Mr. Speaker, I raised a question in the House a while back about child and maternal health for first nations, Métis and Inuit. It is no surprise that I did not find the answer to be adequate.
I am referring to a report from April 2009 of the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women's Health and the Prairie Women's Health Centre of Excellence. They have ably outlined the many problems with aboriginal maternal and child health in this country. I only have a couple of minutes, so I will only touch on a couple of points. They made 14 recommendations. I want to mention a couple of these recommendations before I get to some of the data.
One of the recommendations was that an analysis be conducted as to the budget actually spent on the direct front-line delivery of aboriginal maternal and infant health programming, distinguishing federal program administration costs from what actually reaches the community.
They also recommended that incentives be investigated for retaining and recruiting trained workers in the communities; that they move to multi-year arrangements and more streamlined application reporting procedures; that they develop a matrix for gauging cultural success in their proposals based on criteria that the communities themselves determine; that Jordan's principle be implemented by all levels of government and that it be heralded as a best practice in child-centred care; and that a best practice be to move aboriginal midwifery forward toward the repatriation of birthing to aboriginal communities.
Those recommendations were based on very detailed research. What they did find was that the data in aboriginal communities is inadequate and incomplete. Their fear was that there is a real risk of understating and thus underserving the true need for maternal and child health programs.
I want to cite a couple of statistics. They say, for example, that the life expectancy of the Métis is unknown as are rates for infant mortality, low birth weight and types of cancers. They go on to say that the health issues and concerns of Métis communities, and in particular Métis women, have largely been ignored in health research and data policy and implementation.
They also say that although there is better health data for aboriginal infants, it is dated. Even in that dated material which goes back 10 years, the differences in live births for aboriginal versus non-aboriginal are significant. It is 8.0 per 1,000 live births compared to 5.5 per 1,000 live births for Canada as a whole. There are many more statistics in the report.
The final frightening statistic is that the rate of death from injuries is four times greater for aboriginal infants, and among preschoolers the rate is five times greater.
I ask the parliamentary secretary, how many of these recommendations that were put forward are actually being considered and being implemented? What are the costs associated with the implementation of some of these recommendations?