The funding for aboriginal health service centres has an annual shortfall of $15 million and has not kept pace with the growing aboriginal population, says a senior policy analyst with the Association of Ontario Health Centres.
Scott Wolfe says the 10 aboriginal health centres across Ontario are funded by the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy (AHWS), a chronically under-funded provincial program designated to provide traditional and culturally appropriate health services for aboriginal people.
“AHWS has second-class status in Ontario when compared to similar parts of the health system for non-aboriginal people,” said Wolfe.
Wolfe says AHWS is funded by the provincial government and the money comes every five years. Money is then distributed to the 10 aboriginal health access centres.
Ottawa’s Wanabo Centre for Aboriginal Health is one of them.
“It’s a real challenge to meet the demands and the needs of our clients when we don’t have the proper funds,” said Carlie Chase, program director of Wabano.
Wabano serves 4,200 aboriginal people in its health clinic and an additional 2,000 in other cultural or social programs at the centre.
Chase says Wabano partners with a few dozen organizations, such as Centretown Community Health Centre, but it is the only Aboriginal Health Access Centre in Ottawa.
Wabano has witnessed a 400 per cent increase in the number of its clients since it was founded 10 years ago, according to Chase. But she says the funding has not kept pace.
“It (funding) comes every five years, meaning every five years, we have to prove why we should be here,” Chase said. “Funding can be pulled at any point in time.”
Wabano provides the same health care as community health centres do: doctors, nurses, health practitioners, walk-in clinics and even social programming.
But community health centres receive guaranteed funding from Health Canada, Chase says.
Chase says a community health centre, in theory, would be serving the aboriginal people and anyone else, but in reality aboriginal people usually are left out from community health services.
“Why would you go into a place that’s going to make you feel badly about yourself, where you don’t see people who look like you, that are not reflective of your own culture?” she asked.
There are 1,172,290 aboriginal people in Canada according to 2006 Census data released by Statistics Canada last month.
But Chase says she thinks the population is larger than that because the census did not count homeless aboriginals.
“There is a huge homeless population in Ottawa, of which anywhere between 50 to 75 per cent are aboriginal,” said Chase.
Chase says Wabano estimates that about 35,000 aboriginal people are living in Ottawa – 15,000 more than the Statistics Canada estimates. She also says these people are in great need of health services.
To help meet these health service needs, the Association of Ontario Health Centres submitted policy briefs to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care for the last three years and formally spoke to the provincial government about the second-class status funding, says Wolfe.
It has also asked the Ontario government to continue to pressure the federal government for appropriate transfers to aboriginal communities three weeks ago,
Federal Health Minister Tony Clement announced that the federal government is investing $9.7 billion to improve the quality of life for Inuit in Canada.
The federal money will fund eight Inuit-specific health services projects, an Inuit health database project and mental awareness promotion project.
But Wolfe doubts the impact of these initiatives.
“They are good in spirits, but they (aboriginal health centres) are so under-funded at the whole organizational level that it’s difficult for them to manage all of these projects and pilot funds,” he said.
Wolfe says he doesn’t think the federal and provincial governments have kept pace with the changing dimensions of aboriginal communities across the country.
Late last month, the Association of Ontario Health Centres submitted a report to the Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs regarding this year’s provincial budget.
The report recommended an annual funding increase of $14.6 million for Aboriginal Health Access Centres, beginning this year.
Wolfe says Ontario’s current aboriginal health services can only reach 25 per cent of the aboriginal population in the province.