Agriculture Committee on Oct. 16th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

It has to be not too long.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you for coming here today and doing two things for us: telling us about your personal experience and telling us how it relates to public policy.

I love the term “symbiotic relationship” between the farm management practice and health issues. Can you elaborate a little on that?

[Heather Watson]

I know we're almost out of time, so just quickly, farm management brings confidence, and confidence helps with positive mental health, making decisions, knowing what's in your control and what's not in your control, and knowing you're doing the best you can with what you have.

On the opposite side, negative mental health or not-positive mental health can cause difficulty making decisions and difficulty knowing whether you're doing the right thing for the right person at the right time.

There is a connection between positive business management practices and positive mental health and between not-so-good mental health and not-so-good business practices. Not-so-good business practices can perhaps have some negative consequences for mental health, because you're not quite sure where you are and where you're going.

I like to focus on the win-win of the two scenarios, if we can.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Peschisolido.

To the panel—Mr. Campbell, Ms. Watson, and of course, Mr. Currie and Mr. Sykanda—thanks so much for being here. It will certainly help us in our study. Have a good, safe trip back.

We will break for a few minutes and come back with the next panel. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Welcome to the second hour of our study on mental health for farmers and agriculture.

In this second hour, we have with us Mr. Murray Porteous, past national labour chair of the Canadian Horticultural Council and vice-president of Lingwood Farms Limited. Welcome to our meeting.

We have the president and chief executive officer of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, Ms. Louise Bradley. Thanks for being here, Ms. Bradley.

Also, by telephone, we have the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, Mr. Ray Orb.

We will start the opening statements.

Ms. Bradley, do you want to get us going on the opening statements? Thank you. You have six minutes.

[Louise Bradley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mental Health Commission of Canada]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Ms. Bradley, I'm going to have to ask you to conclude, if you can.

[Louise Bradley]

The Mental Health Commission of Canada can play a supporting role in this. I will stop there.

There are solutions; there are answers; and we do not need to have our farmers suffer and die unnecessarily.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Bradley. You'll have a chance with the questions later on.

[Louise Bradley]

Yes, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Porteous, you may take six minutes.

[Murray Porteous, Past National Labour Chair, Canadian Horticultural Council and Vice-President, Lingwood Farms Limited, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for allowing me to appear here today.

I've never been more nervous making a presentation. This past year has been extremely stressful: we've survived two tornadoes, which struck four of our nine farms; I had a knee shattered in June, which I'm hoping to have back to normal by January; but the worst part was undergoing an integrity audit through Employment and Social Development Canada.

I've been involved in the seasonal agricultural worker program for many years and have represented Canada in international negotiations for the program for the past six years. I'm the past chair of the labour committee for the Canadian Horticultural Council. When the ESDC first introduced the concept of having an integrity audit process, I was very supportive of it. I said we need to have integrity in the program; we need to ensure that workers are protected and that people follow the rules; and there need to be consequences for those who do not. We get a bad reputation as the agriculture industry when somebody doesn't comply and misuses workers. I've been very supportive of it, but right from the start I said that the integrity audit process needs to have an appeal process whereby you can have people who actually understand agriculture look at a situation and decide whether there is a real threat or not.

Second, it needs to be timely. In horticulture, timing is absolutely critical. Asparagus, when it's hot, will grow eight inches a day. I have to harvest it at between seven and twelve inches. That means that most days when it's warm, we harvest every day in asparagus; some days we harvest twice. I need to make sure we have workers available.

If the government decides, as they did in my case, that someone is not going to have workers, I'm out of business. That had serious impacts not only for my business but also for my family members.

Last October I was informed that I was going to go through an inspection, as they called it. I thought, well, okay; they have a random audit process, and that's fine. I was expecting this at some point; they're very thorough. They said, no, it's a risk-based audit. Right away that triggered some panic in me, because a risk-based audit means you are suspected of serious violations of the program requirements. You could be suspected of, for example, sex trafficking, imprisonment of workers, non-payment of workers, violence against workers, deplorable housing conditions—any one of those things.

