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

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to start off by thanking all the witnesses for their important testimony today.

If I could start with you, Professor Driedger, one of the things you talked about was the vaccine prioritization and some of the concerns we heard earlier today from the doctor who was representing First Nations Health Authority. She said folks were feeling fairly sure that they were going to be like guinea pigs.

I'm wondering if you could talk about what you're hearing from communities on that.

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

Certainly when we were engaging with the community around the H1N1 vaccine, one of the differences in Manitoba, compared to federally, was that the Public Health Agency of Canada, when it had been making its recommendations during H1N1, prioritized people living in remote and isolated communities. They used geography as a criteria. In Manitoba, because of the different response tables they had, they thought prioritizing by indigenous ancestry was the way to proceed. However, that was received with a great deal of distrust, and particularly a feeling that this was yet another way of getting rid of the Indian problem.

I don't know if that same level of distrust, in that way, is going to carry forward with COVID-19. It's something that we're going to be learning in the next couple of months as we engage in some of the work. However, that colonial legacy and colonial distrust is very strong. Even though there was senior leadership informing the H1N1 response at the time, on reflection, they thought, “Well, I guess you can understand some of the conspiracy sentiment, because when have first nations, Inuit and Métis ever been put first in line to receive something good?”

It really underscores the need for trying to do that engagement and having those conversations openly now, before the vaccine is even available, so that it is received in a better way.

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

Thank you.

I'll come to you next, Chief Bone. I really appreciate what you had to tell us today.

One of the things I heard very clearly is that housing and housing repairs continue to be a significant issue. As you're dealing with everyday concerns, it's an issue, but adding COVID to the mix has raised it to that next level.

I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about the gaps in your community around housing and what sort of resources you need to deal with both housing and the housing repairs.

[Chief Jennifer Bone]

Thank you.

For our community, I would say we have over 75 families on a waiting list for new housing, or any housing that should become available. We have absolutely no vacancies within our community. Those are some of the challenges that we have.

We have had some cases where we had to self-isolate some families, which required us to take them off reserve. They were self-isolating in hotels in Brandon. Because of the overcrowding conditions, we weren't able to self-isolate the family unit within the home. We've had several cases like that where we had to remove individuals from the community and self-isolate them within hotels, and that is a cost to the nation as well.

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

Thank you. That's incredibly helpful.

I know that one of the other challenges for remote communities, of course, and especially remote indigenous communities, is the access to reliable—and often it's more unreliable—Internet. Knowing that a lot of people are trying to deliver health services now through virtual means, knowing that education has moved much more to a virtual window, are there any challenges that you're experiencing?

Chief Bone, would you mind starting? Then I'll go to Chief Mitsuing.

[Chief Jennifer Bone]

We are our own Internet service provider here in the community. We're looking at some upgrades to our technology and hoping to move towards more fibre within our community, and we're doing some upgrades to our buildings to enable us to do better business here in our community.

Our school has been closed since March. Our students have been out of school. They're doing homework packages and online learning, so we're really working towards upgrading our technology for the community members. Our students are still connecting with their teachers on the regular.

We closed our school completely, once again, on November 10. We reopened in August to staff only. However, due to us being in a critical red zone at this moment, we just shut down our school completely, because a lot of our teachers come from outside of the community.

Our students have been doing the homework packages and online learning since March. We encourage our teachers to follow up with the families and students on the regular.

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

Thanks so much.

Chief Mitsuing, do you have any challenges with Internet connectivity?

[Chief Ronald Mitsuing]

Yes, we do.

On the west side of our first nation, in the town of Loon Lake, we don't have any Internet service. Even though we have a fibre optic cable running by the road, going through the reserve, we can't tap into it because it's so expensive. I believe it's over $6,000 per house. It's $38,000 per house if we want to tap into the fibre optic. That's way out of our funding arrangements. We have over 50 houses, and children in there. We can't tap into home schooling through there. They do get homework packages, but I don't think that's enough.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

That's quite an answer, Chief.

Ms. Blaney, thank you for the question.

To all our witnesses, it's really an honour for us to receive this information. I wish all Canadians could be tuned in to hear your testimony.

We'll do our best as a committee, working with the analysts, to make sure it is captured in our report. Once again, if there's anything further you feel needs to be added, please submit it in writing before this weekend, and we'll see that it gets into the report.

Once again, thank you all.

Before we leave, committee, we have a brief matter of committee business, the adoption of a budget for the study. You received it yesterday. It covers all the costs related to our meetings, including witness expenses.

Having looked at that, do I have unanimous consent to adopt the proposed budget in the amount of $3,750?

Thumbs up, please, for agreement.

I see a roomful of thumbs. Thank you very much.

Thank you, all. It was difficult with the technical issues, but we've listened and we've learned, and hopefully we'll be able to enact things that solve many of the problems we've been hearing.

Our next meeting to continue the COVID study is from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., on Thursday.

This meeting is adjourned.