Thank you for your question, Ms. Zann.
I work with eastern Canada's only treatment centre for young indigenous people, the Walgwan Centre, which identifies vulnerabilities and threats. As you know, the challenge facing indigenous community leaders today is the demographic pressure of youth. It's important for our organizations to offer young people something other than income supports once they reach adulthood. Our people are and can be in the workforce, but we have few options to offer our members.
We're also dealing with highly toxic and destructive substances that compromise some young people's future. We must not downplay the impact of these substances on the developing brain. Young people have amazing hopes and dreams, but unfortunately, their peer group and their environment can be hostile to achieving those hopes and dreams. Earlier, I tried to answer the question about our psychosocial needs by mentioning other elements that must be in place to prevent problems coming up in our communities. In other words, prevention is key. We need specialized teams. We need to take a more medically focused approach because now we are talking about medication in a psychiatric context. We need to integrate a medical approach into our interventions.
The only substance dependence program for first nations is Health Canada's oldest program, the national native alcohol and drug abuse program, or NNADAP. There's also the national youth solvent abuse program, or NYSAP. These are the only direct supports available to our communities.
The pandemic has limited access to the treatment centre and group therapy. That's something we need to address. The common denominator for all these measures is public safety and reducing the availability—