Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Dec. 1st, 2020

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today.

Dr. Weiman, if I could start with you first, you talked about having a dual public health crisis. I hear often from some of my constituents about the opioid crisis and the challenges they are facing. I especially think of Darlana from Moms Stop The Harm, who has decorated a Christmas tree in memory of her son again this year.

I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how COVID-19 is impacting the use of opioids.

[Dr. Cornelia Wieman]

Yes, again I'll speak a little from my context working as a public health physician in British Columbia.

We are dealing with two declared public health emergencies. The opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency in April 2016, so it's been going on for about four and half years. Of course the COVID pandemic is the second. We have seen a really tragic interplay between the two, especially during the early months of the pandemic when here in British Columbia we went into lockdown. Many of the services available to people who use substances were either stopped for a period of time or reduced in terms of harm reduction services, access to overdose prevention sites, things like that. Combined with increasingly toxic street drug supply, laced with very strong variants of fentanyl, carfentanil and other even non-therapeutic substances like etizolam, people who even use recreationally can potentially die from an opioid overdose. Therefore, we have seen numbers over the time of the pandemic of overdose events and deaths that far exceed what we have been seeing over the last couple of years.

We were making some inroads into reducing the number of deaths of all British Columbians, including first nations people, but because of the pandemic and the unintended consequences, we are seeing an increased number of deaths. I think we're on track to have the highest number of deaths due to opioid overdoses in British Columbia this year, including for first nations people, and we currently have a higher number of deaths due to overdose than we do to COVID-19.

We find ourselves struggling to try to keep up with responding to both at the same time.

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

Thank you so much.

Mr. Sheppard and Ms. Formsma, we've heard clearly, and our offices have had conversations with you, about the resources that are needed and the fact that the minister's office is often referring people to friendship centres, and they don't necessarily have the capacity to address those issues. I'm wondering about how that works, and if you could expand a little on what that experience has been like for you during the pandemic.

[Jocelyn Formsma]

I think the FES, as it was called earlier, talked about the $926.7 million. I think about $90 million of that went specifically to urban. What becomes a challenge is that we don't want to be looking at on-reserve in-the-north communities as a comparator group for urban indigenous people. I think there is enough need and enough capacity within the urban settings that we should be thinking about it as a group on its own. We don't want to get into “does it go here or does it go there?” Every resource going to first nations, Métis and Inuit governments for the work they're doing in the communities is absolutely needed. That's probably not enough to build the capacity. We're trying to close gaps from a historical lack of investment in our capacity and infrastructure.

Standing on our own, trying to convince levels of government in different departments about the need for culturally specific urban indigenous supports and responses to COVID, has been a challenge. We work well with Indigenous Services, the group that we have our federal program with, but I had conversations early on with other departments where I was starting from scratch about why it's necessary to fund a network like friendship centres or other urban indigenous organizations.

Our respective provincial-territorial associations were in constant contact with the provincial governments and relaying that information to us as well, as we were relaying information to them. It was quite frustrating earlier, because each level of government was looking to the other: “This is your jurisdiction” or “No, this is your jurisdiction”. Meanwhile, we have friendship centre staff cooking meals out of their own homes to deliver to people.

I don't mind taking up those fights at the national level or trying to get people to talk to each other. Where I think it's unfair is that the local friendship centres, just being out there, providing those supports.... I don't think it's fair that they are the ones who have to fight and really convince people of the needs. They're doing it, and they're going to do it out of their pockets or in terms of the financial health of their own organizations.

We're just trying to make sure that people know the realities and make sure that people making decisions about funding and policy and program designs are aware that this is a very real thing that's happening. Specific responses are needed outside of the current structure that we have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

I'm sorry to interrupt. That's time.

Members of the committee, I am advised by the clerk that we're able to extend past one o'clock. Technically, we're not holding up a subsequent meeting. I propose that we have one more round of questioning from each of the parties, which will take about 15 minutes.

Once again, we'll go by unanimous consent. Is anyone opposed to this? We have to get agreement to go past one o'clock.

I'm not seeing any opposition to continuing for 15 more minutes.

A five-minute round will go to Ms. McLeod and Mr. Vidal.

Cathy, please go ahead for five minutes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I think Mr. Vidal will go first. Then I'll follow up.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you.

