A spotlight series on British Columbia
Sheltering in Place and Offline
The impact of COVID-19 and broadband access on First Nations communities: A conversation with Denise Williams
Published in partnership by the Information and Communications Council (ICTC) & the Vancouver Economic Commission
To read the First Nations Technology Council’s recent survey report, referenced in this interview, please consult their COVID-19 update or final report here.
Recent news cycles have turned to the durability of remote work and life: as of June 2020, one in five remote workers in Canada expect that they’ll be working from home indefinitely.[1] Telework, however, is an opportunity afforded by broadband access, and the CRTC suggests that less than half of rural and remote households have access to high-speed internet.[2] In June 2020, First Nations Technology Council (“Technology Council”) CEO Denise Williams sat down remotely with Information and Communications Technology Council analyst Faun Rice to talk about the impact COVID-19 has had on Indigenous peoples living in BC. Immediate impacts on First Nations communities extend far beyond the ability to work remotely and include access to education, healthcare, and benefits.
Faun: Thanks for making the time to have this conversation today. To begin, would you mind commenting on some of the primary impacts that you and the Technology Council are seeing on Indigenous communities in BC as a result of COVID-19?
Denise: That’s a big place to start. COVID-19 has exacerbated some issues around lack of connectivity and access, and it has also created some new issues for First Nations communities in BC.
First, for at least the last 10 years of my time in the space, we’ve been talking about basic access for internet and mobile connectivity being a significant issue in BC: over 75% of communities[3] currently don’t have sufficient high-quality internet access to stream or, especially, be on videoconferencing tools like Zoom, which is now being used by schools and organizations for classes, job interviews and meetings. The Technology Council has been really passionate about this topic both because the economy is becoming more reliant on digital technology but also because basic services like healthcare, education, and other key opportunities are moving online.
The issue of basic access has existed for First Nations communities for a long time, but it’s currently exacerbating several challenges. A significant issue is access to information and benefits. Being able to find out if the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit is available to you and learning where to apply for support is very tricky for people who don’t have internet at home. A lot of First Nations people had community internet access points in the band office or school for example, but during COVID they couldn’t go there because they had to stay at home.
Accordingly, you have people who aren’t able to access information, fill out an application form, or even receive money promptly, because a lot of allocations are distributed through online banking accounts. A cheque being mailed might come slowly, particularly now, so that the people who are the most in need of these resources are having the hardest time accessing them and waiting the longest.
Another specific problem for First Nations communities is that all the K-12 students who were in public school have come home to their communities and are trying to study remotely. Fewer than 10% of First Nations homes in BC have internet access, and fewer than that have hardware, a laptop, or computer connected to the internet. The vast majority of First Nations K-12 students can’t continue their studies like other kids who do have internet access. You can imagine the impact of that. We have a lot of work to do very quickly to ensure that we actually address the fact that it’s a right for all kids to learn, and that now technology has become a foundational part of that right.
The other thing that’s important to discuss is social isolation and mental health. I’ve been hearing a lot from Indigenous peoples who are engaging with the Technology Council about the sheer amount of loneliness and isolation. A lot of First Nations communities are or were closed, meaning that people can neither come in nor leave.
For someone like me living in North Vancouver, it’s almost unimaginable to think of what it would be like to be in my home over the last three months without Netflix, or without Zoom, which I use all day to keep working. It’s huge for mental health to maintain continuity in your life in terms of still having your job and still having connections with colleagues. I’ve also been using videoconferencing socially to keep up with friends or have dinner parties on Zoom. We’ve all adapted, but we’re still finding it difficult to be in virtual environments for so long and we’re experiencing screen fatigue.
However, the other side of that coin is having no interaction at all, and that’s a reality for likely over 200,000 Indigenous peoples in this province. Elders are specifically at risk, alone in their homes without information. Especially in northern communities where there are already challenges with isolation, at-risk youth, and mental health and wellness. Requiring everyone to stay at home without activities and ways of connecting are putting a lot of Indigenous peoples at risk emotionally and mental-health wise. A lot of mental health care options are being put online, which is a bit ironic. So, as with access to benefits, we’re seeing the people with the most need having the hardest time accessing a service.
On the positive side, the Technology Council has been advocating for greater connectivity, Indigenous-led design of connectivity and the way in which technology is integrated into individual and community live. All levels of government and industry have a keen awareness of how significant this issue is. It takes something like COVID-19, which is global in terms of its impact on humanity, to recognize and appreciate what inequality of access can result in. It will require a collective effort to resolve this, but I feel less like the Technology Council is having to sell industry and government in terms of why this is important and urgent.
Faun: That’s a significant list, and I think you’ve just addressed about half of my questions in one go. To build on this, you mentioned the Technology Council’s advocacy work in terms of connectivity — are there any other projects or services that you’re currently reworking to respond to challenges related to lack of access to the internet and relevant hardware?
