Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  [Witness speaks in Mohawk] I'm very proud to be here, and I'd like to share with you our long-term care concerns. First of all, from Akwesasne's perspective, we understand fully well that the Canadian health care system is fragmented—some provincial stuff, some federal stuff.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'd like to also share too, Mr. Amos, that one of the things we look at is culture as the foundation of our health development. For long-term care, we believe in capacity building, having our own members to be able to carry on that activity. Normally one of the things that we fi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Traditional medicine and traditional healing approaches are more extensive, and you get more value out of those than you do if you were to look at simply a dollar sign. The reality is that we need to socialize and make sure there's stimulation of our elders to ensure that they ca

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We believe in partnerships. If we have an issue, we are going to identify that issue. We're going to find out the trigger; why is this problem arising? Then we're going to look at the basis: what causes it? You gave a good example when you described that everybody in Saskatoon w

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Every province provides funding in a different manner. If you're on the Quebec side the charge is a $125 flat rate to leave, and it's $1.85 or $1.90 per kilometre to get to the closest health facility.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Maybe I can just follow with the ambulance. The most important thing I want the committee to know is that last year we had 156 ambulance calls in our community, and 48% of them were for elders 65 and over. I challenge everybody here to ask those ambulances that service the com

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Most of the time if you speak to an epidemiologist and people who are looking from a research perspective, research dollars are usually very generalized in the number of years they can do it. The last time anything was done specifically on diabetes for first nations, I think it

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the very fortunate things about our community is that of our five physicians, two are first nations and they understand the language. They do home visits as well, along with our home care nurses. We need to do this: if there is a problem and they're starting to burn out,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Under the national assisted living guidelines, five levels of care were identified by the federal government back in 1983. Those indicate that type I care is the support of nursing care for under 90 minutes a day. Type II is for under two and a half hours per day. At type III, it

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Most of the time, if there are services that are provided, we have to work on agreements with the American side. Our ambulance services have the capacity—and we have served in the past—to support the services provided on the American side. All of our staff are certified in both N

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, 12,500.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No. In the United States, they are covered under their own tribal system, so in fact they have their own governance system, whereas Chief Benedict is responsible for the entire Canadian portion. There is a separate portion. Chief Benedict?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  What we see right now is that this is going to be the trend. I don't think it's going to be as fast as the Canadian system, but the reality is that we've been very fortunate multi-jurisdictionally. We're hoping to develop something sort of like what we have with our public health

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  What I'd like to do is look at the indicators of the major issues in dealing with our elders. With the ambulance, where we do have a good system of components, the bulk of our elders are dealing with two major issues: respiratory and abdominal pain. If you think about these two c

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we do.