Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll just say that we were actually able to provide services to children who would have normally relied on services being provided in school, and that would be the same with respect to food for those vulnerable families. We were also able to provide some virtual mechanisms for fa

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Very quickly, it's just to say that the Inuit child first initiative right now is an interim approach. We are committed to working with the National Inuit Committee on Health on an approach that will meet the needs of Inuit across Inuit Nunangat. We are consistently approving r

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We've implemented emergency contracts that can be used to provide additional nursing staff. These contracts also apply to Quebec. We've also asked for volunteers from [inaudible]. They include volunteers who can also work in the Quebec region. We haven't had to use those resource

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll just say that we don't have a fixed funding envelope at the moment when it comes to providing additional public health supports to first nations communities in particular. We are receiving requests on a continuing basis from communities across the country for what they requi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll answer very briefly. In Nunavik, public health is the jurisdiction of the province's Regional Board of Health and Social Services. The same goes for Inuit people in the territories. In Nunatsiavut, Labrador, the Inuit government is responsible for public health, and it wor

Health committee  Maybe I can start and then I'll see if Dr. Wong or Chad have anything further to add. We have certainly offered public health expertise to help support planning and support these particular communities, as well, that are impacted or near to those operations to ensure that we can

Health committee  Telemedecine networks have already been operating for several years in northern Manitoba, Ontario and Alberta. Telemedecine plays a very important role in improving access to health care services. In fact, many communities are visited regularly by physicians, who now offer their

Health committee  Unfortunately, I don't have that particular response, but I certainly can say, from the announcement this weekend, over 6,000 first nations, Inuit and Métis businesses will benefit from those resources through the aboriginal financial institutions with which they already have pre

Health committee  I'm just going to see if my colleague Chad, who has not had a chance to intervene from our regional operations side, would like to jump in on this question.

Health committee  As indicated by my colleague Dr. Wong, we are already making testing available across nursing stations, health centres with treatment, any community that has primary health care capacity on site and wishes to have access to testing. We will support them with access to swabs, trai

Health committee  In terms of criteria, there were some parameters laid out in terms of the RFP itself, which essentially set the stage in terms of addressing unmet needs, areas where there were no other support systems available to organizations and specific needs that had emerged as a result of

Health committee  On the field hospital side, what we're doing now in remote and isolated communities is we have pre-positioned some mobile, temporary structures that can be deployed, flown into a community setting, which then can provide extra space for testing purposes or assessing individuals.

Health committee  We had representatives within the department with expertise in terms of social programs who led the coordination and the assessment of the proposals very quickly. Those recommendations were then brought to our deputy minister and will be brought to our minister. We expect decisio

Health committee  I can speak to that. Communities have looked at various options. Some are renting hotel rooms that are nearby or in the community, and we are helping them to pay for that. Some of them have repurposed other facilities that they have in the community in order to create those space

Health committee  These are mobile structures. I think they are very self-contained, and they would be used for medical assessments, testing and stabilization of patients. We have purchased a number of them directly, and we have also worked with a first nation partner in Saskatchewan to purchase s