Go ahead.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At the two-and-a-half-minute mark, please transition for us, if you want.

I have one quick question for Mr. Sheppard and Ms. Formsma. It's around the community support funding. The original round of community support funding included $15 million for urban indigenous. I know there was some concern at the time about the recognition of the need. Another $75 million was added to that sometime after that. My question goes beyond that. When we get to the next round of the community support fund, out of about $300 million, about $160 million of that was for an application-based process.

It actually closed just yesterday, if I'm not mistaken. We're well into the second wave, and the application process closed literally yesterday. There was another announcement yesterday of some more money under the community support fund. I don't know how that will roll out.

I'm looking for your comments in regard to the application process. Was it burdensome or helpful? I'm just wondering how you felt about that process.

[Jocelyn Formsma]

Early on, because the National Association of Friendship Centres has an existing agreement with Indigenous Services through the urban programming for indigenous peoples, as well as the urban indigenous coalition tables, it was our position that there was already an existing mechanism to at least release dollars immediately. It wasn't going to be a perfect process and certainly there was time to open it up to other organizations, but we felt that would have been at least an immediate release of funds that could have gone to the friendship centre network and the urban indigenous coalition table network as an interim component.

That wasn't utilized in the beginning, so it resulted in our having to wait weeks after other indigenous organizations received funds. It didn't mean that the work stopped. We went ahead and did it anyways without a guarantee that there would be funding.

That was my experience. I'm going to hand it over to Chris to fill in from his perspective.

[Christopher Sheppard]

I think we were in front of committee right around when that was happening in the first round. Being someone who works in the region and works with individual centres every day, I was extremely frustrated that while people were getting direct investment without delay, we were having to contact centres whose staff were working in the now and ask them to stop and start collecting data and information so that we could get an application into Canada to get the support to help people.

I felt frustrated in round two when the same thing happened again. You're delivering funding to indigenous organizations, but you're treating urban ones differently by forcing them to apply.

We're now in round three and it's the same process again. Even if Canada had looked at our pre-budget submission and looked at what we had submitted as a need, in that submission was the request for money to create an urban indigenous health framework. We submitted those things previously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Ms. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

I'm going to go back to Dr. Wieman.

From the last panel, we heard concerns raised in terms of the rapid testing. I'm going to give you a quick example. Without rapid testing, health care workers are going into communities and they're essentially having to, under many rules, completely isolate regardless of their results. I guess I'm sort of getting back to that balance for our health care professionals and to applying rapid testing and policies that might make life a little bit more normalized for these caregivers.

Could you talk about that piece, both rapid testing and policies related to rapid testing and health care providers?

[Dr. Cornelia Wieman]

Thank you very much for that question.

As the other witnesses have mentioned in the previous hour, and in this hour as well, rapid testing is definitely necessary in many different situations such as you mentioned. Part of the challenge, especially for rural and remote communities, is that it's not feasible to put the capacity to do rapid testing in every single community. The hubs that were mentioned by Mr. Smith in the previous hour is a workable idea.

Here in B.C., for example, we are in the process of putting some of those GeneXpert machines in, at least one per region, but it has been a really slow-going process.

It's unfortunate—I can't believe, actually—that we're hearing delays in getting results back in four or five days. It's quite surprising to me to hear that someone goes 10 days without getting their result back because that means they're essentially at the end of their self-isolation period by the time they get the actual positive COVID test result.

That is a very big issue, but the other thing to remember too is.... I have two things really quickly. One is that rapid testing isn't necessarily the gold standard for testing for COVID, so there's a possibility of getting inaccurate results. Also, it's critically important for people who are coming from urban centres to provide services, especially rural and remote services, to do whatever they can to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, given the vulnerability of our population. I don't often use that word “vulnerable”, but in the COVID sense, yes we are.

Second is that it's important to remember that COVID testing in and of itself is really a snapshot of a period in time and it doesn't necessarily guarantee that you won't be exposed or pick up the virus and become contagious somewhere quite soon after the actual test in and of itself.

There are lots of challenges, but we are advocating for doing as much as we can to keep our communities, and especially our elders, safe.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks very much, Dr. Wieman.

