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ITK welcomes PM's $700 million prescription

"What we are seeking is the same standard of living as other Canadians"

JIM BELL

Canada's political leaders may be badly divided on how to fix the country's health care system, but there's one issue that unites them all: the need to improve the health of aboriginal Canadians, including Inuit.

Prime Minister Paul Martin promised this past Monday to spend $700 million in new money over the next five years for aboriginal health care, at a special aboriginal health gathering held before the start of this week's two-and-a-half-day first ministers conference on health care in Ottawa.

The federal money that Martin announced this week is divided into three parts:

• $200 million for a new program called the Aboriginal Health Transition Fund, aimed at finding new ways of adapting existing services to better meet the needs of aboriginal people;
• $100 million for an "aboriginal health human resources initiative" aimed at helping pay the cost of training more aboriginal people in health professions, and to recruit and retain health workers who serve aboriginal people;
• $400 million for a long shopping-list of preventative programs, including: a national aboriginal youth suicide strategy; more money for maternal and child-health programs; expansion of the aboriginal diabetes initiative; more money for the aboriginal head-start program.

Martin said the money will be spent in a "flexible" way, reflecting the varying needs and cultures of Canada's aboriginal peoples.

"We're not talking here about a one-size-fits-all approach to aboriginal health reform. The needs of the Inuit of Nunavut are not the same as the needs of Métis living in Winnipeg," he said.

Details on how this money will be divided, and how much would flow to the Nunavut government, and to health boards in Nunavik, Labrador and the Inuvialuit region of the Western Arctic, still have to be worked out.

Martin's announcement won unanimous support from provincial, territorial and aboriginal leaders.

Jose Kusugak, the president of Inuit Tapirisat Kanatami, whose remarks were broadcast nationally in Inuktitut, and then in English, said the announcement is a "very positive step."

But he reminded first ministers that the health of Canada's 45,000 Inuit is directly tied to housing, education and economic development.

"All the doctors, nurses and medication in the world won't improve our lives unless health care is addressed as part of the bigger social and economic picture," Kusugak said. "We believe there must be fundamental social change."

Kusugak said that although a proposal from the premiers to have Ottawa run a national pharmacare program was a big media issue, Canada's Inuit need help with "basic realities" of their lives.

Kusugak pointed out that more than half of all Inuit live in overcrowded conditions, leading directly to the spread of tuberculosis and respiratory infections among children.

Referring to a recent controversy in Ottawa where a emergency patient died after an ambulance was delayed for about 20 minutes, Kusugak said it's normal for people in the Arctic to wait for as long as eight to 12 hours for emergency medevac aircraft.

And unlike southern Canada, where people take it for granted that they can get to see a doctor whenever they wish, in the Arctic only four of every 10 people are able to see a doctor in any given year, Kusugak said.

As he often does at public gatherings, Kusugak showed the first ministers a large reproduction of ITK's logo, which contains a representation of Canada's four Inuit land claim settlement areas and a representation of a maple leaf, symbolizing Inuit loyalty to Canada.

"What we are seeking is the same standard of living as other Canadians, no more, and certainly no less," he said.

Kusugak and other national aboriginal leaders attended a provincial premier's meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake last July, where they briefed premiers on the sorry state of health care among aboriginal peoples.

"What we heard about the state of aboriginal health was more than disturbing. It was devastating," Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario, said this week when he described what he learned at that gathering.

Kusugak said, however, that he's encouraged that the federal government now recognizes the specific needs of Inuit, referring to a decision earlier this year to create an Inuit secretariat within the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

Sitting behind Kusugak, as part of the Inuit delegation, were Mary Palliser, the new president of Pauktuutit; Franco Buscemi of the National Inuit Youth Council; Larry Gordon of the National Inuit Committee on Health; and Rhoda Grey, ITK's health policy advisor.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest described how the James Bay land claim agreement makes the Quebec provincial government responsible for funding health care in the Nunavik region, but he didn't talk about the huge deficits that the Nunavik Regional Health and Social Services Board has run up in recent years.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams told first ministers about a recent trip that he made to the Inuit and Innu communities of northern Labrador, praising the overworked nurses who provided health care in that region.

In a brief speech, Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik repeated what he's said many times before at similar gatherings, reminding first ministers that 85 per cent of Nunavut's population are aboriginal people.

Okalik said Nunavut's issues include the training of Inuit to work in health professions and the need to develop midwifery programs.

But Okalik and the other two territorial premiers said little about their desire to have Ottawa pay the full cost of medical travel for northern residents, an idea endorsed earlier this year by provincial premiers.

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