Island Lake rehab centre no longer in the works

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This article was published 23/08/2022 (1488 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Years after promising the First Nations of Island Lake a meth rehab centre, Ottawa has decided the project is not a priority for government funding.

“At this time, all funding resources have been committed to other priority projects,” Indigenous Services Canada spokeswoman Maddy Warlow wrote.

“The department has a consistent and transparent ranking system to address pressing needs in First Nation communities, and resources are allocated accordingly.”

Island Lake’s 11,000 residents live on four First Nations, accessible by flights and winter roads.

The area was evacuated in 2017 due to wildfires, and nearly all residents were flown 475 kilometres to Winnipeg.

Locals have testified to Parliament that the city’s drug dealers offered free samples to get people hooked on meth, and proceeded to smuggle the drug into the community when everyone returned home.

Band leaders claim they had an inadequate response from Ottawa when they asked for mental health services. Families held walks to Winnipeg and then to Parliament Hill in 2018 to press their point.

The contingent made national news at the end of their 3,000-kilometre walk in May 2018, when the federal Liberals promised support.

In August 2020, a departmental steering committee accepted the community’s feasibility study for a treatment centre, to be located at Red Sucker Lake First Nation.

Since then, community officials have been left wondering when the Island Lake Anishininew Nation Regional Addictions Program will actually get underway.

The department says it undertakes an annual “review of all capital project priorities and resources available for Manitoba First Nations,” that sorts out the best way to allocate funding, and that it took the treatment centre’s preliminary cost estimate into consideration.

In recent years, some of the four bands have reported an uptick in youth suicides. Chiefs have argued that underfunded housing and social programs have led to catastrophic COVID-19 outbreaks, which caused the military to be deployed to the region twice.

The area’s MP, New Democrat Niki Ashton, says the Trudeau government needs to commit funding that matches its promises to Indigenous communities.

“It’s appalling that the federal government continues to ignore the health needs, including mental health needs, of people in the Island Lake region,” said Ashton, the NDP MP for Churchill–Keewatinook Aski.

She said the area appears to have the largest population of any Manitoba region without a hospital, let alone an addictions centre.

“To hear this isn’t a priority, when it so clearly is, is a slap in the face to First Nations in the Island lake region, and I expect better from the minister and the department,” she said.

“It’s incumbent on the federal government to track with the reality, that there is a mental-health and addictions crisis and it’s only been exacerbated under COVID.”

In 2021, the department rolled out a handful of detox units, which are rooms set up to help wean people off drugs, in the community. During the pandemic, the band converted them into isolation units. The department has set up tele- and video-counselling for substance users, but band officials say that doesn’t address the communities’ huge need.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca