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.