Mr. Speaker, first I would like to note that I will be sharing my time with the member for Oshawa.
Certainly as we look at the current situation that has prompted the emergency debate, we see it is horrifying, tragic, and to be quite frank, a very sad reflection on what is a shared failure by all levels of government and Canadians. I do appreciate the comment from the member for Timmins—James Bay and also the more recent question of whether this will be an Alan Kurdi moment, when we take what is a very tragic situation and finally start to see what are some significant and important improvements.
It is a deeply personal debate, and many of us have talked about our stories tonight and how suicide has impacted us or how we have intersected with it in our careers. I reflect back, and as a nurse I had maybe a year or two of experience under my belt when I ended up in an aboriginal community with not a lot of community experience. I was pretty good in a hospital, but I sure was not ready to be thrust into a community as a solo nurse. During that first week there were three suicides. I can just remember thinking, “Oh, my goodness”. The community was reeling and I actually did not have the capacity or the skills to deal with it, nor were the resources there. That was in the 1980s, and it does not sound as if things have changed all that much since that time.
First I want to look at the nurses, the community health workers, and the drug and alcohol workers who are in Attawapiskat or in communities across this country, who are doing yeoman's duty in terms of dealing with very difficult situations, often situations that are really beyond their skill level. Everyone in this House should acknowledge the very difficult situation that the people, including the RCMP, are having to deal with right now.
How are we going to make a difference, and how are we going to make a difference forever? First I want to say that in this debate we are there in terms of making positive movements to go forward. I want to say that, unlike the H1N1 crisis, where it was leveraged for some political points with some very difficult literature that was sent out, we are there with them. However, we also are going to say this. What is happening in La Loche if two months later people are saying they cannot get help on the phone? That is not good enough. We know that has to be changed. There are people struggling with PTSD, and suicide rates are going up.
I have to go back to the whole framework that health care providers take to some of these issues. First, I have to say that solutions need to be within the community and in partnership with the community. However, we are always looking at a number of different levels of dealing with these emergency crises in communities, and certainly we would go back to tertiary, secondary, and primary prevention. We perhaps need to reflect on what we as the Government of Canada are doing in partnership with our provinces and within a partnership with our indigenous communities and indigenous leaders in every single one of those areas. We cannot just say that we have sent in some counsellors.
I do want to give the Minister of Health credit. From what I have heard of the current situation in Attawapiskat, it sounds as if there are some great resources there in a tertiary kind of model, people who are there supporting the community, whether psychologists, psychiatrists, or nurses. It sounds as if the government has deployed a relatively rapid response to that current situation. I do commend the government on that piece, but I am concerned to hear that two months later in La Loche that support is not there anymore. That sort of tertiary kind of prevention is not just a week, not a couple of days, but it is something that goes into a few months.
I am sure both the ministers have that same kind of framework when they look at how we are going to approach the secondary prevention element of it. There was a very intriguing photograph that I saw, and apparently it was done by the children of Attawapiskat, depicting what they need to help them in their community.
There were simple measures the children of the community asked for, recognizing that there was a crisis. They asked for recreation programs and things that many of our children take for granted. There was a board with three photographs that were powerful because it they showed what the children said they needed to help life in their community become a little better.
We can call it many things, but what is most important is primary prevention, a new relationship, how we are going to solve the problems of 150 years. I hear that 28 years ago there was the same debate. Frankly, the progress we have made is not what anyone should be proud of.
However, I hope we do not look at everything as doom and gloom, because I look at some of the things that I was watchful for in the 1980s and I have seen some important progress. I will take mental health as an example.
Mental health used to be in the dark, but look at Bell Let's Talk or the Mental Health Commission of Canada. We have resources out there that now have structure in place, and we need to take those resources like the Mental Health Commission of Canada because it has expertise in mental health. We have communities with expertise in who their communities are and what those communities need. We need to start to marry them.
However, more important is the fundamental issue of poverty and economic opportunity. At the end of the day, perhaps these other areas have to be dealt with, but we need to create that future that is so important.
I am going to focus in on that particular piece. The government has some plans, and where the plans make sense, we do support it. I have to say that moving back from the First Nations Financial Transparency Act is a terrible disservice to band members and community members, because that is one way they can hold their leadership to account when dollars come to the communities for recreation and education. The Department of Indian Affairs cares, but the parents of the children care more. They want to see that the money for health care and education is going where it is supposed to. That is a critical step in how we shine the light for communities to look at their leadership and what it is doing.
In the budget, the government focused on education because it is critical. An area I thought was lacking was economic opportunity and equity partnerships. In British Columbia there is a group saying to please backstop a loan so that they can actually become a partner in some of the natural resource opportunities.
In conclusion, I believe everyone's heart is in the right place. We commit to working toward solutions and, if those solutions are not there, everyone will be hearing from us.
