Agriculture Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. We are continuing our study on the mental health challenges that Canadian farmers, ranchers, and producers face.

This morning, we welcome René Beauregard, who is the Director General of the organization Au coeur des familles agricoles.

Welcome, Mr. Beauregard.

[René Beauregard, Director General, Au coeur des familles agricoles]

Good morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

From the same organization, we also welcome Nancy Langevin, who is a field worker with the Travailleur de rang program.

Welcome, Ms. Langevin.

[Nancy Langevin, Field Worker, Le travailleur de rang, Au coeur des familles agricoles]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

There will be no videoconference because this morning's session is televised. It is not possible for a television broadcast and a videoconference to occur simultaneously in this room. Pierrette Desrosiers, who is an occupational psychologist, will therefore participate in the session by telephone.

Can you hear me, Ms. Desrosiers?

As I'm not getting an answer, we will start with the witnesses who are with us in the room.

You each have six minutes for your presentation.

[René Beauregard]

Thank you for your welcome this morning.

First of all, I'm going to talk about our organization's beginnings and explain why it exists.

Au coeur des familles agricoles is an organization that has been in existence since 2003. It was created by people in the agricultural sector, who, in the early 2000s, observed an increase in distress among agricultural producers. They saw that those producers were not seeking help from the health care system. When they did so, unfortunately, they saw that the health care network was not tailored to the reality of those in the world of agriculture.

The specific nature of Au coeur des familles agricoles as an organization is based on the street worker model, but it is tailored to the agricultural sector. We established a “field worker” service, which provides proactive and preventative responses. We don't wait for producers to seek out our assistance. We travel to see people on the farm. This is what distinguishes our services from those offered by the Quebec health care network.

We also do what we call “milk runs”, like a truck driver who goes from door to door picking up milk on farms. Our field workers travel and randomly visit farms to meet producers, talk to them and find out how they are doing in terms of their mental health, but mainly to raise awareness about our organization and our services.

Our field workers provide psychosocial support, within the limits of their knowledge and abilities. If the needs of the producers exceed our skills or our knowledge, we accompany them through the health system; we do not leave them to their own devices. We help them to find help. We are aware that, on their own, they would not take steps to find those services.

These workers have knowledge and hold either a bachelor's degree or a college diploma in social work. So they have the skills to work with an agricultural clientele. Another very important prerequisite for us as a determining factor in hiring an individual, is knowledge of the agricultural sector. The workers currently employed by the organization are all women. They have skills and knowledge that allow them to quickly build relationships with farmers. The relationship of trust grows quickly because the farmers know that the person standing in front of them understands their reality.

Our services are provided around the clock, seven days a week. We also offer a respite service. Our respite centre in Saint-Hyacinthe is able to welcome farmers from all across Quebec and to house those who have an urgent need for rest. While there, they meet with a worker on a daily basis for a week and can even come back, if their need is greater.

In 2017, we made 1,157 contacts with agricultural clients. The producers came to meet with us because the care offered by the health system did not match their needs. Because of our expertise and our knowledge of the agricultural sector, they came to us in order to avail themselves of our services.

Sixty-two per cent of the individuals who came to us seeking assistance were men. We start from the premise that men are already a difficult clientele to reach when the issue is a mental health problem. This demonstrates just how positive the approach we use with them is.

Essentially, we cover all types of production. This is perhaps more related to the announcement that was made yesterday, but I must tell you again that, over the past two years, most of the people who have called upon our assistance have come from the dairy sector. In fact, 72% of the requests for support that we have received have come from people in this sector. We provide our services in Quebec. We have established contacts in 11 administrative regions, but we have a presence in 7 regions.

In closing, I would like to tell you that 25% of our funding comes from grants. The rest of our funding comes from fundraising, donations and sponsorships that we receive from agricultural businesses, the businesses that work with farmers.

That concludes my presentation on the organization Au coeur des familles agricoles.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Beauregard.

Ms. Desrosiers, can you hear us?

[Pierrette Desrosiers, Occupational Psychologist, Pierrette Desrosiers Psycoaching]

Yes, I can hear you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay.

Ms. Langevin, you have six minutes.

[Nancy Langevin]

Good morning.

I'm a social worker. Since 2016, I have been a field worker with the organization called Au coeur des familles agricoles in the Chaudière-Appalaches region of Quebec.

This summer, a psychologist from the local community health centre contacted me about a person that he had been working with for quite some time. This lady was experiencing some difficulties. Given my expertise in agriculture, he asked for my assistance in working as a team to help her. Our meetings were mainly about my helping the woman buying her share from her parents.

