Evidence of meeting #5 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was businesses.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:30 a.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
On a point of order, Chair, I'm not hearing anything.
11:30 a.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
I can't hear him. I see that he's speaking, but I can't hear him. Can anybody else hear him?
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
11:30 a.m.
The Clerk
Ms. Blaney, you could try switching the interpretation language to English and back to floor or vice versa.
11:30 a.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Carry on. I will ask them to deal with me.
Go ahead, Arnold.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
All right. Thanks, Rachel.
Thank you, Ms. Hopkins, for your testimony there.
I come from a riding in northern Alberta with 14 first nations. You can drive to all of them. They've put up blockades at the highways, and COVID has basically been kept out by doing that. I'm wondering about the schools. We've seen fairly broad strokes in school shutdowns in Alberta, which don't necessarily make sense in a community that has no COVID in it and that has a barricade at the end of the road. I'm just wondering what kinds of impacts there are on children and families when the schools get shut down.
11:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Thunderbird Partnership Foundation
As you can imagine, there is an impact. Parents worry about the education of their children, but they're balancing many things in that environment. They're balancing their ability to work, if they are working from home, and their Internet connection. That's the first point: Do they have a digital connection if they're working from home?
Communities have been able to sustain an environment with no COVID cases. They have done that by asking people to stay home and to limit their contacts outside the community. That's why they're able to maintain zero COVID cases.
I'll give you an example. My community is a very small community of about 575 people. We've been COVID-free until just recently, and now, in the small population, we have three COVID cases. Our borders have opened up, our kids have gone back to school, we're back in our offices and now we have to shut down.
Across the country, where services have opened up, their concern is about maintaining that safe barrier from COVID-19. The stress on families around whether their children are participating in education virtually is their ability to work at home and have good connectivity, while managing their children's education and helping their kids stay connected to education.
Many schools on reserve are not staffed solely by the people in the community. They rely on people from outside the community coming in daily to provide that education. In the 14 communities you mentioned that are all accessible by road, I would imagine it's the same case. In order for that school to operate and function, they would rely on people from outside the community coming in. That doesn't ensure that barrier from contact with COVID-19 cases.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
I am wondering if you could address some of the social impacts that come from the disruption of school and children being at home rather than going to school every day.
11:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Thunderbird Partnership Foundation
One of the greatest impacts is for parents who are worrying about the education of their children. If there is virtual education available, do they have digital capacity? That causes a lot of stress on the families who are trying to keep their kids in front of an iPad or a computer or a laptop and connected to a classroom. They are used to being on those devices probably for gaming and other kinds of social reasons, but for parents who are trying to work and support their children in maintaining their wellness, it's is a challenge.
I've heard from many families that their children have said, “If I have to continue education virtually next year, then I want to take the year off.” Parents are asking about home-schooling, because there's too much stress. We've heard this across the country in populations outside of first nations communities. It's about managing the wellness of children.
If you're on a screen like this and you have your hand up and you want to contribute and participate in the activity of the classroom and your teacher doesn't see you—or is responding to another person—then that youth, who might already have mental wellness challenges, goes to a place of feeling as if they're still not recognized, still not heard, and they withdraw. That child will then be less likely to engage in that virtual environment. Meanwhile, the teacher is doing all that is possible to manage a number of students, for kids who are participating and are required to check in with attendance being taken in the virtual environment.
For kids who are participating face to face in a school, it's the worry about how kids are being protected, the number of kids in the classroom and whether they are required to have personal protective equipment like face masks. Is that enforced? Are they able to have discussions in their classrooms with somebody who has the skills to respond to the worry and concerns? Smaller kids are having anxiety issues related to those concerns.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina
I have the same anxiety, trying to look for hands and keep everything on time.
Thank you, Ms. Hopkins.
We go now for six minutes to Adam van Koeverden.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Adam van Koeverden Liberal Milton, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much to the three witnesses today for their contributions and their testimonies. It's so important to hear directly from people who are working with the communities, and this is a really difficult time for everybody.
As we've been saying, COVID-19 has really exposed a lot of vulnerabilities, inequities and inequalities in our societies. I know that's front and centre for you guys. I just want to say thank you.
I'm joining you from Milton, which is on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, the Attawandaron, the Anishinabe, the Huron-Wendat and, more recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
My intervention today will focus on mental health. I would like to talk about mental health in the context of the $82.5 million that Minister Marc Miller announced in August, but beyond that as well. I got to do a little bit of sport for development work in my previous life as an athlete ambassador for various charities. I know the impact that sport, physical activity, recreation and that connection to the land and the natural environment—which I think is even more relevant in indigenous communities than southern communities—can have on children but also on those teaching, coaching and mentoring youth and people.
