Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 24th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

You have just 30 seconds.

[Dr. Shannon McDonald]

Mr. Alsop.

[Jason Alsop]

Sorry. I just want to back up that point. I think that in the long term and immediately, it is just a matter of investment into the community. It's great to hear that trauma counsellors are available at that level, but instead of expecting people to reach out and call these numbers—it's all a lot of noise, all the numbers and places—we have the ability of knowing who needs help directly. We could be proactively reaching out and trying to tailor solutions to each individual.

That's one of the benefits of us being in smaller communities and having that intimate relationship. We could proactively approach each person in the way that works best for them and have that on-the-ground support in the community.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ms. Zann.

Ms. Bérubé, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Chair, I thank all the witnesses joining us virtually for their full cooperation in their indigenous communities.

I am on the traditional territory of the Algonquins, Anishinabes and Crees of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou in Quebec.

My question is for you, Mr. Alsop. You said earlier that your aboriginal rights were being recognized, but that, in terms of food security, the pandemic was causing issues with hunting and crops.

Can you give us details on the impact that has had in your community?

[Erik Blaney]

I can start with that one, if you like.

Our community took the food, social and ceremonial allocations that we received, which is a treaty right that we have, and our boats went out and harvested some prawns. We also have an allocation of six elk per year in our community, so I believe we put aside four elk for community distribution. That was harvested within the community and then distributed.

I believe that for protein we are okay for now, but looking at those allocations and going into the second wave, we had a number of hunters who weren't able to access their hunting rights in the community.

Fish season as well was significantly impacted with a very low return of sockeye. This is the fourth year we have not received any sockeye in our community. Chinook as well was very limited. We got 60 chinook allocated for the entire community of 700, plus off reserve, so our access to traditional food resources has been significantly impacted.

What I'd like to see is some additional help for community farming if this is going to go on long term. We have two ferries, and our food comes in by barge. Right now with the windstorm we are in, the barge likely won't be coming in for a couple of days, so we could see the food resources on the shelves get depleted quite quickly.

We should look at long-term, sustainable funding to create more farms within the communities.

[Jason Alsop]

I'd like to add to that.

I think we share similar situations with food coming into Haida Gwaii by ferry, and obviously increased costs with transportation and disruptions. It is really important that we're able to continue to be self-sufficient as much as possible in our growing and providing healthy vegetables and those things.

Again, one of challenges we encountered in the spring and early summer is also competition for food as B.C. looked to open up. You're opening up luxury resort sport fishing lodges where people are coming for recreation and luxury experiences and competing directly with local people who need that protein. We're seeing the decline in stocks everywhere. As well, hunters are coming in. Even though the provincial health direction is to stay in your own community and not travel so many hours from home, people are still travelling distances to come into our territory. It causes a lot of anxiety around bringing the virus in, but also the food competition.

We found the communication and checkpoints were very important to get that message out there at this time: Follow provincial health, but also indigenous jurisdiction. There are great opportunities for a place like Haida Gwaii, though, as well, where we have introduced invasive species...black-tailed deer. There could be programs or opportunities to not only address food security, but also conservation concerns similar to salmon enhancement, as well as restoration of habitats.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

You said earlier that, when it comes to food security, exchanges were being done by ferry.

Since self-sufficiency is important, how do you propose we help you? Of course, there are budgets to consider, but do you have something else to suggest to us?

[Erik Blaney]

Maybe I could speak to that.

What I've done is assisted a couple of nations in setting up walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers. In some of the remote communities like Klahoose on Cortes Island, or Tla'amin, we're trying to figure out how to store food and how we can backstock at least 14-days' worth of food. Those communities have to go into places like Campbell River, take two ferries, fill up a van, bring that van back to the community and then store food for a couple of weeks.

We've actually taken the approach of looking at setting up large coolers and freezers within communities, but one issue with that is the weather. We've now had one community lose all of their elk and their salmon this year because of a power outage after a wind storm. They did not have power back in the community for three days. They lost over 2,200 pounds of elk and probably about 300 salmon. That was supposed to feed the community throughout the winter.

Backup generators are another cost that was not considered through some of the funding made available by ISC through EMAP. I believe that backup generators are something that needs to be looked at, for not only emergency operation centres, but also for emergency food storage and management.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much.

Next is Ms. Blaney.

Ms. Blaney, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of you so much for your important testimony today.

I'm going to pick up on a couple of things I've heard repeatedly from multiple witnesses here today.

The first part is around the seriousness not only of mental health within the communities, but the mental health and the well-being and the burnout of people who are serving those communities in leadership roles and as front-line workers.

Perhaps I could start with you, Mr. Blaney, or Erik—I knew you would like that.

Would you talk about what that would look like and what resources are needed to deal with those on those two levels. Of course, if you have front-line workers burning out and they're not able to help the larger community, those concerns will just grow.

Then I'll come back to you, Mr. Alsop.

[Erik Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. Blaney. That's a very good last name.

Burnout for us is a very tough one, because we are a volunteer fire department within the community. Our community, through the treaty, negotiated a good amount of money for training and equipment, so we're very fortunate to have what we have in our community. A number of the other communities I work with do not have a volunteer fire department. Those are the ones I worry about, because there is no emergency operation centre training for many communities, and there is no incident command training for many of those communities.

