Dakota Tipi First Nation chief reacts to race-based data collection at health centres – PortageOnline.com
May 10 2023
Following the province’s announcement that it’s the first in the country to prepare a program to collect race-based data for all patients coming into our hospitals, Dakota Tipi Chief Dennis Pashe says it’s all based on money.
The program was planned to highlight gaps in equity between patients for the quality of health and length of wait times to, more or less, prove there is racism in how these decisions are made.
“We’ve already identified that there are problems with the Canada Health Act,” says Pashe. “It’s all based on funding. I think, recently, the funding increases that the federal government announced to the province have a rider that they have to spend that money on health. It might improve, but under this provincial government, there’s been nothing but cutbacks to health. That’s not acceptable because ultimately, who suffers is those who are the most vulnerable. There are monies for businesses to support business people to run in elections. I think Obby Khan got $500,000 to do something, but there’s no money for health.”
