Health Canada’s first annual report on the health of Canadians has identified Aboriginal communities as being among those most at risk. The report stated that Aboriginal communities continue to lag behind the rest of Canada "on virtually every measure of health and every health condition," and recommended a number of possible remedies to address the problem. But Aboriginal Health advocates say that Canada is still a long way from achieving past goals to improve the problem.

According to the Health Canada report, Aboriginal Communities have a higher infant morality rate, a higher suicide rate, and a significantly lower life expectancy than the rest of Canada.

Statistics Canada recently reported that “people living in Northern and remote regions of Canada, many of whom are Aboriginal, have life expectancies more in line with developing countries than with other Canadians.”

Health Canada has recommended several measures to improve health in Aboriginal communities, including encouraging more people from within the communities to be the health care providers, and incorporating more traditional aboriginal healing methods into health care.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation has worked for years to address issues of healthcare and counseling in Native and Inuit communities. Executive Director Mike Degagne says that the foundation’s work in “dealing with the historic trauma of sexual abuse within residential schools” has had a tremendous impact.

The NGO has also helped fund 1300 community-based projects in Aboriginal communities last year which employ locals, fulfilling one of Health Canada’s recommendations.

The foundation was established in 1998 as a response to a 1996 Royal Commission report on Aboriginal health. It is scheduled to end operations within two years, but DeGagne is skeptical that it will be able to finish its work so soon. He insists that Aboriginal communities are nowhere near meeting some of the goals laid out in the 1996 report.

Hugh Armstrong, a professor at Carleton University's school of Social Work, says he is skeptical of the Health Council report on Aboriginal health. Even though Canada has one of the best Health care systems in the world, he says Aboriginal healthcare is "horrendous and a scandal because of the changes we've imposed on Aboriginal communities over the years."

Armstrong says that there have been ongoing efforts to blend traditional healing and Western medicine, but that "there aren't enough healthcare workers in [Aboriginal] communities" to make the idea effective.

The Health Canada report also recognized that the causes for the disparity between the health of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians go beyond health care alone. Instead, health indicators such as infant mortality rates and life expectancy are influenced by a number of factors, including socio-economic conditions, health behaviors, and even geography.

The report gives some examples of why the disparities exist, including the fact that only 33% of Aboriginal student's complete high school compared to 52% of non-Aboriginal Canadians. Aboriginal communities have an average unemployment rate of 19%, compared with a national rate of 7%.

Health care alone is "powerless" to change the lives of Aboriginal men who die nine years younger than Canadian men, to reduce the suicide rates in Inuit communities or the different diseases such as diabetes or tuberculosis affecting different aboriginal groups.

The solution, according to the Health Canada report, is to "engage sectors beyond health to contribute to reducing the gap."

Jean Crowder, NDP health critic and MP from Nanaimo-Cowichan riding of British Columbia, isn't impressed with the Federal government's current 1.3 billion dollars transfer payments to improve conditions in Aboriginal communities.

"We are not making inroads into Aboriginal health because there is no accountability and money just isn't going where it should," she says.

Crowder is familiar with the challenges facing Aboriginal communities. Her riding includes the Cowichan band, which suffers from chronic housing shortage and 80% unemployment rates. The irregular ferry service in the area also means that access to doctors is often nearly impossible when it is needed.

Crowder suggests that we “must focus on capacity building and infrastructure and learn to work with the Aboriginal community using traditional ways of healing, while insisting on targets and benchmarks."

The Health Canada report acknowledges that transportation costs eats up significant proportion of government funding allocated to Aboriginal communities. "These resources would be better spent on services provided closer to home, by health professionals who understand local needs," states the report.

In order to achieve this, Health Canada recommends strategies to encourage Aboriginal youth to pursue careers in medicine.

The report says the 2004 Ten Year plan First Ministers accord earmarked $700 million for Aboriginal health issues- $100 million to remedy the acute shortage of aboriginal health professionals.

The Health council of Canada will release a more detailed discussion on Aboriginal health in Spring of this year.