In recent weeks, I received a letter from her that I would like to read:

“It's over for me, Nancy, I'm giving up on life. Nothing's keeping me here on Earth. Everyone I love is constantly abandoning me. My plan is gradually taking shape. I will be alone this weekend, no [Charlie], no one with me. It will be the perfect time to leave, to quietly fall asleep and never wake up. So don't go running to my parents, I don't want to hear from them. They are the reason I have been in such a state for so many weeks. [Sylvain] is going hunting for all of next week. He has a lot of other things on his mind than me. My latest has taken off; he said all kinds of fine words, then threw me in the garbage like a piece of trash. [Stéphanie] is far too busy to realize that I'm not doing well. It's now or never, if I want to do anything about it. Every time I take a step in hat direction, something always comes up. But this time, it's over. I'm at the end of my rope and I have no way out. I have no strength left to fight. At least, you have your family to help you, to support you and to love you. I am just a bad mother who's having a hard time taking care of her daughter. I'm always there when others need me, yet, as always, no one takes the time to listen to my calls for help. By the end of the week, there will be no more [Cindy], everyone will be rid of me.”

I received this email at 7:45 in the morning. I must say that I was pretty shaken by this letter. I quickly grabbed my phone and called the author of the email directly to tell her I was there, that I was there for her, and that I was very concerned after reading this letter.

Why did this woman choose me? A psychologist had been helping her for just over a year, while I have only been in the picture for a few weeks.

As I said just now when I began, it was because of my expertise in agriculture. As you gathered, when I introduced myself, I said that I was a former dairy farmer. The fact that I am a former dairy farmer, allowed me to establish a strong bond with the person who came to meet me.

What did I do? I called her. Fifteen minutes later, I realized that her daughter was standing behind her. I asked her if her daughter was going to daycare that morning. She said yes. I asked her why she wouldn't drive her to school and then we could talk again afterwards. She said that was a very good idea.

In that time, I quickly contacted the psychologist. We had already been communicating because, in the last few weeks, the lady had given us permission to work together for her well-being.

The psychologist was surprised. He told me that he had seen the lady the previous week and that she was doing very well. Actually, he added that he was even surprised to see how well she was doing. I asked him what we were going to do.

My role as a field worker really allowed me to stay in touch with everything in the agricultural field, while the psychologist took care of finding a shelter for the woman for the weekend. As a result, someone from the Urgence-Détresse hotline called her to see if she could come to the crisis centre over the weekend.

Our common aim was to reduce the stressors that this woman was experiencing. For my part, I called her employer, a local dairy farmer, to let him know that the mental health of his employee had deteriorated considerably in recent days. I also called her parents to inform them about their daughter's mental health. Logically, her parents should have been aware of the situation, but in this case, they were not.

I didn't mention that, for several weeks, this woman had been experiencing financial difficulties, a separation, a mental health problem in addition to a family dispute, which is related to the succession, as you can well imagine.

The only good news in this letter was that it was Tuesday morning at the time and the woman was planning to carry out her plan on Friday.

So that gave us time to put a safety net in place so that the lady would have good support.

As I said, my work is really with the agriculture. I did not interfere with the work the psychologist was doing. The psychologist, though, called the woman towards the end of the morning. I called her at 10 a.m. and he did so at 11:30. He made an appointment with her for the next day, and we stayed in touch by email. So there is one intervention among the many I have done.

A little later, if I have a bit of time left, I will talk about the milk runs and what they mean. We don't wait for people to reach out for help. I just show up on the farms, I introduce myself and I explain the mission of our organization. Then I take a look at the people there. These types of meetings often don't last longer than five minutes, but they can run to 15 or 20 minutes, and in some cases, I'll spend the entire morning on site, if I came at a good time and the person really needed to talk.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Langevin. You will have the opportunity to answer questions from the members.

Ms. Desrosiers, you have six minutes.

[Pierrette Desrosiers]

That's perfect.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before you.

I am speaking to you as a farmer's daughter, a farmer's sister and a farmer's wife, but also as a specialized psychologist who, for over 20 years, has been working with farming businesses. So today I will present two aspects of the situation.

I will be talking to you about a new threat that is coming on top of all the stressors we are already familiar with, and I will talk about our urgent need to train support workers.

On top of all of the stressors in farming which you are probably familiar with, I would like to draw your attention today to a growing threat; it is coming from animal rights activists. In 2010, Benoît Gagnon, a doctoral candidate at the École de criminologie at the Université de Montréal was already saying that animal rights activists represented a terrorist threat. That's a bit how the movement is being described. It's not new, but it could become increasingly significant. Some authors believe that it is the next great revolution.

