[Witness spoke in Coast Salish as follows:]
Ah jeh Chep Ot. Tiy’ap thote kwuth nun.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello everyone. My name is Tiy’ap thote.
[English]
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Erik Blaney. I'm an executive council member of the Tla'amin Nation.
I was the fire chief and incident commander for our local community outbreak. Our nation was experiencing an extensive COVID outbreak. At the time, it was the largest outbreak per capita in Canada. After a funeral in the community, we ended up with 36 cases of COVID in a small community of 700 at the end of September 2020.
Our nation sprung into action. We locked down our community, making it one way in and one way out to help protect not only our members, but the members of the neighbouring communities. We initiated a local state of emergency, which forced the closure of all government buildings as well as the only convenience store in the community.
In the midst of the outbreak, we noticed the deep-rooted social issues our nation was facing. We needed some serious help to battle the drug and alcohol and domestic housing issues that were causing our cases to rise dramatically. It was then that we realized we were in a dual pandemic, with the many opioid overdoses happening within the community.
Our hunting and fishing season was significantly impacted this year. Access to cultural activities are causing some major mental wellness issues within the community. Our nation was to host Tribal Journeys this year, which would have seen thousands of people coming to our community. Having to cancel that has had a big impact on the wellness of our community, in that everybody was really excited to have members from both the United States and Canada coming to our community to share culture.
The mental wellness of the first responders and front-line workers needs to be at the forefront of the second wave. Many of us are burnt out and experiencing PTSD from the first wave outbreak. Ongoing access to financial help for those who are off work due to burnout and PTSD is greatly needed.
As an incident commander during the outbreak, funding was the last thing on my mind going into the first few days, but after about four days the bills were stacking up. We worked with EMBC for financial assistance and reassurance that some of our expenses would be reimbursable.
The indigenous community support fund for first wave funding had been expended before we even hit the second wave. About halfway through our outbreak, our second wave funding hit the bank account, which dramatically helped us deal with the issue at hand, in that this funding is non-prescriptive and we could spend it at our discretion.
At the time of our outbreak, checkpoints weren't funded in the community. We were seeing that the checkpoint was actually one of the best ways to control the ins and the outs of the community and to track and monitor who was going into and out of the community, so that we could assist contact tracing with the health officials.
I'm really glad to see that checkpoints are now being funded through, I believe, federal funding that came through FNHA, which then reaches the community. I believe that putting that checkpoint in place the day after we got the positive COVID cases within our community really helped us get our numbers under control. It really helped us stop the spread.
Again, I think six minutes isn't much. I could go on for a couple of hours here, but I will pass the mike over to my colleague Dillon Johnson for more.