Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I do agree with our counterpart here as well. Provincial and federal standards need to be changed to meet the needs of our indigenous people. I'll give you an example. We just built a brand new $7-million health centre in our community. Already, I'm full to capacity. This build

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As to Jordan's principle, yes, I'm in agreement. Even when you look at children with disabilities, when they reach the age of 18, what's going to happen to them? If Jordan's principle is providing tons of support to the family because of the jurisdictional barriers around their c

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Sure. As I said, we began this process more than 10 years ago because we face the same issues as all first nations. We don't have data. A lot of the data we were collecting for Health Canada or INAC—I'm sorry that I don't know the new names—was related to the accountability of fu

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's true. We do have.... I didn't bring any of my documentation with relation to that. Often the challenges we face in first nations communities are around the availability of data to support our stories. With the data linkage project we did in Nova Scotia, the data then began

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Also, in Nova Scotia we have obtained support and resolution from all the leadership for the establishment of a Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq health authority. We have informed the current political government in Nova Scotia. They have been advised by our leadership that we are proceeding

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's discriminatory.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll just introduce myself. My name is Sharon Rudderham and I'm the health director of Eskasoni First Nation. Eskasoni is the largest first nation or Mi'kmaq community east of Montreal, in Nova Scotia. It has a population of 4,500 people. Half of our population, about 2,200, are