It is not trivial, far from it. For the very first time, a coroner points to the lack of safe housing to explain a wave of newborn deaths from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in 2021 in Nunavik. Ten deaths that could perhaps have been avoided if it had not been for unsafe sleeping practices caused, among other things, by the lack of space in the room. The proximity of adults lying on a single mattress with a baby is a high risk factor for suffocation for a small baby.
As reported The duty this weekend, coroner Geneviève Thériault therefore urgently recommends “ensuring access for each family to healthy housing of an appropriate size for the household”, with the aim of promoting so-called safe sleep and reducing the exposure of toddlers to second-hand smoke — another possible cause of SIDS. In Nunavik, where the birth rate is 2.5 times higher than elsewhere in Quebec, 60% of children under the age of 6 grow up in a modest and overcrowded house, where more than 15 members of a same family, spread over three generations. A few months ago, the attempt to send cots for babies by the local health services did not meet with the expected success, and for good reason: there was not even space to place the cot in the sleeping room. Result: the infant mortality rate is seven times higher in Nunavik than elsewhere in Quebec (according to the most recent data, dating from 2016).
Let’s be honest: if such a situation were to arise in the South, the political cavalry would be quickly deployed to remedy the situation. In Nunavik, where nearly 98% of the population lives in social housing, and where the private housing sector is almost non-existent, this housing “crisis” has been in the headlines for ages without the rate of construction of new housing can exceed the rapid population growth. On the waiting lists, hundreds of residents are hoping for a decent space of their own. It is not a futile hope. As we have seen, this could save lives. ” He […] missing 800 [logements] every year because, even if we build 150, we can’t catch up with the birth rate, which is higher in the North,” said Marie-Christine Vanier, interim deputy director general of the Office municipal d’ habitation Kativik, in a report by our investigative journalist Stéphanie Vallet broadcast in the spring.
The context of extreme proximity and the overcrowding of the habitats are the cause of several major social problems in this northern region, and cause significant trauma to the physical and psychological health of the inhabitants. Another recent report from To have to dealing with the delicate but important subject of suicide among young people taught us that the housing crisis in Nunavik has a dramatic double effect: overcrowding accentuates certain problems of personal distress, but in addition, we do not even have the necessary space to accommodate specialized resources, an aberrant situation.
Reports flaunting the extreme precariousness of social resources in which Nunavik finds itself are pouring in, like so many opportunities to come and break down the wall of our indifference. In the last few months alone, the media have reported on a shortage of caregivers forcing the locals to beg Quebec to send them the army, a request that was rejected; they also reported the effects of a severe shortage of drinking water delivered by tanker truck, as 13 of the 14 villages in the North have no aqueduct or sewage system; they reported a lack of judges, undermining the proper functioning of the justice system, but also a worrying lack of police officers to criss-cross the territory. This is without counting the commonly reported public health problems and the extreme concerns in the field of academic success.
What more will it take to reverse the trend and allow these communities to find their way back to dignity? Such a portrait is indeed not worthy of Quebec, whose blind spot is Nunavik. It is a real humanitarian crisis when the essential rights of children, among others, are threatened, such as the right to food, health and housing, one of the key principles of the Convention on the Rights of the child of UNESCO.
The brand new Minister of Employment, the Innu Kateri Champagne Jourdain, will not be able to resolve the immensity of these shortcomings alone. But as the first aboriginal woman to become cabinet minister, she will have the luxury and the leisure to raise awareness, to tell stories, to defend and perhaps even to demand that northern communities no longer be ignored, forgotten and erased from our radar screen.