Who are these animal rights activists? You will see why it is so important to talk about them. First and foremost, they are vegans, though not all vegans are activists. They believe in antispecism, that is, the idea that animals are equal to humans. They want the use of animals in any way to be completely abolished. So, of course, they are against agricultural production that enables the consumption of meat and meat products, and they are against the idea of owning animals as pets. They agitate to shut down packing plants. This is very important and we must be concerned with the growing strength of this movement because we know that more and more millennials are vegans. That said, I repeat that not all vegans are animal rights activists.

In addition, because of the power of social media today, a single video going viral can inflict a great deal of damage on an entire industry. People are also increasingly concerned about animal welfare, health and the environment, which in itself is all well and good. That said, there are far fewer farms today, which means that fewer and fewer people understand what the farming is all about.

Whom do these animal rights activists target? Of course, the first ones in their sights are the producers. Today, as well as being called polluters, they are accused of being aggressors and rapists, because of artificial insemination, and child kidnappers and killers. You know, those words have extremely serious consequences. As one farmer told me, when he gets up in the morning and he sees that type of thing on Facebook, he's already wondering how he is going to cope. It adds a lot of stress and distress. I must point out that psychological distress is very prevalent among Canadian farmers, as several studies have shown.

Producers, artificial inseminators, those who ship animals, veterinarians too, packing plant staff, butchers, everyone in the agri-food business, that is, are affected by the animal rights people. The consequence is that our producers are increasingly subject to psychological violence, harassment and online bullying. That can increase the conflicts and, of course, the distress. A number of experts say that a major source of stress is developing and developing rapidly. So I wanted to draw your attention to this new threat, one that is adding to a major source of distress that already exists.

My second point is about what we need. We need more and more responders. Mr. Beaureard and Ms. Langevin said just now that some factors are unique to agricultural producers. We must not respond in the same way with men, with family businesses, and with our unique system, and we do not have enough people trained in the area. We also do not have enough psychologists who fully understand the realities of agriculture. We must therefore train more psychologists both in private clinics and in the health care system. We also need more front-line workers. We have to help and support them more, and continue to train them.

We certainly also have to train entrepreneurs in agriculture at the basic level, to get ahead of the game, to allow them to develop greater entrepreneurial skills, to better manage stress, change, and the work-life balance. Basically, we have to develop leadership skills so that they can face the issues and challenges of today and tomorrow.

Agriculture is getting more complex everyday, they say. In order to be able to face tomorrow's challenges, we need a high degree of entrepreneurial skill. So we have to help our agricultural entrepreneurs before the situation gets worse. To prevent them from sinking into distress, we have to be able to put initiatives in place so that they are better able to face the problems. In agriculture, the distress level is high and it directly affects the entrepreneurs, their families, and the agricultural economy.

There is only one conclusion. We have to invest for and with our agricultural producers, because leaders in better health will help to improve the health of our agricultural industry and our society.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Desrosiers.

Now we will start to go around the table.

If you want to ask Ms. Desrosiers any questions, can you please let me know?

Welcome, Mr. Motz, to our committee. Thank you for being here as a replacement.

First will be Mr. Dreeshen for six minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I will try to split my time. I know Mr. Motz has a question.

First of all, though, I would like to speak with Pierrette Desrosiers.

The things you talked about are exactly the key issues in agriculture. I have said for years that the issues we have with, as I believe you indicated, animal rights activists and other groups and organizations that look at.... I'm a grain farmer, so they look at other non-tariff trade barriers and issues—such as GMOs, neonicotinoids, trace elements—and all of these sorts of things that are done to protect other people's investments. When farmers look at these things, they understand what is happening. There is a discord between agriculture and those who live in urban centres.

Another aspect—and I believe this is a point for other guests as well—is the fact that the farm is your workplace and the workplace is your farm, and the massive investments you have are always in jeopardy.

Then we have all of these different groups who just don't care. I look at the A&W ad that talks about no added hormones, where you go from five nanograms of estrogen to seven, if it is used, while the bun would have thousands of nanograms. These things are frustrating and they are done simply for market share.

I wonder if you could comment on that, and then I will give the rest of my time to Mr. Motz.

Thank you.

[Pierrette Desrosiers]

Do I understand that the question is for me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Yes, go ahead, Ms. Desrosiers.

[Pierrette Desrosiers]

As I understand the question, it is about the animal rights activists. As fewer and fewer people understand how extremely complex an agricultural business is, and as society is tending to consider the work of farmers less natural and less valuable, an enormous amount of education needs to be done, starting at the base, in the schools, to explain it and to reestablish its value. I think we have no choice. In order to counter the misinformation, we are going to have to inform the public at large, and educate young and old alike, so that they understand how much respect farmers have for the environment and for animals, and how excellent a job they do.

