Canadian doctors apologize for harms to Indigenous peoples

An association representing Canadian doctors on Wednesday apologized to Indigenous peoples for harms they suffered at the hands of medical professionals, including forced sterilization and apprehensions of newborns.

At a ceremony in Victoria, in westernmost British Columbia province, Canadian Medical Association (CMA) president Joss Reimer apologized for decades of systemic racism, neglect and abuse.

The CMA, she said, "is deeply sorry for the harms First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples have experienced and continue to experience in the Canadian health system."

This "racism and discrimination," she added, according to prepared remarks, "is deplorable and we are deeply ashamed."

A CMA investigation found evidence in 157 years of archives of doctors having participated in or failing to stop medical experiments on Indigenous patients, such as the testing of experimental tuberculosis vaccines.

Indigenous women were subjected to forced sterilizations and many had newborns taken away at hospitals after social workers were alerted about the babies being born into poverty, domestic violence or addiction.

The most recent sterilization case, in 2019, led to a doctor being sanctioned for failing to get the patient's approval for the surgery.

The so-called birth alerts that led to forced separations of babies from their mothers, meanwhile, were officially ended in 2021.

Indigenous children still make up more than half of all children in foster care in Canada, despite accounting for a small proportion of the total population, according to government data.

Until the 1990s, many Indigenous people were also treated in racially segregated hospitals, where they reported rampant abuses.

In documents accompanying its apology, the CMA listed several recent examples of abuse or neglect to show problems continuing to persist.

One example was of a man dying in a Winnipeg emergency room in 2008 after waiting 34 hours for care.

Another recalled an Indigenous woman who posted a video online of nurses making derogatory and racist comments about her while she lay in a Quebec hospital bed screaming in pain in 2020, just hours before she died.

Such incidents have contributed to Indigenous mistrust of healthcare in Canada that the CMA acknowledged has led to serious health concerns going undiagnosed or without proper treatment.

The CMA's regretful acknowledgement follows apologies offered by the Canadian government and Pope Francis over the mistreatment of Indigenous children forcibly enrolled in Church-run government residential schools.

Last year, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba also apologized for "poor health outcomes" of Indigenous patients in the province.