities. We don't have any cases in Manitoba to date, and they have done a really good job at anticipating risks and responding to these emerging challenges.
With the help of leadership, our organization and partnering organizations, the political bodies that exist in Manitoba, have implemented a very strong and collaborative process to support one another during this challenge, to share our expertise and to try our best to tackle the broader systemic issues.
First nations understand the critical nature of preventing COVID-19 outbreaks. The colonial legacy and the embedded racial approach to funding structures have definitely made first nations more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection and its associated harms. This is a result of the higher burden of high-risk conditions and the lack of access to appropriate and comparable health and social services. We can also look to issues around the social determinants of health, which include insufficient housing, food insecurity and a lack of adequate water infrastructure, which make it very challenging and sometimes not even possible to adhere to public health directives.
This data from the first nations atlas report in Manitoba, which we will send as an attachment with our submission, has strongly demonstrated that the gap in health status between first nations and the general population is growing, not closing. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed these inequities as well as the potential risk that these inequities place on Manitoba first nations.
Therefore, today we would like to take our time to stress not only some of the gaps within the system but also to talk about some potential pragmatic solutions.
First, as we spoke about earlier with respect to the higher burden of high-risk health conditions and the poorer access to health services, these environments in which first nations are placed put us at significant risk for COVID-19. Therefore, we are asking for the federal government to aggressively invest in self-determined and culturally inclusive wellness promotion efforts that are directly aimed at improving the social determinants of health, so that high-risk conditions with respect to COVID-19 can be improved. A good example would be to look at the drinking water situation in communities. Food insecurity is particularly of issue in our remote and isolated communities here in Manitoba.
Second, because first nations are placed at a disproportionate risk, we call on the federal government to provide sufficient investment in local and regional health services in order to equitably respond to this risk.
This means increased investment in the work that first nations are already undertaking while being under-resourced. This is inclusive of pandemic planning, mitigating risks that have emerged with the pandemic, increasing COVID-19 education, increasing access to testing, increasing access to any equipment that's required such as personal protective equipment, and more. There needs to be strong advocacy to ensure that first nations are front-of-line in receiving those services. Further to that point, these types of investments need to continue long after the pandemic is done. There needs to be a post-pandemic focus as well.
Third is with respect to data. Data pertaining to COVID-19 is key to monitoring and evaluating emerging patterns and trends, and to supporting better prevention and management, especially in populations that are placed at high risk or are considered vulnerable. While some first nations across the country are currently engaged in COVID-19 data collection and surveillance, approaches and measures captured vary widely across different jurisdictions. There's a bit of a patchwork of data collection with respect to the different jurisdictions, both federal and provincial health service providers.
Therefore, we are calling on the federal government to collaborate with first nations in developing a nationwide first nations COVID-19 data collection and surveillance system that is governed by first nations and has respect for first nations data sovereignty.