Absolutely. What's going on is huge in terms of what the additional costs are. Food security is a huge problem that's going on and a concern.
Even our nurses have been restricted from the north, except in emergencies only, as a result of the high need for nurses in the urban areas. It reflects how first nations communities are not the priority here. It's really focused on the urban areas in terms of how health is managed in the region. It's for those reasons that we need independence from these provincial systems in some ways. We have to take care of ourselves.
We travelled internationally to create a value-added model in partnership with Cuba at one time. We're looking to provide health care service experts for our communities. We also had the ability to train our citizens within the health system over there.
That could have created some solutions to the problems that we experienced with COVID, although we weren't given that ability. We weren't given that opportunity. We were shipping people out of Manitoba, because the system wasn't able to take on the crisis.
Now we're seeing another example of this here in Manitoba, where our nurses are being taken away. In a case like that, where we're not being prioritized, it's quite simple that the system is not putting first nations in the place where we need to be. There's already an 11-year life expectancy gap. It's terrible for our elders, who need to be passing on that knowledge.
We need to create our own system. It needs to be independent. We need to have our health experts looking out for us. Until there's trust built.... I don't know. It's decades and decades of a culture that has not been built to serve the needs and interests of indigenous people.