Agriculture Committee on Sept. 27th, 2018

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for your presentations and your commitment to this topic.

Andria, back in May, I met with you in Guelph, and you were talking about the work you'd done on research. Since then, you've launched the In The Know program.

In this morning's discussion, there was an interesting comment about “Is this confidential? Are you a farmer?” I heard the same question when I was working with veterans in Guelph. The veterans say you can't understand the path they've come down as a veteran unless you're a veteran.

In 2017, we committed $5 billion over 10 years towards mental health with the provinces and territories. We've also committed money to veterans, to indigenous services, in terms of mental health.

You mentioned to me about a national centre of excellence that could be focused on farms. Could you expand on that a little and whether we involve farmers in their communities, maybe through their churches or their associations? How can we reach the farmer through the places where farmers normally gather and have those types of discussions around mental health?

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

I think I heard a couple of things there.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes, there were.

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

One is that there definitely is a need for custom tailored supports. We can't just take existing models and apply them to farmers for numerous reasons that have been discussed.

The stresses that farmers face are unique. Yes, other small business owners—not that farming is a small business in a lot of cases—experience stresses as well, but I would argue not to the extent of the different types of stresses that farmers experience. It has come up a couple of times that people don't understand agriculture.

One of the things that struck me, which I frankly wasn't expecting when I did the national survey, was that farmers feel scrutinized. They feel attacked by the public, anti-agriculture groups, people who don't understand farming who are speaking out openly. You can make fun of me as a professor, and I can go home and I have a whole bunch of other stuff to my sense of identity. Farmers don't have that. Their occupation is their identity; it's their culture, their history, what have you.

Yes, we absolutely need tailored resources. How do we reach them? I think the best thing to do is to ask farmers that question. I think the sentinel program in Quebec is fabulous. I've only just recently learned of it. It's things like that.

We have things going on in Manitoba that are great. If I may say, we have things coming out of Guelph that are great. We need to better understand what everybody is doing, so we are not leaving anybody unprotected and unprepared.

I think it's really important that the provinces come together and that there is federal leadership in this so that we can take a systematic approach to it.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great.

Mr. d'Amours, in your work with communities, are there groups where you've had success in reaching the farmers through where they gather?

[Alain d'Amours]

Yes, because the sentinel program has slowly expanded. We started around a kitchen table where farmers would come to meet with us and discuss their needs. They guided us. Many people would come to see us, people who transported milk, and many others.

We did this, and then we went to these individuals' homes. With the Association québécoise de prévention du suicide in Quebec, we created an agricultural model that was truly adapted to farmers. The people understand what farmers experience and will therefore intervene in a very different way. The results are conclusive. We're finding that farmers feel more comfortable talking with us. As the gentleman who's himself a sentinel said, he'll go to see the person and he'll talk to the person. He'll sense that the person is experiencing something difficult and will advise the person to consult someone who can provide help. We reach out to people in their environment and apply their way of thinking to encourage them to use the services provided. You'll agree with me that this works well.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Caron, I'm thinking of the farmers I saw over the years when I used to travel the Prairies going to different mines and mills, working on solutions for farming equipment as well. They would get together at the truck stops. I'm thinking of one in Colonsay, Saskatchewan, that I used to love to drop in to because you could see all the farmers gathering. They were comparing what they were doing with fertilizer. They were comparing what the market was doing. They were talking about things at home and whether somebody hadn't gotten onto his field because his wife had him doing something else. There were always these little stories.

With regard to the gathering of the farmers—I'm thinking maybe in terms of you and your dairy experience. Dairy farmers probably don't gather the same way as do grain farmers, for example. I'm still trying to see how the federal government, with the Canadian Mental Health Association, Health Canada, the Mental Health Commission of Canada.... We have these large organizations, but the reality is that farmers have a way of gathering and communicating, which we need to find a way of connecting in through these large organizations and then through the provinces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Longfield, unfortunately....

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I thought you said a minute and a half.

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

It wasn't quite a minute. We're going to have to move on. I'm sure they'll have time.

Mr. Shipley, go ahead for six minutes.

[Bev Shipley, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, witnesses.

Ms. Jones-Bitton, you mentioned three scores: 45% with high stress, the second one which I missed, and 35% with depression and burnout. What was the second one?

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

For anxiety, 58% met the scale's definition for classification of various degrees of anxiety—mild, moderate or severe.

[Bev Shipley]

Mr. Caron will agree, I think, with this, being on a farm. As well, those of us who were involved back in the 1980s will have some understanding of the sort of stress that comes with it. Stress actually drives us. Is there some sort of a definition of what you would score as high stress?

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

Yes.

[Bev Shipley]

Without it we do not have effective, efficient producers, but there's some sort of a tipping point and everyone is different.

I have a friend with a large farm, and I'm convinced that he never wants to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

Right.

[Bev Shipley]

It's just what drives him, but that's not for everyone.

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

Right. There's a great model that looks at a curve. The middle bit is nice. It's yellow or orange in colour. That's where stress drives us and our production is high. We're focused. We're motivated. We want to get going.

There's a green area that's low stress. That's bad. Low stress means our production is low because we're not motivated.

The problem is too many of us are living over in the red zone. In the red zone we have fatigue, exhaustion, anger, anxiety, and burnout. If you look at production levels at that point, our productivity is actually lower.

Your friend who thrives on that high stress, I would say, is doing well with that. Unfortunately, too many of us are in that red zone and are not.

[Bev Shipley]

Social media plays such an integral part of our life it seems. Much of that is by choice. A lot of it, on the other hand, on the business side, is how we operate. That's how we keep track of markets. That's how we keep track of what prices are in terms of our inputs. That's how we monitor innovation and technologies we're moving, and we talk. The downside of that, though, is the social media stuff that everybody's on. Is there any evidence of what role that plays?

Farmers get targeted based on the inputs that we use to grow our crops and how we grow our crops, how we raise our animals. We get targeted by certain animal rights groups and individuals who are brutal, not only on our farm but as we transport it. Is that part of anything you have talked about in your pilot project, how we deal with that?

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

I think there are two sides to that. Farming can be a very socially isolating occupation. In some respects, social media is great for farmers. Ag Twitter is alive and well.

[Bev Shipley]

Yes.

[Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton]

People support each other through ag Twitter. In those respects, I think that's great. People throw out a problem, and they instantly have solutions. They throw out that they're having a bad day, and they instantly have support.

On the flip side of that, though, is that dark side that you alluded to. I was honestly struck in our survey by how powerful that negative aspect of social media has become and by these anti-agriculture groups that, quite frankly, are spreading lies. They're buying public support with those lies. That's a real insult to farmers and what they do for us.

[Bev Shipley]

Mr. d'Amours, when you're talking to people, is this something that ever comes up in terms of the negative effect social media may have? There's a productive side of it, but there's a dark side too and it is that continual attack. We want to hear what they're saying. Well, actually, we don't, but there's something within us that drives us to want to see it.

Do you hear that when you're talking to farmers?

[Alain d'Amours]

We're starting to hear about it. Facebook and other social media have an impact on both the public and farmers, and also on the farmers' children. Bullying threatens farmers' children and adds stress.

Stress can be positive as long as there's an answer. However, the farmers I meet who have reached the point of considering suicide no longer have any answers.

When a farmer tells me that his wife will leave him, that she will leave with the children and that he'll lose his farm, he no longer has a solution. He's experiencing stress that's no longer positive, because he's hit a wall.

We must be careful. When we say that stress can indeed be positive, it's true. However, when a person hits a well, the person's stress becomes unhealthy.

[Bev Shipley]

The foundation of what we strive for is to give people hope.