Question Period Note: Long-term care on-reserve

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• Indigenous Services Canada is working with Indigenous communities and organizations to co-develop a new distinctions-based and holistic Long-term and Continuing Care Framework.
• This Framework is intended to provide a responsive, high quality, culturally-safe continuum of health and social long-term care services for individuals at all stages of life.
• Through this work, we are ensuring that seniors and individuals living with disabilities or chronic conditions will be able to access key services while living close to or within their own home, for as long as possible.

Indigenous Services Canada’s Assisted Living program funds non-medical, social support services (i.e., in-home, group-home and institutional care supports) for seniors and individuals living with chronic illnesses and disabilities (mental and/or physical) on reserve and for Status First Nations in Yukon. The program provides daily living supports that help people maintain their independence and stay in their homes and communities. In 2024-2025, this program helped serve approximately 16,500 clients, on an income-tested basis, providing non-medical services that included in-home care, adult foster care and long-term care facilities. Through the Budget 2025 process, the Government of Canada has recently decided to provide $60.2 million in 2025-26 to ISC to renew sunsetting funding for the Assisted Living Program, with no new funding being provided to support program integrity.

Indigenous Services Canada’s First Nations and Inuit Home and Community Care Program provides funding for home and community care services to Indigenous people living in First Nations and Inuit communities. Services offered through this program include, client-need assessments, case management and care coordination, in-home nursing and personal care, in-home respite services, and palliative and end-of-life care. This program enables First Nation and Inuit clients to receive care in or close to their home. In 2022-23, this program provided services to approximately 30,000 First Nations and Inuit.

If pressed on the Long-term and Continuing Care Engagement and Co-development
• Indigenous Services Canada has been working closely with Indigenous partners to better understand the needs and gaps in providing essential Long-Term and Continuing Care (LTCC) supports to members in and around their communities.
• The purpose of co-developing the new distinctions-based
Long-Term and Continuing Care Framework is to ensure that Indigenous communities are better supported in the delivery of culturally relevant LTCC services to their community members.
• Engagement and co-development work demonstrates the Government of Canada’s commitment to reconciliation and the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.