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

[Jason Alsop]

Before the summer break, obviously, there was a shutdown, and then there was a slow reopening in June. We found, in that case, that many of our Haida or indigenous students did not return at that time as the parents were quite concerned and felt that since they were off that long, they might as well be safe. Many other students from our neighbouring communities did return, but the teachers in the school district did take a position that it would be equal education whether you're doing it online at home or in the classroom to avoid that imbalance.

We have two schools on reserve. One is a community-run band school in Old Massett, and one is in the community of Skidegate reserve which is provincially run. We tried to coordinate the reopening of the schools as we were coming out of an outbreak in early September, so we delayed the opening for an additional two weeks to allow more time for the school and community to prepare.

All of this creates a lot of anxiety and forces communities to be more careful, because of the close-knit nature. There's great opportunity to look at developing more resources and supports, not only online learning but options to bring community teachers into the classroom to teach remotely. An additional option is to explore outdoor education opportunities, and support safe transportation, so that we can get the kids out to learn on the land, and not feel cooped up in that environment.

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

I've been seeing it around the world. Folks have been saying that interrupted learning, and the nutrition value that students have been receiving has been changing. There's been confusion and stress, interfamily violence and things like that. I don't think that's any different here in Canada. The United Nations is making the recommendation that schools should no longer be shut down, just to avoid all of these things. I just wanted to get that on the record.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you very much, Mr. Viersen.

I'm going to ask for the indulgence of the committee now. We have another panel. If we continue to complete the round of questioning, we'll probably lose 15 minutes of that panel. We've had great questions and responses regarding the submissions.

Do I have unanimous consent to thank our current panellists, suspend briefly to organize the next panel and carry on with the second hour? Otherwise, when we hit one o'clock, we're going to lose some of our people as it is due to time constraints and virtual House.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I want to thank our panellists. I'm sorry about the time. That's always an issue with committees, but we're impacted by a lot of other influences in the way we organize our meetings. Thank you all once again. This has been a tremendous hour.

I'm going to suspend for a few minutes while we arrange our next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

We once again call this meeting to order and resume the study of indigenous communities through a second wave of COVID-19.

First up for six minutes is Professor Michelle Driedger.

Professor, would you please go ahead. You have six minutes.

[Dr. Michelle Driedger, As an Individual]

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak before all of you. My name is Michelle Driedger, and I'm a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba.

It is important to note that while I'm a proud Manitoba Métis citizen and do research in partnership with the Manitoba Metis Federation's health and wellness department, I do not speak for the Manitoba Metis Federation. It is my understanding, in inquiring why I was asked to provide testimony today, that my invitation was identified based on research work that I have done with the Manitoba Metis Federation in regard to research carried out both during pandemic H1N1 and also during COVID-19.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Ms. Driedger, would you move your microphone up just slightly?

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

Is that better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Yes. That's good.

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

As much of my COVID-19 research is still under review with the Metis Federation, I will be providing lessons learned from pandemic H1N1 and also will provide context on how to engage with existing community infrastructure as I know it. I will also share some broad lessons from pandemic H1N1 that can be applied to COVID-19.

At times in my testimony, I may make references to first nations, Métis or indigenous peoples. As much as possible, I will only use “indigenous peoples” when making more general statements. When something from my research is specific to first nations or Métis, I will identify it as such.

In developing a lot of my research around pandemic H1N1 and prior to even having the vaccine rollout, I was invited to a northern fly-in first nations community in Manitoba [Technical difficulty—Editor] data collection to demonstrate that our strategy to engage indigenous peoples was both appropriate and of benefit. Too often, researchers have gone into communities and have done extractionist research, taking knowledge that is gifted to them by indigenous peoples for their own academic gain.

What we learned is that first nations participants shared a lot of their concerns and their fears of the impact of a novel virus entering their community and having a devastating impact—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I'm sorry to interrupt. Could you move it up again a bit?

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

They were talking about having a lack of adequate health supports—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Could you put it down half an inch?

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

Is that better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Yes.

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

They weren't quite familiar with how the virus spread and what people could do to protect themselves. We answered a lot of questions, as many as we asked of participants, and we also went back to the community to share things through school presentations, as well as a call-in TV station that they had locally within the community.

With that example, the reason I use it is to highlight the important lesson not only of engaging with communities through partnership, but also of making use of existing communication infrastructure in areas where cellphone and Internet coverage may be poor.

When I started on the work with the Manitoba Metis Federation, I was asked to also conduct an evaluation of an intervention that had been developed specifically between the Metis Federation and the Manitoba health government. One of the things to understand during pandemic H1N1 was that part of the response tables involved not just the standard public health and surveillance tables. There was also a social justice and equity table, as well as specific engagement with indigenous peoples—specifically, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, INAC, Health Canada and the Province of Manitoba— but there was no seat at the table for the Metis Federation, despite their representation of 40% of Manitoba's indigenous population.

The Metis Federation had to advocate hard to be included in these indigenous response tables. Part of their success is owed to the strong research capacity they had in partnership with the university to create what was at that time the very first Métis atlas in Manitoba, which documented Métis health status alongside that of other Manitobans. It was one of the first times that the Metis Federation could provide some evidence and could document experiences and outcomes similar to those of first nation citizens.

