“Where I’m from, most people carry box cutters because you never know when you will come across a child hanging from a tree.”
That’s how one northern Manitoba MLA describes widespread fears over suicide.
In an interview with CBC, Judy Klassen, the Liberal MLA for Keewatinook, said she ran for office “because I’m tired of burying my people from highly preventable causes.”
Klassen told CBC she wanted the Progressive Conservative government to do more to help indigenous people in its inaugural budget, unveiled
in May.
The suicide epidemic – in Klassen’s home community of St. Theresa Point and in remote communities across northern Manitoba – has received much media attention in recent times.
In March, the northern Manitoba reserve of Cross Lake declared a state of emergency following six suicides in two months and another 140 attempts in two weeks, Global News reported.
Suicides are also a major concern in northern Saskatchewan. In April, Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River MP Georgina Jolibois told parliament about suicide attempts in La Loche following the Jan. 22 shootings that left four people dead, CBC reported.
Jolibois added that in her own family, her brother has lost three children to suicide.
