What about Canada?

Posted on April 6, 2009 by aalex0

How about everyones thought about Canada’s inability – not only in giving 0.7 GPD as promised to international aid/development – but also the blatant inequalities within its own country? 

Just one example that came to mind…

The following are highlights from Health Canada’s A Statistical Profile on the Health of First Nations in Canada for the Year 2000 report.

  • The proportion of the First Nations population under 30 years of age was 61.1% in 2000, compared with 38.8% for the Canadian population in 2001.
  • In 2000, life expectancy at birth for the Registered Indian population was estimated at 68.9 years for males and 76.6 years for females. This reflects differences of 7.4 years and 5.2 years, respectively, from the Canadian population’s life expectancies.
  • In 2000, the First Nations birth rate was 23.4 births per 1,000 population — more than twice the Canadian rate. One in five First Nations births involved teenaged mothers; by contrast, far fewer births occurred among Canadian teen women (5.6%).
  • First Nations and Canadian populations had similar proportions of low birth weight births in 2000; however, almost twice as many First Nations babies were classified as high birth weight than in Canada as a whole.
  • Combined, circulatory diseases (23% of all deaths) and injury (22%) account for nearly half of all mortality among First Nations. In Canada, circulatory diseases account for 37% of all deaths, followed by cancer (27%). Unintentional injury and suicide were approximately 6% of all deaths among First Nations in Canada. 
  • The most common causes of death for First Nations people aged 1 to 44 years was injury and poisoning. Among children under 10 years, deaths were primarily classified as unintentional (accidental). For First Nations aged 45 years and older, circulatory disease was the most common cause of death.
  • Suicide and self-injury were the leading causes of death for youth and adults up to age 44 years. In 2000, suicide accounted for 22% of all deaths in youth (aged 10 to 19 years) and 16% of all deaths in early adulthood (aged 20 to 44 years). This compares with 20.4% in Canadian youth.
  • Motor vehicle collisions were a leading cause of death over all First Nations age groups.
  • In First Nations, potential years of life lost from injury was more than all other causes of death combined and was almost 3.5 times that of the Canadian rate.
  • Compared with the overall Canadian population, First Nations had elevated rates ofpertussis (2.2 times higher), rubella (7 times higher), tuberculosis (6 times higher) and shigellosis (2.1 times higher) for the year 2000.
  • The notification rate of genital chlamydia was almost seven times higher than the national rate, while the reported hepatitis C rate was one-third lower than the national rate.
  • The coverage rates for routine immunizations of 2-year-olds were lower among First Nations children for all antigens.
  • First Nations hospitalization rates were higher than the Canadian rates for all causes except circulatory diseases and cancers. Where the principal diagnoses were respiratory diseases, digestive diseases, or injuries and poisonings, the rates were approximately two to three times higher than their corresponding Canadian rates.
  • Diseases of the respiratory system accounted for 18.8% and 11.6% of all hospital separations for First Nations males and females, respectively, in 1997.
  • Injuries and poisonings accounted for 17.7% and 9.3% of all hospital separations for First Nations males and females, respectively, in 1997.
  • The 1997 First Nations smoking rate was reported to be 62%. In Canada, 24% of the population aged 15 years and older were smokers in 2000.
  • According to the 2001 Census of Canada, on-reserve Registered Indians rate lower than the general Canadian population on all educational attainment indicators, including secondary school completion rates, postsecondary education admissions and completion of university degrees. 
  • In 2000/01, 55.8% of homes on First Nations reserves were considered adequate. This was an increase of 12 percentage points from 10 years earlier. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) reports show that 15.7% were in need of major repairs, and 5.3% were no longer habitable or had been declared unsafe or unfit for human habitation. 
  • In 2000/01, 98.2% of First Nations homes were evaluated as having an adequatewater supply. In terms of water delivery, 60.9% of homes relied on water service provided by a piped pressurized system.

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5 Responses

  1. alishamawji, on April 7, 2009 at 4:25 pm said:

    Alex,

    Thanks for posting those stats, they’re shocking really. I think the whole situation is very contradictory. If you take a look at the “mission” of our country, or any other country for that matter, is first and foremost to improve the quality of life of its people. At the same time, we’ve committed to give .7% in aid to foreign countries. One side of the argument states that we should take care of human rights at home before tackling the rest of the world. But we should also consider that Canada will likely never be perfect, and we should be putting our dollar where it can have the most impact.

    The stats above which startle me the most are the ones regarding children and teenagers They are very severe and it indicates that improvements aren’t being made fast enough, although there are no comparison statistics of past generations. The other factor to consider is that the funds are sufficient but aren’t being used appropriately to address the issues above.