What surprised me is that they wouldn't answer when I asked them what I was being suspected of. I'm right in the category with all of that. My neighbours all know that I'm under inspection, and so they obviously start saying that I must have done something really wrong, because that means they can stop processing your applications for workers for next year.

The government is so slow in working that I have to apply right now if I want workers next spring to start harvesting asparagus. Any delay in that process really screws me up. It used to take the government ten days to process those applications. We're now talking about several months for them to process them. When you add in an integrity audit process, who knows where the end line is and whether you'll even have a workforce.

When they came and said in October that they were going to do this integrity audit, I was very relieved to hear them say they would not stop processing my application in the meantime. What I didn't know was that they were lying to me: they did stop processing my application. I didn't find that out until two months later.

Maybe I shouldn't say lying, but they weren't telling me the truth. There's a difference. There are different silos within the ministry. Communication isn't really good, and one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing, and when they find out, nobody has the authority to overrule anybody else. As a farmer, you thus end up as a victim.

I thought, okay, I'm well organized; I'll submit everything they've required. I did that in November. I started experiencing health effects in October when they told me I was going to have an inspection. My resting heart rate has been 48 for the last 40 years, up until October, when it dropped to 40, which I thought was odd. Then one night while I was sitting watching TV with my wife, I said, "I don't have a pulse." She said, "That's ridiculous. Check somewhere else." But no, I didn't have a pulse.

What would happen was that my heart rate started ranging between 33 and 190 as a resting rate, and then it would reset for several seconds and wouldn't restart, so I was experiencing blackouts and things like that.

Anyway, we started going through this process, and we didn't know what we were accused of. You're guilty until you're proven innocent, because they're not going to process your application until you're cleared, which means you could be out of business right away. I farm in partnership with my brother-in-law and my father, and we also employ my son. My father is 81 years old. He started worrying about whether he's going to have enough money for his dotage when he gets old so he withdrew his member loans from the company.

I can't blame him for doing that. It's the prudent thing to do. When the bank realized that we had no guarantee that we were going to have workers this spring, they started to become nervous as well. We had less working capital because of my Dad withdrawing funds and also because our business was growing, so we had to increase our operating loan. The bank required an appraisal of all of our assets and then renegotiated our financing. That was okay. That was a little bit stressful, maybe, but we had hope that this integrity process would go tickety-boo. There's nothing wrong here. There's nothing to look for.

I was assured in December that I would know within days, not weeks, that I had my approval. That was the beginning of December, and I received my approval in about the third week of February. In the meantime, calls weren't answered, emails weren't answered, and we kept going through ridiculous questions. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada staff even suggested we move closer to town because there were more unemployed people there to hire.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Porteous, I'm going to have to ask you to terminate. You'll have another chance with questions as we go on. Thank you so much.

[Murray Porteous]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Orb, you have up to six minutes to do your opening statement. Go ahead.

[Ray Orb, President, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities]

First of all, it's a pleasure to be here today.

My name is Ray Orb. I am the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, known as SARM. We have been the voice of rural Saskatchewan for over 100 years and we represent all of the 296 rural municipalities in our province. As an association, we are mandated to work in agriculture, which is an important sector and a way of life in this province.

Going back to 1911, we reported that there were 95,000 farms in Saskatchewan, and the crop area going to wheat was 5.3 million acres. In 2016 we counted 34,500 Saskatchewan farms and 11.8 million acres of wheat planted, more than double the area that was reported in 1911. The landscape has changed over the course of the last one hundred years. There are larger farms yielding more production while at the same time there are fewer farms and fewer farmers, and this has all had a hand in creating additional stress for producers.

Farming and ranching have unique occupational hazards and stresses, with strong traditions of being independent occupations. The Agricultural Health and Safety Network was founded in 1988 in Saskatchewan by the Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture along with SARM and originally with six rural municipalities in the province. It actually provides support to improve health and safety on the farm. According to the Agricultural Health and Safety Network, farmers are exposed to a great deal of physical health risks, along with long strenuous labour and poor working conditions inhibited by weather and time of day. Due to the nature of farming, farmers and their families are susceptible to high levels of stress, depression, anxiety and suicide.

