It’s always an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre. It is an honour specifically to speak to this important motion. I want to give my thanks and heartfelt gratitude to my colleague, our deputy leader, Sol Mamakwa.

This motion was crafted after consultation with the Indigenous community. Their voices were centred at the table as they shared with him and everyone who would listen, and as they recorded the results, what the community needed in order for them to be healthy and well. There is no doubt in my mind that, as they shared those stories, they oftentimes had to peel back the layers of pain and reveal their vulnerabilities of what they didn’t have access to. And we know for sure that this is probably one of the most important issues gripping our province today: the lack of high-quality access to health care for the Indigenous communities, communities living in the north and fly-in and remote areas. Indigenous people suffer and experience disproportionately high levels of maternal and infant mortality, malnutrition, cardiovascular illness, HIV/AIDS and other diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.

My own riding of Toronto Centre has one of the largest urban Indigenous populations in Ontario, and that means that it is home to vibrant Indigenous communities and service providers who are doing incredible work with very little resources. These communities deeply understand what this motion spells out, Speaker: that Indigeneity and colonialism are critical social determinants of health that need to be properly and formally recognized in this House.

The needs of urban Indigenous communities are oftentimes different from northern and on-reserve communities. Toronto also has a significant population of community members who are Indigenous who actually commute—they have dual connections. These are folks who come to work in Toronto and they come to study, but maintain a deep connection to their rural and on-reserve communities.

Unlike northern and on-reserve communities, urban Indigenous people in Toronto do not struggle, generally, with long travel times for medical access or access to clean water. But many do struggle—all do struggle, I should say—with the lack of culturally appropriate health care access and services, and the medical racism that meets them everywhere they go, especially as they interface with the larger hospitals. And they all suffer from a lack of connection to spiritual support and community elders.

That’s why I’m so proud of the organizations in my community that are bridging those gaps. They bring together vital health, social and cultural services under one roof, oftentimes an amalgamation of so many different services, because they’re doing so much to support our community. I particularly want to highlight Anishnawbe Health, Thunder Woman Healing Lodge, Native Women’s Resource Centre, the Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy, Two-Spirited People of the First Nations, Native Child and Family Services of Toronto and Toronto Council Fire—just a handful of the hard-working and underfunded organizations in my riding.

Many urban Indigenous people in my community have deep connections to their culture, language and land, but some do not. The effects of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, the Millennium Scoop and ongoing trauma and racism really impact how they interface and interact with our publicly funded services—their publicly funded services. They are always looking for culturally competent health care. Indigenous-led health care providers like Anishnawbe Health are all trying to do what they can with what I said are limited resources, but none of those organizations I named actually provide service at hospital-level care.

Given the current health care crisis, Ontarians of every cultural background are struggling to access timely and appropriate care. This means that many Indigenous people access mainstream health care and supports every single day, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but every single day there are barriers and obstacles. They experienced racism and they were oftentimes turned away.

It is deeply troubling, Speaker, that this government has not recognized, so far, the importance of this motion—not in the remarks from the member across. It’s so important for all of us to remember that if we are to do better for the—