Denise: Yes, absolutely. Foundations and Futures in Innovation and Technology was designed to be a face-to-face twelve-week program that helps Indigenous peoples gain an understanding of opportunities in the tech and innovation sector. We mapped all those courses to what the BC Tech Talent labour market study from 2016 had mapped as the trajectory for growth in BC, so we developed modules in our program that would encourage Indigenous peoples to get skilled in areas where we know demand will exist. As a complement to that, we’re now working with the province on a sector labour market project of our own, recognizing that we need our own data on the movement of Indigenous peoples into the digital economy sector, and on the growth of local digital economies as well. We see these two initiatives working hand in hand. We’ve got labour market data about where BC is going in general when greater connectivity is achieved, and now we’re hoping to develop a complementary data set that supports greater movement of Indigenous peoples into the sector.
With COVID, everything is being re-thought. It’s obvious that we’re going to be in economic recovery for a number of years. A lot of the trajectories that we saw for the tech sector are going to change, and I think it’s still a little unclear what those changes will be.
To respond, at the Technology Council we’ve moved all our programming online. This was something we were already working on, but COVID accelerated the project. Now, what we’d like to do is partner with the province over the next three to five years in taking the Foundations and Futures in Innovation Technology Program and adding new modules and curriculum. We’d like these to support Indigenous peoples to reskill and retool for a post-COVID environment that is based in an at-home working environment.
At the Technology Council, we’re in a good position to provide a lot of value to communities, government, and industry, especially in a time when everything is going to be digitally enabled. So the good news is that we’ve been building all these plans hoping that someone would want to advance them with us, and fortunately we’re beginning to collaborate and build out these strategies.
Faun: One of the immediate responses to COVID-19 from the Technology Council is a survey that has asked respondents about hardware and internet access, digital skill training needs and, not least, the immediate challenges that Indigenous peoples are facing in the province. Are there any early findings you’d be comfortable sharing?
Denise: We’ve actually just released that report. Some of the findings weren’t too surprising to me: there are a lot of individuals who have talked about their lack of access and the impact on their families. This includes what I touched upon earlier with regard to Elders, their level of isolation, lack of access to healthcare and prescription drugs, and fears about going in to hospitals for routine things.
Another clear theme was around the sheer lack of access to smartphones, laptops, any kind of connective hardware — many people would report that they didn’t have this, that they were doing the survey on a friend’s device.
In addition to the issue of access for K-12 students, as I was mentioning before, university and college students also went back to their communities as soon as COVID-19 happened, and they don’t always have connectivity, but many of them do have hardware. Universities have moved a lot of their curriculum online, so these students could be accessing their courses if they had better internet access but are now looking at longer waits for graduation and a lot of stress and anxiety around course completion.
Faun: What kind of policy response or support from British Columbians would you like to see in response to these challenges? Any measures that people in BC should be taking to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to Indigenous communities or offer support in another way?
Denise: I think that a lot of communities have closed, and it’s important to be mindful of community safety. At the Technology Council, we’ve stopped all travel into communities for a year and will likely continue to do so until there’s a vaccine, just because of the population density on reserves, crowded homes, numerous generations of individuals who may have underlying health concerns, and healthcare access issues. It’s important to support communities’ right to manage who comes in and out.
Beyond that, we’d like to see immediate access to cellular coverage across the province. We’d like to see the cost of internet go down, especially during this period and during recovery. We recognize that infrastructure-building takes time and money, but something that can happen immediately is better affordability, and more subsidization for all British Columbians and specifically for First Nations communities. I also think that the data caps that are in place — for example, a connected community may only be able to buy a certain amount of bandwidth — should be removed. I’d like to see communities being given full access to whatever internet access they can get, and for that to be subsidized. Those are some things that can be done today.
Faun: Thanks again for taking the time to talk today — it sounds like a busy time for both yourself and the Technology Council! In closing, we’ll just remind readers that they can learn more about the Technology Council’s programs and advocacy work through the organization’s website or newsletter.
[1] “Only one-third of Canadians working remotely expect to resume working from the office as consistently as they did pre-pandemic, while one-in-five say they will remain primarily at home, according to a June study from the Angus Reid Institute.” Quotation from: Tara Deschamps, “Canadians working from home permanently should expect salary changes,” CTV News, June 22, 2020, https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/business/canadians-working-from-home-permanently-should-expect-salary-changes-experts-1.4993449
[2] Catherine Tunney, “Liberals hasten high-speed broadband access plan in response to pandemic,” CBC News, May 02, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/broadband-internet-covid-1.5552261
[3] See, for example, figures as cited in: Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada, “High-Speed Access for All: Canada’s Connectivity Strategy,” https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/139.nsf/eng/h_00002.html
This article was published as part of a spotlight series on the province of British Columbia (BC) through a partnership between the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) and the Vancouver Economic Commission. Our contributing partner for this post was the First Nations Technology Council.
