First Nation puzzled why it’s getting medical tents

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This article was published 07/05/2020 (2158 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — They didn’t ask for it, they lack the staff to use it, and they are afraid it could spread the coronavirus. Nevertheless, Ottawa plans to bestow a set of medical tents from Newfoundland upon a remote Manitoba reserve.

Bureaucrats won’t say how they decided this or how much they spent, citing national security during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Paternalism is evident in the way that this process has been carried out,” said Chief Lorna Bighetty of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation.

Her community, known as Pukatawagan, got a strange phone call in mid-April from a company planning to bid on a federal contract to provide medical tents.

That’s the first time the First Nation, 700 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg, heard about the contract.

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) awarded the contract last week to Dynamic Air Shelters, a Newfoundland company, which told the local CBC station it will provide nine medical units.

That’s how Pukatawagan leaders learned of the shipment, and they still lack any details.

The band council said it would much rather Ottawa pay a small amount to help them retrofit their nearly completed youth centre into a temporary quarantine space.

The community doesn’t want to seem ungrateful or lose the tents it’s been offered.

Yet band councillors are perplexed, and aren’t sure they have the right staff to use the equipment.

They’re also afraid of outside contractors bringing the coronavirus into their community, which is so far free of any positive tests.

“It is deeply concerning that the federal government is not listening to First Nations about what they need when it comes to COVID-19, and are instead sending in materials that they didn’t ask for,” said the region’s NDP MP Niki Ashton.

ISC Minister Marc Miller was not made available for an interview Thursday.

Public Services and Procurement Canada spokeswoman Michèle LaRose wrote Thursday that ISC asked for “medical, isolation and accommodations shelters to be delivered urgently to remote Indigenous communities,” but couldn’t immediately list which places are on that list.

“In this instance, a national-security exception was invoked and, as a result, this Request for Proposals was not published,” wrote LaRose, who said the national-security exemption applies to all federal procurement related to COVID-19.

“Such solicitation documents are not publicly available,” wrote LaRose.

Federal officials have been reluctant to disclose where personal protective equipment is located and how many masks and gloves Ottawa has, as this could reveal vulnerabilities in the health-care system and drive up costs in bidding.

Ashton said that when it comes to medical tents, “there’s no reason that should be seen as a national-security issue.”

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs was “blindsided” by the decision, which it learned about through media reports.

“This is yet another example of the lack of respect for First Nations in Manitoba, as demonstrated by the unilateral awarding of this contract by the central government in Ottawa,” Grand Chief Arlen Dumas wrote in a Monday statement.

Dynamic CEO David Quick wasn’t aware of the local response, but said his company is glad to have business, and wants to assist those who need it.

“We are very fortunate to help,” he said. “We’re super busy trying to deliver things (…) there is probably a lot more work they’re doing.”

Pukatawagan had never requested these facilities, though the Cross Lake and Norway House reserves, some 275 kilometres southeast, asked Ottawa in March for a joint field hospital and their requests were declined.

Island Lake, which was hard hit by H1N1 in 2009, has long asked for medical staging areas.

Bureaucrats stressed the Pukatawagan project is not a field hospital, which would require sophisticated medical devices. Instead, they are “mobile health-infrastructure units” used to test, screen and isolate patients.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca