Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Vancouver East for bringing forward this urgent and pressing issue. She has been a tireless advocate for her community. She has been vocal and outspoken on the very pressing issues that she sees. I have had the good fortune to visit Vancouver East and see some of the good work, but also see some of the despair.
What prompted this emergency debate was a report in the American Journal of Public Health. The member for Vancouver East talked about the incidence of HIV-AIDS infection in Vancouver East. There are a couple of points I want to read into the record from that report.
The report states:
However, Aboriginal persons have been shown to commonly have lower life expectancy as a result of higher rates of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, and lower access to health care and prevention services. Access not only means physical access but also culturally appropriate and meaningful access to health services.
I urge people to read this report because it is a stark criticism of Canada's failure to address this very urgent and pressing issue.
It goes on to say:
Our findings demand a culturally appropriate and evidence-based response to the HIV epidemic among Aboriginal injection drug users. Canada's drug strategy has recently been the subject of significant criticism. This criticism stems from the fact that resources are overwhelmingly devoted to law enforcement-based interventions, which have been shown to have negative health consequences related to health service interruption and limited evidence of effectiveness...
The report goes on to talk about the shocking incidence of incarceration of aboriginal people in Canada. It says that more than 20% of the incarcerated population is aboriginal. Yet the aboriginal population is only 3% of the overall Canadian population as a whole.
Before I talk a bit more about the problems, I want to point out there are some very successful culturally appropriate interventions in Canada, and I will mention one. It is the Nine Circles in Winnipeg. This client centred approach to HIV-AIDS patients talks about the fact that it wants to improve quality of life for those living with and affected by HIV-AIDS. It goes on to talk about the culturally appropriate services, which include elder support, cultural ceremonies and continued connection spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically.
Those culturally appropriate services are extremely important. As the member for Vancouver East rightly pointed out, part of the legacy that many first nations are facing is the legacy of residential schools, which has meant that the cultural underpinnings in many communities have been disrupted and fractured and many people end up in situations where they just simply do not have the resources in their cultural and community supports.
One of the things we know is true is that accessibility, particularly in rural and remote communities and certainly in inner cities, is difficult. A project called the Cedar Project looked at HIV-AIDS infections in aboriginal populations in both Prince George and Vancouver.
One of the elders, who was interviewed in that project, talked about the fact that what happened in many of the rural and remote communities, because of lack of economic opportunities, was the youth gravitated to major centres like Vancouver and ended up in the Vancouver East side or in Prince George. Because there are no cultural supports or services there for them, the youth end up in a lifestyle that sometimes has them contracting HIV-AIDS.
The sad comment is these young people go home in many cases to die. In the report from the Cedar Project, the elder said that it reminded her of how the salmon returned to their spawning beds to die. That is the harsh reality of what is happening in British Columbia and throughout Canada. Many of these young people return to their rural and remote communities. They are sick, sometimes they infect other people in their communities and sometimes they die. What a tragedy that is for the communities and family members.
I hope the House will move beyond partisan rhetoric to talk about what a loss it is for those communities, what a tragedy it is for the young men and women who simply do not get to live the life that most of us would expect.
Unfortunately, when we talk about HIV-AIDS it does not just stop there. The Lung Association of Canada has some statistics on this. It talks about the fact that worldwide the majority of AIDS patients die of tuberculosis.
Unfortunately, when we talk about HIV-AIDS it does not just stop there. The Lung Association of Canada has some statistics on this. It talks about the fact that worldwide the majority of AIDS patients die of tuberculosis. What happens is the immune system is depressed and then people contract these other opportunistic infections. One of its statistics says that first nations, Inuit and Métis people have a tuberculosis rate 30 times higher than the rate of other people born in Canada.
In a story in the Calgary Herald, in November 2007, the headline is:
TB on reserves a national scandal, same old studies produce the same old answers
Another study, another invitation to inertia. The plague of tuberculosis in Canada's First Nations communities has been studied to death. Every study repeats the truth of the preceding one—that crowded, unsanitary housing conditions on reserves are a breeding ground for tuberculosis, which afflicts the aboriginal population at much greater rates than non-aboriginal Canadians.
There is much more in this report, but I want to give a couple of numbers. In its latest report the CTC noted that the TB rate in aboriginal communities was rising. In 2003 it was 22 per 100,000 and in 2005 it was 27 per 100,000. In 1999 these rates were four times the national average and about as much as 20 times the rates of non-aboriginals.
Further on in the report, it talked about the fact that a lot of the contributing factors to tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS infection was poverty. It is a stark reality that many first nations, Inuit and Métis people do not have access to adequate housing, to adequate drinking water, to education and they certainly do not have access, with that kind of background, to sufficient economic opportunities.
In the study that came out about Vancouver East, I will quote from a news release from the Friday, February 1 Globe and Mail by André Picard. He says:
However, Ms. Barney, a member of the Lillooet Titqet Nation, said the real explanation for the higher rates of HIV-AIDS infection goes beyond these daily interactions. It has its roots in poverty, unemployment, lack of housing and dislocation that plague many aboriginal communities and send young people to the streets of Vancouver seeking solace.
The article goes on to talk about the culturally appropriate services are required to aboriginal IV drug users including housing, rehabilitation facilities and health services.
This is not simply a Vancouver East problem. What we have seen again in report after report is that the rate of poverty in first nations, Métis and Inuit communities puts many of these communities in third world conditions. We also know there is something called the social determinants of health. The Lung Association of Canada, and I want to thank it for the good work on this, lists a number of social determinants of health which include the kinds of things we are talking about, housing, income, access to good jobs. All these factors affect the health of people.
The Assembly of First Nations has a campaign on eradicating first nations poverty. It talks about the utter poverty in many first nations communities. It talks about the fact that in applying the United Nations human development index, it would rank first nations communities 68th among 174 nations. Canada has dropped from first to eighth place due in part to the housing and health conditions in first nations communities.
There are solutions and certainly part of it is money. The Canadian Aboriginal Aids Network has put together recommendations toward a good practices approach. It talks about community based approach. It talks about holistic care treatment and support. It talks about community awareness. It talks about high risk group counselling. It talks about adequate screening for people who have HIV-AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It talks about a very important harm reduction strategy. It talks about healthy sexuality. It talks about sustainable funding resources and advocacy.
In this day and age it is a very sad comment that the member for Vancouver East had to request an emergency debate on this matter. It is a very sad comment that we have literally turned our backs, over generations, to the poverty in first nations, Métis and Inuit communities.
I am on the aboriginal affairs committee. We have had reports on education and housing. Currently we have a crisis in education for first nations, Métis and Inuit. We know education is one of the tools that can lift people out of poverty.