Jaime Battiste, please go ahead. You have five minutes.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm coming to you guys today from Eskasoni, a Mi'kmaq community. It's a first nations reserve of close to 5,000 people. With my discussions with the indigenous caucus, we've been noticing across Canada that it has been a really tough year for indigenous people in 2020. Regular prevention methods around supports, around ceremony, social gatherings such as powwows and athletic events that were held among communities in terms of hockey tournaments have all been cancelled. It's really done a number on our communities in terms of their mental health, but also we're witnessing a lot more addictions in terms of alcohol as well as opioids.

We're looking at this winter coming as a very bleak one for first nations across Canada, on reserve and off. We're really looking to get some recommendations out there.

I know the most recent funding announced said we were going to do $631 million over the next two years for a public health response, as well as an additional $82.5 million for mental wellness needs. Can the witnesses give us some recommendations on best practices around indigenous youth, indigenous people on reserve and ensuring that we can still build up their morale and their hope during a pandemic that has taken so much from them?

Can you give us any kinds of best practices and recommendations on that funding? What is working in terms of ensuring that we're offering the supports in the right areas to the indigenous communities?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Who'd like that?

[Christopher Sheppard]

I guess I'll quickly go. Thank you, Mr. Battiste.

I think, number one, especially when we're talking about indigenous young people, let's recognize that Canada doesn't have any specific one-stop program that supports the development of indigenous young people at all. For the fastest-rising demographic in Canada, the people who will be our economy in 20 years, there's nothing. If there is anything that exists, it's a subcategory of a current program, so you could serve vulnerable women or vulnerable young people.

Canada once did have a program specifically for young indigenous people to come up and become leaders and be involved. Jocelyn and I actually went through that same program at the same time. To me, why do we not have something? This is something that I and Jocelyn have presented at multiple levels of the federal government for a very long time. If there is anything specifically, it's a specific program for children, a specific program for young adults, regardless of where you live, that looks at how you support them in becoming able to have the same success that other children in this country do.

To me, that's something that is critically important. I try to remind everyone that young indigenous Canadians are the Canadian economy in 20 years, so if you want a successful Canadian economy, you have to support those young people who will make up those who are forcing that economy forward. You won't have a choice.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

What was that program called?

[Christopher Sheppard]

It has gone by many names. Originally it was the urban multi-purpose aboriginal youth centres program. It was part of a program under Canadian Heritage. Then it was CCAY, and then went into non-existence.

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

In terms of this $82.5 million for mental wellness needs that we've announced, you believe a distinct category should be created to support youth during this difficult time. Is that what I'm hearing?

[Christopher Sheppard]

We have said that COVID is just one more piece of a puzzle that has been what we've dealt with for the last 70 years. It's just another challenge for us.

We've had young people within our movement across the country create mental health programs for submission to Canada that weren't funded. One thing we have been very lucky with as a national organization is to be approached by private funders. That's who's getting us the support to get a youth mental health and suicide program off the ground. It's actually a private corporation, not Canada.

We'd really welcome Canada to come join us and create some amazing things for young people. But the reality for us is that we had to figure out a way to do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks very much. Thanks, Mr. Battiste.

Ms. Bérubé, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Sheppard.

In the spring, you mentioned that the friendship centres were not involved in the national urban indigenous agenda and that Canada needed to start looking at them as partners.

In the context of the pandemic, how has the federal government mobilized friendship centres to adopt urban indigenous-friendly approaches?

[Christopher Sheppard]

I think recognizing that Canada and friendship centres have a 70-year history, a once-permanent program history that has been developed to.... It's a self-determined structure created by our own people to move ourselves forward. We have been a welcoming place to collaborate, to do work and to make sure our people are looked after, not just during the pandemic but at all times.

On the back end, and even in public policy, urban indigenous people aren't included. StatsCan data tells us every year that it's not like urban migration is slowing down or stopping. It continues to happen. However, we as a country seem unable to say the truth, which is “You are all important”, and we need public policy that says that. Why is it that if you did an analysis and a scan of how urban people are funded comparably, it would be nowhere near equitable?

We did an analysis of the COVID response money. Canada says that they want to make sure there's a gendered lens on the work that they do, and there is not. I can tell you that COVID is no different. When we look at how to do work post-COVID, in some regions, we're already looking at a gendered lens response to ensure that indigenous women, who typically are the backbones of communities, are supported to recover their communities collectively.

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

Have mechanisms been initiated to establish a formal relationship between you and the government?