I'm very honoured to appear with Mr. Jackson. Meegwetch, “Peter”, for your work over the years.
Also, Regional Chief Poitras, meegwetch again for your leadership during these difficult and uncertain times.
Meegwetch to the committee for inviting me and allowing me to say a few words.
I want to start by saying that Nishnawbe Aski Nation represents 49 first nation communities, 43 from Treaty 9 and six from Treaty 5. We have a vast territory in the northwest and northeast part of the province of Ontario.
I was asked today to talk about the federal government's response to date to this pandemic. On March 11 when the World Health Organization made the declaration that COVID-19 was a worldwide pandemic, the first thing we found out was that the federal government did not have a plan, so we had to scramble. As a first nations community, we were already behind the eight ball in terms of the level of health care and the living conditions in our communities with the housing and the lack of proper infrastructure. Right now in the NAN territory we have 18 boil water advisories, nine long term, nine short term, including the Neskantaga First Nation, which has been on that list going on 26 to 27 years.
When we found ourselves in this situation in March, we knew we had to act very quickly. One of the first things we did was to put together our own team, or what we called the NAN COVID-19 task team, comprising public health experts, doctors and knowledge keepers. We had our own people on that team, and they've proven to be a very valuable resource to our communities over these last three months.
Then we had to do a lot of work to keep our communities safe, and we have over these last three months. There's only been one positive case so far in the NAN territory, which was in Eabametoong in early April, and it's since been resolved.
We are grateful for the protection from our Creator. Everything we do is based on the fact that even though we may think we have our own strength and our own knowledge, it's the Creator who in the end looks after all of us. I really believe that, and every chance I get to talk to our leadership, I talk about how important that is, and that we need to keep working together as a nation. We've been reaching out with Treaty 9 in our case. We also have a treaty partner with the Province of Ontario, and we've reached out to both Ontario and Canada to work with us and join us in this effort to keep our communities healthy and safe during these dangerous times.
One of the things we also found out right away is that the things we're trying to address weren't new. These are long-standing issues, and the regional chiefs from Alberta have had some of these issues.
In addition to dealing with a public health disaster like a pandemic, we're also saddled with all the historic wrongs and the inequities in every field, whether it's education, health, infrastructure. Then you throw a pandemic in the mix. That's a recipe for a public health disaster.
We created that trilateral table where we have been working very effectively with both levels of government over these last few months. I would ask that some of these things that we put together.... They need to be carried forward past the pandemic. I think we've been able to prove to both Ontario and Canada that, if we work together, we can do a lot of things. We can really speed up on some of the things that we've been trying to address for many years, and we want to see the tools and the process that we've developed carried forward post-pandemic.