When they are expected to step into EMBC with a task number and then look for the funding, they don't even know which paperwork to use. When that transition happened for indigenous services to pass the torch over to EMBC to manage emergencies within the province here, there was a major step missed in that there wasn't as much consultation as should have happened. There has been a real lack of training for front-line workers to participate in this paramilitary organized system.

I think what needs to happen is they need access to a roving emergency planning coordinator trainer, or some help to go into these communities and assist them in navigating the management system that has been put in place for us.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Alsop, could you talk about those concerns in your own region in Haida Gwaii?

[Jason Alsop]

I think I share similar feedback that the training is really important to be able to have the fill-ins, and multiple people fill the number of positions you need within that incident command structure, so they need to understand the roles and responsibilities in all the functions.

Similarly here, we have had the volunteer fire department involved in both pieces, and again, very few people who already do other things in the community.... I think there's the immediate issue. I also anticipate that a number of people, when we come through the pandemic, may start stepping aside and taking a break from this kind of work, so we need to cultivate that next generation of our community members to step in and fill these roles.

I think it's not only a COVID need but an opportunity to continue to build the capacity in emergency response of paramedics and first responders. It also creates economic opportunities going forward for our membership.

There's an immediate need but also an opportunity to look forward. Also, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, look at what services we are outsourcing now and how we can put in training, mentoring, and education plans to get young people to fill those positions and know what those opportunities are to be supporting the community and picking up the roles and filling the shoes of those who are going to be burnt out and want to take a break and spend time with family. Some are retiring and moving on as well.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

I see that a lot in the communities I represent, that need to see people trained in those local opportunities right here in our communities, so I thank you for that.

Dr. McDonald, do you have anything you would like to add? You oversee so many of the nations that I would love to hear from you.

[Dr. Shannon McDonald]

I think the biggest thing I hear about right now is surge capacity. Our nurses, especially on the front line, are burning out. Not only is it the FNHA nurses, but it is also the staff in the community who are trying to deal with, not only the COVID emergency, but the health needs of the community generally.

We are certainly struggling in accessing physician resources. I'm desperately trying to find another public health doctor to support my team to be able to do this work. Between March and the end of June, I worked 900 hours of overtime. It's my commitment. This is what I trained for, but it's not sustainable. We really need to consider the sustainability of this kind of effort. It has been nine months of really hard work. It's certainly not just me or my team; it's everybody, and I'm especially concerned about our care providers on the front line.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

You're just about out of time, Ms. Blaney.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Johnson, is there anything you would like to add? Also, I agree around the housing issue. Could you tell us how important it is again?

[Dillon Johnson]

Sure, and thanks for the invitation. I know we're almost out of time.

I know Canada recently announced its rapid housing initiative, which I think is a positive sign that Canada views housing as a stimulus and a worthwhile investment.

The issue is that $500 million for the entire country is not going to be enough to meaningfully assist our community. That's why we've targeted this proposal. We started this work back in April. All the self-governing groups came together and asked what our priority coming out of this pandemic was. It was housing.

We started the work back then in April, pulled together all the data and had an independent firm compile it and put it into federal government speak, a Treasury Board or Department of Finance kind of format that would resonate with them.

We've all pulled together, so it's a self-governing indigenous government-made solution and it's consistent with the motive behind the rapid housing initiative.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I'm sorry, but we're well over time. We're going to have to extend into the next hour, which will impact on the time for our next panel, and we're dealing with all sorts of problems, mostly technical. I'm sorry about that.

Mr. Viersen, you are up now for five minutes. Please, go ahead.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.

My questions are mostly for the community executives who we have on today. I can start with Mr. Blaney or Mr. Johnson.

I'm wondering about the schools in your communities. Have they continued to be open and where are they at right now?

[Erik Blaney]

When we went into our lockdown, our community day care centre was closed down. We don't have any community schools on our former reserve lands but we do have a tutoring centre, which was also closed down.

When we went into lockdown, all of our kids were kept home from the public school system, which many of our kids go to. They experienced some pretty harsh racism given that we were having an outbreak within the community. Even when the lockdown ended, a number of our kids were welcome to go back to school, but they experienced a lot of bullying and racism, and were called the “COVID kids” when they went back to school.

A number of parents have decided to keep their kids home. We're working on a plan to try to figure out tutoring and to get their school work to them at their home and to make sure there are proper wellness checks on those kids within the community.

[Dillon Johnson]

I would just add, as Erik said, that we have this tutoring centre and we've assigned teachers to be stationed in the tutoring centre. There are kids within the school system who are able to register and come to this tutoring centre to work on their school work instead of going to the public schools. I guess it's a comfort-level type of thing. As Erik mentioned, they're facing some backlash in the schools.

What we've seen from our lockdown is that these kids—our kids—are quite a bit behind. My wife works in the school district and is in indigenous education, so I kind of get the updates from on the ground there. Really, we've been set back quite a bit.

A potential solution, I think, would be to have greater investment in that. We have only one teacher, actually, right now manning our tutoring centre, so perhaps more resources need to be made available.

We're concerned about what this means for the students this year. As I said, they were falling behind before, and now with the pandemic, it's worse.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Alsop, how are things in your community with regard to schooling? We've been hearing reports from around the world. Some countries have never shut down the schools, and other places are missing their second year of school. What's the situation in your community, and do you have any recommendations?