Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I just want to clarify my comment from earlier. The Department of Indigenous Services doesn't have a medical officer in Nunavut. The reason is that all of the health services, including public health services, are transferred to the Nunavut government. The Nunavut government has

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. I'll start by talking about our department's program, and then I'll hand over to Ms. Gideon so she can provide more details. There are no public health physicians from our department in Nunavut. To support Nunavut, we're working with the Public Heal

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Minister. We are working actively with the Public Health Agency of Canada as well as the indigenous communities, both off reserve and on reserve, together with the local public health department and the province. Of course, off reserve, the lead is the provi

Health committee  Regarding the infection control processes and measures as well as physical distancing inside the work environment, from a public health perspective, we would be supporting any community in order to maximize those measures. As for the shutdown of those facilities, it would be the

Health committee  Thank you for the question. At this moment, based on the information from the company, if everything goes well, we are expecting that by early May they will have a significant quantity of these rapid test kits produced in Canada and able to start being used in remote areas. We

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Currently in our nursing stations in all first nations on reserve there are swabs, and nurses are available to take samples from the nose and send them off to the provincial laboratory system. As you know, in each province there are guidelines on the

Health committee  Every day we get requests. As of yesterday, 570 shipments from the warehouse have been made in response to requests. On an average day, depending on the number of requests coming in, approximately 20 to 30 requests are waiting to be processed. We operate seven days a week. Some d

Health committee  Just to give you an idea, currently we have over a million gowns and close to a million gloves in our stockpile and, at this moment, more than 300,000 N95 masks. Those are just some examples. In addition to that, every time Canada receives a new shipment, part of that goes to the

Health committee  Since January, just to give you a magnitude of scale, approximately 160,000 gowns have been distributed, and just under 500,000 gloves have been distributed. Close to 200,000 surgical masks have been distributed. As for N95 masks, which are used for aerosol-generating procedures,

Health committee  Thank you. In the area of public health, our priority in the Government of Canada is to make testing available in remote communities. This is very important to us. Spartan Bioscience, which produces the rapid tests for Canada, doesn't yet have the test boxes because the plant i

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  To echo what Serge Beaudoin just said, the ITK together with NICO, jointly through the ICPC process, has drafted an Inuit food security strategy. They are hoping they will be able to finalize it later on this year with the opportunity of different departments trying to support th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Indeed, the lack of food or food insecurity is a major determinant of ill health. When a child is does not have enough food at home and is going to school with a growling stomach, can you imagine what happens to academic achievement, as well as predisposition to many diseases? We

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our department has no opening remarks, and we are open for questions.