  2. suekimmy, on April 8, 2009 at 5:35 am said:

    Thanks Alex for putting up the stat. Sadly, I am not surprised by this since I have done some research on aboriginals in the past for another project, specifically on elder population. To add onto the stat, I’d like to mention the lack of aboriginal nursing homes in Canada, our own province having only one! This puts aboriginal seniors at risk for being stuck at home where the likelihood of injuries would increase dramatically, since most of them live alone on reserve (where the living conditions are sub-par to begin with). From a psychological standpoint, aboriginals (from children to seniors) are at risk from the mixture of the racism they face, cultural discontinuity, and painful historical background – and the cycle fails to cease but yet to produce generation effects to even 3 generations down from residential school sufferers.

    How should the government of Canada balance its dollar between aid within the country versus foreign aid? That is obviously a tough and complex question… The complexity of it is astounding as it is intricately associated with our own health and well-being. For instance, Canada attract numerous foreign medical workers (doctors, nurses, etc) from developing countries like philiphines and south africa, because we are running low on these workers especially for our aging population. However, these countries really need their own medical professionals to deal with crisis at home (such as HIV epidemic or malnutrition)! In this instance, what would be the right thing to do for government of Canada?

  3. elizabethvossen, on April 8, 2009 at 10:17 am said:

    Interesting post. It is clear that First Nations health lags significantly behind the rest of Canada and I do agree that more should be done, but I think one thing that we have to remember is that this situation is the result of both current and PAST events. We are unable to change events that happened in the past. Many First Nations health problems today are a result of colonization and contact. When First Nations were contacted their lifestyle changed dramaticially; new foods introduced by the Europeans were very different from the natural First Nations diets and had adverse health effects. Admittedly, more health interventions to improve First Naitions health should be taking place today, but I think its important to remember that those statistics are not only caused by current events, but are heavily influenced by past events also.

  4. jesspisarek, on April 8, 2009 at 3:42 pm said:

    There are HUGE health inequalities in health in Canada.
    And I think I’ve talked about them enough.
    But I wanted to remark on Elizabeth’s point. The issue is actually not genetics which is usually blamed for First Nation’s very high diabetes. Rather it’s the poverty, environment, and stress.

    Though much of this stress is from past events so you’re definitely right on the money with that point.

    I add an excerpt from an article Often some genetic
    http://www.davidsperorn.com/diabetes_chapter_1.htm

    True Causes of T2D

    The Pima are an extreme case, but they’re not unique. Many people with diabetes or pre-diabetes have experienced these kinds of injuries, although usually to a lesser degree. They are forced to live in an environment that causes disease, denied the social and psychological resources to resist the environment, and then they’re blamed for it.

    You or people you know may be in this situation. In the U.S.A. and Canada, most Native nations, most African-Americans and many Latino communities have faced such historical trauma. They have very high diabetes rates, as do some low-income Whites, and Southerners. T2D is often a very accurate gauge of where a group ranks in society. In general, the less power, money, and status a group has, the more T2D it will have.

    The same is true for individuals. Having less money leads to more diabetes. Less education leads to more diabetes. Unemployment seems to cause diabetes. All these things are aspects of having less power. Trauma can also rob you of power by damaging your self-confidence and taking away your sense of safety. Being an abused child or growing up in an insecure home, the death, jailing, or substance abuse problem of a parent, all these put you at risk for diabetes. Soldiering is often traumatic and predicts diabetes. Military veterans have more than twice the diabetes rates of non-veterans.

    The pathways from difficult lives to diabetes are still being explored, but stress and powerlessness play major roles. Stress is a major contributor to diabetes (and other conditions), and power is its most important treatment. Chronic stress contributes to diabetes directly through the action of stress hormones, and indirectly through its effect on behaviors. Stress is not evenly distributed through society – people with less power have more stress, and high rates of illness go along with high levels of stress. Chapter 2 explains these effects in detail.

    Stress isn’t the whole story, of course. The availability of healthy food and opportunities to exercise play a big role, as do motivational factors: self-confidence, positive goals and reasons to live. The effects of social environment on diabetes are far stronger than any known gene or behavior, as the experience of two tribes in Southern California will show.

  5. hollyenns, on April 9, 2009 at 8:19 pm said:

    Having done a class on Aboriginal studies, I feel totally inundated by stats that show the huge gap in health between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. Although I would agree that this desparity is totally unacceptable, I’m not sure that I would advocate for ‘interventions’ as a solution, either. I’ve heard many people argue that the First Nations are a very ‘underserved’ population, but all you have to do is take one look at Health Canada’s website and you’ll see that Aboriginal communities are often full of government programs, many of which have proven totally inneffective. I hate to say it, but I don’t think that government can really do a whole lot to solve these problems other than supporting grassroots initiatives that come from First Nations people themselves. I guess I agree with Liz’s point that so much of what se see today is the result of the brutality to which these people were subjected not all that long ago (the last residential school only closed in 1996, by the way). There is hope in all this, though. In my class this semester we got to hear from many Aboriginal leaders who are doing amazing things to promote healing in their communities. It’s these kind of people that are going to bring about lasting change.

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