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Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
I saw a news report on "state of emergency" yesterday. What exactly would that entail?
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Access to emergency funding to support programmes that deal with things like counselling, housing, education, addition treatment, etc. These are things First Nations leaders have been demanding for years from upper governments but haven't received them.
Thunder Bay itself, just like First Nations, has plans in place to actually mitigate these problems, but the money isn't there to implement them. The upper governments give us money for art workshops and statues but no money to make rivers safer or add lights to dangerous alleyways. It's just not a priority for them. A state of emergency kind of holds their feet to the fire and forces them to react, and gives the city a few extra tools they can use to deal with problems.
The city was last under a state of emergency for several years after flooding in 2012 disabled our sewage treatment plant and contaminated over 1,200 homes with combined sewer and storm water.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
At some point, istm, they are going to need to develop a system of secondary education for kids on the reserves that does not involve moving them to the city. How many kids in total are in the TB situation? I take it there are not enough of them to justify a "collective" secondary school at one of the First Nations?
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There is already a secondary school in Sioux Lookout that many go to, but not every community has a connection to that facility. As for putting a single one in one of the First Nations: there's over 50 and they're all about the same size, pick one. Keep in mind that their flights only connect them to Thunder Bay, not each other.
One of the resolutions of the emergency education meeting this week was looking into moving the high school to a different community, the hard part is figuring out the logistics of it. The other hard part is cost.
First Nation education systems receive about 60% of the funding that provincial education systems receive, but their costs are much higher because they have smaller schools, supplies are costlier due to the distance, and teachers cost more because they have to attract them to northern communities and only the most dedicated stick around more than a couple years. Most of their schools simply don't have the resources to go beyond grade 8 or 10. A few go up to 12, in the larger communities, but the high school in Thunder Bay still offers more and the city has a university and college. Despite this crisis, Thunder Bay has one of the most educated and most successful indigenous communities in Canada, and moving the school takes away the kids access to the opportunities that provides.
Distance education via internet could be a partial solution, with occasional trips to other centres for various aspects of coursework or training, but that involves setting up a lot of infrastructure. Not just establishing a way to deliver the curriculum and grade the work, but in many cases, simply giving the community access to reliable internet and providing computers to people who often can't afford one just so they can access the education. Some of those communities are either using satellite services to access internet, or are still using low speed dial-up or ADSL lines that don't have the capacity to provide a quality education through the internet.
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