Thank you very much.
I'm delighted to be here this morning to talk about a topic that I, along with the Mental Health Commission of Canada, am quite impassioned about.
We have long understood that to get to the heart of addressing mental health and wellness of Canadians, we absolutely have to look beyond the health care sector. We need to understand that when we say “mental health”, it cuts across all jurisdictions—and I mean all jurisdictions. I would be happy to give you an example of what another country is doing in that regard. That's why the Mental Health Commission of Canada has prioritized working with unconventional partners, and chief among those are the workplaces.
When we first began to champion the national standard for psychological health and safety in the workplace about four or five years ago, we had to get employers to reimagine the concept of what a workplace is. We also had to remind our stakeholders that workplaces don't begin and end with office buildings—they simply do not. We've done a great job at helping to support a range of workforces, from first responders, to trucking companies, to health care providers, to help them put employee mental health on the agenda.
We've had some pretty good results. So, where am I going with this? Well, farmers, producers and those mining our natural resources are equally people at work—hard at it, in fact. Rural Canadians are some of the toughest, hardest-working people anywhere in the world. But, as we've seen from our efforts with first responders, being tough isn't the same as being invulnerable, so we need to step up to the plate collectively and take a look at what's happening across our farming communities.
We need to give some serious thought to how we are supporting their mental health, because the challenges they face are complex and layered. Their chosen jobs are replete with realities most of us would find quite daunting. It's an around-the-clock job, 365 days a year, and profits are reliant on the vagaries of weather, the supply chain, trade agreements, and other factors far outside the realm of their control. And there are very high levels of stress and isolation. Compound to that is stress with a lack—and I mean a lack—of access to mental health care. Let's remember that access to services is scant and often unavailable in most communities across this country, and that stigma is hardly a thing of the past in communities where everybody knows everyone else.
These reasons just scratch the surface as to the need to examine where a pan-Canadian responsibility lies in bridging the gap that too often sees agricultural workers and producers suffering in silence before resorting to suicide.
Addressing this may seem a daunting task, but back in the seventies, when Canadians were dying in car accidents, we didn't throw up our hands and say there's really not much we can do about that; it's too hard a problem. In 1971, seatbelts were made mandatory in all new cars. Legislation was enacted to make sure we used those seatbelts. We've seen even stricter evolution over car-seat requirements. Grassroots organizations and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving have lobbied hard to raise awareness about the dangers of impaired driving.
These and many other practical measures taken together actually save lives. In the same way, we have to build a practical framework to address the mental health of farmers, and we need to build better broadband infrastructure. Investing in e-mental health programs is not only wise but is the way of the future.
We should be making evidence-based distance mental health skills training, such as that provided by the Strongest Families Institute, widely available right across the country.
Taken together, these efforts would give farmers the opportunity to seek help where and when they need it, at a time convenient to them, and in the privacy of their own homes. It can be done.
We need to implement suicide prevention programs, such as the one the Mental Health Commission of Canada is promoting and now doing in three provinces in rural sectors. It's called Roots of Hope. It addresses such things as means restriction, provides resources such as walk-in mental health services when needed, and creates groups of like-minded people to share stories and act as peer supporters.
In 2015-16, the University of Guelph did a study co-authored by Andria Jones-Bitton, which revealed that of the 1,000 participants engaged in agriculture, nearly 60% were to be classified as suffering from anxiety.