By Lawrie Crawford  Local Journalism Initiative Reporter The Council of Yukon First Nations has sent 197 people to Outside residential treatment centres for substance use disorders since October 2020. Shadelle Chambers, executive director of CYFN, described how the initiative originated during the pandemic, when access to services was shuttered and travel restrictions were put in place. For a period of time, most of British Columbia’s Indigenous treatment centres stopped accepting out-of-province clients, or would only accept people if they had not flown in an aircraft to get there. “People were then forced to have a whole bunch more barriers,” Chambers said. These came in addition to pre-existing barriers to residential treatment put in place by the federal government’s non-insured health benefits program. Other requirements that served as barriers included things like

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