Thank you very much for the question. We were really honoured to welcome you to the young Canadians' parliament on the weekend and to hear from Mégane and many of her peers.
Certainly social media is prevalent in the lives of girls and young women, and the lives of all children and youth, even from the very early stages of life. We know that young people are using technology from the earliest days. It's playing a role in preschool years and certainly well into their teen years.
We have heard about this extensively from young people. Back in 2017, we created the Canadian children's charter through extensive consultations with kids from coast to coast to coast, identifying the challenges they face growing up in Canada and the solutions they envision. They named the role of changing technology in their lives as one of their primary concerns, and it was framed in the children's charter as an area that they believe warrants urgent action.
Again, the young Canadians' parliament, in their most recent report and in the bills they tabled in February of this year, highlighted the role of technology in changing their lives and its pervasive role in impacting their mental health.
Our latest “Raising Canada” report is full of data on this, and we'd be pleased to share that with you as well. It's extensive. It's a problem but also, in many ways, young people see technology as playing a role in creating the solutions that they need. We use digital technology to facilitate programs like the young Canadians' parliament. We see the harms that it caused, but we also see the role it can play in helping provide access to support.
We heard from other witnesses how technology is being used to deliver clinical services to young people and make them accessible to young people in their homes, their schools or other places where they need support. We need to continue to fund those innovative and evidence-based solutions to ensure that they have access, and we need to have them at the table when decisions are being made around how to deliver these services.
Mégane and many others want to be able to have a role in the policies and programs being delivered for them.