The priority has to be in valuing farmers. People have to be informed, educated and sensitized, because, unfortunately, some people are spreading viral messages that our farmers find destructive and difficult to accept. As there are fewer and fewer farmers, we have no choice in the matter. My fondest dream, you know, would be for every child to have the opportunity to go to a farm at least once. A huge number of adults will never have seen one in their lives. We have reached the point where, apparently, 7% of American adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Ms. Desrosiers, unfortunately, we are short of time. Let us move to another question.

The floor is yours, Mr. Motz.

[Glen Motz, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, CPC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the panel for being here.

My riding is made up of a mostly rural agriculture area—30,000 square kilometres. My heritage is also in agriculture. I still farm and ranch, so I have a deep appreciation for the impact and importance of farming to our economy, but also for Canadians in the production of good food.

I know from people in my riding that stress and anxiety went up last summer when they heard from the current government and were labelled as tax cheats. The government was looking at ways to get more from them—taking money out of their pockets—making it more difficult for them to pass their farms on to their next generation.

In my area, the language that was used in accusing people of that caused anger and frustration, and it really showed a disconnect between our agriculture community and the current government.

Does that kind of language create problems for those who are struggling already? That would be one question.

The other one would be, did you observe any impacts on the farming community that you interact with on the policies that were brought out, or the messaging that was used, that would impact them even more, or did they just internalize the attacks that they received?

[René Beauregard]

If we look at the assistance claims we get from producers, we realize that, frequently, the problem has a number of sides. Often, the problem is triggered at a certain point when several reasons accumulate.

As I mentioned earlier, over the past two years, the vast majority of our assistance has gone to dairy farmers, particularly in Quebec. This stands in contrast to what we were doing a decade ago, when we were mainly helping hog and beef producers. This change is due to the insecurity created as a result of the Transpacific Partnership negotiations, the changes to NAFTA and the diafiltered milk issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Beauregard. Unfortunately, we are out of time.

Mr. Breton, you have six minutes.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.

I want to extend a special greeting to the representatives of Au coeur des familles agricoles from Saint-Hyacinthe, near my riding. A special hello to Mr. Beauregard, who was very humble during his presentation. In fact, in addition to being the director general of that organization, he is the mayor of Saint-Joachim-de-Shefford, a rural municipality in my riding. He is also a former farmer, so he really knows what he is talking about.

First, I want to thank you for your excellent work, Ms. Langevin and Mr. Beauregard. Your organization is a model, and we would like to replicate it, because it provides significant respite and support for farmers in our region. So we are lucky to have you with us. My sincere thanks.

Several studies have been done in the United States and Canada; they found that farmers were twice as likely to suffer from mental health issues than the general population. Mr. Beauregard and Ms. Langevin, could you talk to us about the anxiety and stress you see in your work, and tell us the top three or four causes?

[Nancy Langevin]

I will answer that question.

Actually, it is what Mr. Beauregard was talking about. Often their frustration has built up over time. Since we are talking about dairy producers, let me remind you that they experience the same problems as the rest of us: separations, deaths, accidents. I do not know whether you saw the news last week, but two individuals died after falling into a silo. That kind of situation causes stress too. Furthermore, these days, the issue of supply management is adding to the frustration and stress already being felt by dairy producers.

Market forces constantly push them to increase their company's efficiency and profitability, and producers are starting to crumble under this ever-present demand. The message they are hearing is that they must get bigger and bigger to become more efficient. However, they are not prepared to sacrifice the family farm they have cherished all those years.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Of course we are aware that a farmer's work is more solitary than most professions. I imagine that you refer some of the mental health problems that you uncover to physicians and the health care system, correct?

Mr. Beauregard, the respite process that you mentioned earlier seems quite interesting. When a physician's prescription for farmers is to get out of their working environment in order to rest and recover their health, it must not be easy for a farmer to do. His workplace is often in the same place as his home, two steps from where he lives. He hears all the noises and sees all the work to be done. Do I understand that they can actually come to you to rest and recover their health.

[René Beauregard]

Correct. Our respite home welcomes producers from all over the province who feel the need to take a step back, to rest and to recover their mental health. They stay with us at no cost to them and they have daily access to the care provided by workers like Nancy.

However, the fact of having to leave the farm to come and stay with us creates its own problems since they have to find someone else to do the work when they are away. Leaving their farms and putting their business in the hands of someone who is not familiar with it may well cause more problems than if they decided to stay. That is why we have to find the proper balance.

Currently, the people who come to us for some respite are often those who do not operate their businesses by themselves. Then someone can continue to work when they are away. Unfortunately, we know that a lot of farms are operated by a husband and wife, each of whom has needs as great as, if not greater than, those experienced by other producers. They cannot simply up and leave their farms for a specific period.