I'm just thinking about long-term and sustainable strategies to mitigate mental health and addiction issues and problems that exist in every community in Canada, which are maybe harder to reach right now because of isolation and the need to be apart.
I want to talk about and hear about any interventions that you find have worked, whether you think the $82.5 million will go far enough for the time being, and how we can really leverage the opportunities—or at least the potential—that sport, recreation and physical activity can have, not just for youth but for everybody in Inuit, first nations and Métis communities across the country.
Just so you guys don't have to choose, I'll go with Ms. Hopkins, Monsieur Cardinal and then Dr. Restoule, in that order.
11:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Thunderbird Partnership Foundation
One of the solutions that we have provided to create access to virtual services is that we've purchased a number of tablets that have capacity to save—they have SD cards—and minimal capacity for data connection via the Internet. We've distributed those tablets to treatment centres, which then distribute the tablets to their clients, sharing those tablets with people who use drugs, who are in recovery for drug addition or alcohol addition, or who are just contemplating accessing more services to support their mental wellness. Those tablets are distributed to people so that they have access.
We plan to pilot that with 100 tablets, but we had a request for 120 tablets. Those tablets are out in first nations communities in the hands of adults, youth and families who are seeking some kind of support and access to culture and to elders and cultural practitioners who can provide guidance.
The increases I reported through the Native Wellness Assessment measure are a direct response to those people having access to those tablets. That is small pilot test, and we anticipate that as we go further into the second wave, there might be more need for those kinds of devices. We certainly heard in the workforce wellness survey, as well as in our survey that measures or looks at opioids and methamphetamines in first nations communities, that they need greater capacity for digital access, devices and data. That's one workaround solution that has been meaningful, and, no, the $82.5 million is not enough.
Again, treatment centres and others have said that they need a way to sustain these innovations. Also, when their services get back to face-to-face, they're going to have to maintain both.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Adam van Koeverden Liberal Milton, ON
Thank you, Ms. Hopkins.
Mr. Chair, if I have any remaining time, I'd ask the two witnesses to respond.
11:40 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, First Peoples Wellness Circle
Thank you.
We've seen through our work with the mental wellness teams that there has been a lot of effort to give people access to cultural teachings and cultural activities.
We've seen a shift to being able to have people go on medicine walks. People can stay in their homes and watch somebody do a medicine walk, or they're able to organize and say, “We're going on a medicine walk today and we need you to go to this part of the community and look for these types of medicines.” Everybody is given an opportunity to pick the medicines and to come home, harvest them and move them into a tea or something that can help with health and wellness.
We've also seen that mental wellness teams have gone out and picked the medicines, dropped them at people's doors and then helped them to harvest them. Getting people on the land to harvest and to look for things, and then helping them to learn some cultural teachings around that, has been really helpful.
We've also seen that mental wellness teams have encouraged people to go outside and do cultural practices. For example, one community talked about having people go out on their front steps at certain times of the day with their drums and sound the drums and, if they wanted to, to sing. They talked about how sounding the drums was really soothing and supportive to people. It made them feel safe and helped them to feel connected to other people in the community when they were feeling disconnected.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina
Thank you.
Madam Bérubé, you have the floor for six minutes. Go ahead.
11:40 a.m.
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I also thank all the witnesses in attendance today, November 17.
I am on the Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou territory, which includes 11 Anishinabe and Cree communities.
Mr. Cardinal, you mentioned in your presentation a survey that shows that indigenous businesses are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in comparison with the rest of businesses in Canada.
Can you give us more details on that survey and its findings?
11:40 a.m.
As an Individual
The taskforce carried out that survey of 900 indigenous businesses in the spring. The survey is available online, including on the website of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.
At that point, it was the end of the first wave, and the survey found that COVID-19 had had negative repercussions on nearly all of the businesses surveyed. In fact, nine out of 10 businesses said they were affected: 56% of them said they suffered very negative repercussions, and 35% of them said they suffered fairly negative repercussions. That's huge. What's more, that was only in the spring. The survey also showed that one-third of indigenous businesses said they had closed offices or facilities and that nearly one indigenous business in five had already decided to close its operations.
This survey clearly shows the major impact of COVID-19. We will redo the survey to monitor the evolution of this second wave over time.
11:45 a.m.
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
You also told us about the Indigenous Business COVID-19 Response Taskforce and its database initiative.
How many businesses are registered, and how does the database work?