What is important to understand is that the Métis live diffusely in the province, with approximately half of our citizens living in Winnipeg and the rest living in the broader Red River Settlement areas along the lake systems, where Métis depend on access to the land for survival. If you were to look at a distribution map of first nations reserves alongside a map of Métis communities, you would see that they are quite close in proximity, particularly in the northern parts of the province.

While on a first nations reserve you might have access to a health centre, Métis citizens often have to access health services much like other Manitobans do: through provincial health offices that might be available in larger centres. This means that Métis in smaller communities and more isolated communities have to travel considerable distances to access primary care, as well as to seek more specialized care, and this travel has to be covered out of pocket. Métis do not receive benefits from first nations and Inuit health grants, such as access to medical van transportation, as an example, and this was something that was frequently raised in focus groups that I was conducting in different Métis communities about why they would—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

You have 30 seconds.

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[Dr. Michelle Driedger]

One of the things within the pandemic and the response tables was how vaccine prioritization was received. There was a great deal of distrust in how things were prioritized, and it was felt that the vaccine was being tested on indigenous bodies to make sure it was safe to give to the white guys. That was how participants put it.

One of the things that we need to take away is how logistic planning tables have to be done in partnership, engaging communities in order to have trust. Locals and communities know better how to reach their citizens and how to implement response measures than if it's just being done from federal-provincial response tables without that local integration.

We need to consider all of the logistics associated with vaccine rollout, as well as public acceptance and updates so that it is not seen within a colonial, distrusting light.

I will stop there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

We'll have to leave it there.

Thanks very much, Professor Driedger.

We now have Chief Jennifer Bone and Christopher Hersak, director, of the Dakota Oyate Lodge.

Do we have our witnesses? No.

Let's go to Chief Ronald Mitsuing.

Chief Mitsuing, are you hooked up?

[Chief Ronald Mitsuing, Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation]

Yes, I am.

Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Yes, I can hear you fine.

Go ahead for six minutes, and then we'll catch up with our other guests.

[Chief Ronald Mitsuing]

Okay.

Since this pandemic started, our school has been closed about four times already. One of our EAs got into contact with somebody and then we had to shut the school down. The school reopened yesterday, but we had only six students. I believe today there are only four. The parents are pretty concerned about the virus, so they're keeping their children at home.

On a personal note, my two children attend the town school, so they go to school every day. There was only one positive so far. They sent that classroom home, not the whole school. I'll tell you the truth: When school started, my kids were all ready a week before it opened up, because they were so happy to go back to school.

The virus affects our kids on first nations here. They consider school as also a safe house that helps with learning. I am pretty concerned right now. They're all at home. I don't know what's happening with the rest of the 400 students at home with all of the domestic violence we have going on on the reserve here. Alcohol has become a big factor, and drugs. We do have security, but they can only do so much. We can't enforce our bylaws with the RCMP. We need our own prosecutor to do that.

That's one of the challenges we face too. Our security can do only so much. They can break up the house parties, but they can't actually go into those houses and kick out all those people. They can tell them to quit. That's about all they can do. It's not enforceable by law. If we could maybe draft up our own BCRs and bylaws, maybe we could get help legally.

The curfew too is not really helping us right now. People know we can't enforce the law. We prevent out-of-town members from coming in. They always get mad. They have family members here, and they find a way to get in. There's a highway here that goes through the town of Loon Lake and it also goes north. We don't have control of those highways, because they're provincial. If they gave us permission maybe to do checkpoints on there, then we could actually control the amount of people coming in.

The Town of Loon Lake has the same concern. They're worried about this virus. There's nobody on the streets anymore, except on our first nation. The biggest concern I have is all the mental wellness, what the kids are going through right now, and the parents. We do have a community scan going. I haven't gotten that report as of yet, but I'm hearing some bad things already. We have to find a way to bring out these people, to get them to reach out to us. They're not reaching out to us. We have to go into those homes and find the problems and what they're facing each day.

That's where we're at. We had a big concern over youth suicide, and since then have had four middle-aged people commit suicide. We do have four therapists constantly, on 24-hour call, but they'll also be burning out. We have seven therapists in total. They deal with over 100 cases between them. We're worried also about our nurses right now with the pandemic. They might burn out when things start getting rough. We're only one case away from being considered an outbreak. Then we have to go into lockdown. We don't know what that entails yet. That will cause more anguish for our people.

Too, our guys are dealing with some forestry companies on the south of our reserve. They're coming into our traditional lands and not allowing us to hunt over there, because they're deforesting right now.

That's where most of our hunters are getting their meat sources from. We used to get trappers. We have lots of battles going on. On the school note we don't have a cell tower west of Loon Lake here. We have about 50 houses that don't have Internet to do online learning.

The province announcing 74 towers and none of them landing on first nations was a big step backwards for this reconciliation for us anyway.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Chief, your testimony is very descriptive and I really appreciate you sharing that with us. We're just about at time now. I will thank you for now. Questions will come.

Chief Jennifer Bone, are you ready to go now? Please go ahead for six minutes.

I'm sorry, Chief, we're not hearing you.

Mr. Clerk, I'm not hearing anything.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Naaman Sugrue]

Because of the system they're using, we can't identify what device they have selected, nor can we see whether they're muted on their end or not, but it appears they have.