As a former chief, I know that these documents, like departmental plans, exist. Now that I'm a member of Parliament, I go through them in a lot more detail since I am responsible as the shadow minister for this area.
It struck me that—if I were looking at this through my “chief lens”—the KPIs seem very copied and pasted. If you go to “Table 2: Indigenous Peoples are mentally well” of the departmental plan, you see that the actual results are 50.5% for 2022-23, 50.5% for 2023-24, 50.5% for 2024-25 and that the next target is 55%. The new indicator for off reserve is 55% as well. Those are vastly different populations, but the numbers are the same.
To me, it speaks to almost neglect that these are copied and pasted numbers with no actual, real thought process behind them. When you go to the footnotes on these things, you see that the results are from the 2015 first nations regional health survey up until 2020. You're actually taking results and saying that they're from these last three fiscal years, but they are really from 10 years ago. How do you explain that to chiefs?