Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, everyone in this committee, for inviting me. I am Natan Obed, and I am the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national representation organization for Canada's 65,000 Inuit. The majority of Inuit live within Inuit Nunangat. This is o

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In relation to harm reduction and safe drug supply, in our Inuit Nunangat communities we just don't have the resources for a lot of those types of facilities to exist. There are a lot of challenges from not having harm reduction principles employed within our homeland. For urban

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm sorry. I don't have a specific response in relation to that question. I can get that information, along with the other promised information, to the committee.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We continue to have ongoing conversations with Health Canada, with the Public Health Agency, Indigenous Services, and the four public governments that service Inuit Nunangat communities. Around testing, we have a structure called the Inuit public health task group, where chief

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The access to connectivity is one that is particularly acute during COVID: the ability to hold Zoom meetings or Microsoft Team meetings, any of these sorts of things. We had our AGM and board meeting last week at ITK. We had certain people who couldn't participate because the con

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I agree with Vice-President Chartrand. In the second round of the community support fund, we would have preferred that more of that portion had gone directly through in the way in which the first allocation of funding did, which was through the self-determination processes among

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. Sorry about that. There have been some unexpected positive consequences of the pandemic. One is that more people have been on the land in the last six to eight months and therefore have been providing to the communities more of their country foods than generally in the most

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's been interesting. Personal relationships matter a lot within the federal government, no matter what you might think about the idea of a bureaucracy. We have great relationships with departments like ESDC, Indigenous Services, Infrastructure Canada, the Public Health Agency,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thanks for the question. The reduction of air travel has been universal across Inuit Nunangat. There are many restrictions now for anybody to travel. There are two-week quarantine isolation requirements for much of the four regions of Inuit Nunangat. Also, a lot of the planes th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The major considerations are following public health protocols. All of the messaging has reached our communities around how to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but if you have 12 people living in a three-bedroom home, if you have people sleeping in shifts, and if you have limited

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The funding has allowed Inuit Nunangat communities to respond to COVID-19 considerations, but in the coming months we are going to need different types of funding. As was discussed earlier, the economic fallout is severe within Inuit Nunangat. If you think about how many Inuit ar

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As I said in my opening remarks, applying an Inuit Nunangat policy lens to any of the COVID-19 relief efforts goes a tremendously long way in ensuring that Inuit can benefit from anything the federal government provides in support. A lot of our time over the summer was spent chas

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The way in which we make the best possible decisions around a COVID response is with data. Outside of Inuit Nunangat, we do not have any clear understanding of how many Inuit have contracted COVID-19 or the types of services they have received, and very little else about their he

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the biggest challenge is the access to supports and services—mental health services and addiction treatment centres. The decriminalization is something that goes hand in hand with policy across Inuit Nunangat. We still have dry communities in which alcohol isn't permitte

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  These scenarios are changing day to day. It's a U.S. manufacturer that provides this GeneXpert technology. There are, therefore, also some political considerations with regard to the availability of these cartridges in Canada and the number of these cartridges that come to Inuit