Long hours in the field, unpredictable weather and often low commodity prices are all common concerns for producers in Saskatchewan. If you mix those things, for example, with a prairie fire that destroys homes, crops and livestock, you have the perfect recipe for stress coupled with disaster. That's exactly what happened last year in the southern half of our province, in the fall of 2017, as we saw hundreds of livestock perish and close to 35,000 hectares of pasture land lost in a fire that swept through the Burstall and Tompkins, Saskatchewan, area last October.

I had the opportunity to hear first-hand from farmers and ranchers as we toured the area to witness that devastation. We met with several ranching families who have been devastated by the grass fires. Many of them have lost a good part of their livestock herds, their pasture and their livelihood. When I asked how they would recover, they said they had faced adversity before and pulled through then, and they'd pull through now.

As an association, we hear producer frustrations about land prices, taxation policies and the lack of safety net programs with regard to their operations. As a retired farmer myself, I realize it's impossible to alleviate all the stresses of farming and ranching, but it's imperative that we have mechanisms in place to support our producers in times of need.

According to a 2016 study from the University of Guelph, Canadian farmers are more stressed than those living and working elsewhere. The survey found that 45% of respondents had high stress; 58% of them were classified with varied levels of anxiety, and 35% had depression. As well, 40% of the respondents agreed that they would be uneasy about getting professional help. This demonstrates that there still is a stigma associated with mental health treatment, especially in the agriculture industry.

If you look at a report on how to feed the world by 2050, it indicates that by that time the world's population will reach 9.1 billion. Food production must increase by 70%. Annual cereal production needs to reach three billion tonnes, and annual meat production will need to increase by over 200 million tonnes.

To ensure a sustainable food system, we need to ensure we have healthy producers, and we need to look at the ag industry holistically. We need to equip our producers with all the tools they require to be healthy, productive and successful. This should include safety net programs that address disasters, such as prairie fires as a result of extremely dry conditions.

We need to have forage and pasture insurance available to farmers that is affordable, timely enough and adequate to protect farmers from disasters. Sometimes it's also necessary that programs be modified, such as the livestock tax deferral program that permits livestock producers to spread income over a longer period of time when they are forced to sell part or all of their herds.

On behalf of Saskatchewan's rural municipalities, we thank the standing committee for the opportunity to lend our voice to this important conversation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Orb.

Now we'll start our questioning round.

To start us off, we have Mr. Dreeshen for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, all of the witnesses and also the witnesses who spoke earlier.

It's difficult for me to figure out exactly where to start in this.

I am a farmer. Right now we have our crops under snow. When you add that, and when you take the regulatory burdens that are associated with it, such as those of the Canada Revenue Agency and the added stressors they have there.... I believe, Mr. Porteous, you mentioned the integrity audit, and how you are suspected of being something that you aren't. There's exactly the same situation with the CRA and with the other concerns that people have. It's just so frustrating.

We have groups, such as Do More Ag, that are out there talking about things. What we need is a “do no more harm” from governments and other groups, like anti-farm associations. We heard earlier about the attacks we've had. It's something that is so critical. I think of all of the different things.

As Canadians, we'll apologize for anything. Other people around the world understand that. We see that happening in our oil and gas industry. All of a sudden we are afraid to take our natural resources to tidewater, where the rest of the world is filling in the gap. We lose because of that. Our forestry has had the same types of attacks from Greenpeace, and so on. Our agriculture groups are having the same issues as well, as we deal with GMOs and all these associated non-tariff trade barriers.

That is the attack. For the people who are watching and for the members we have here, these are the attacks people are talking about when they say that this is where the pressure is as far as agriculture is concerned.

Ms. Bradley, you spoke about the need for appropriate training for mental health workers, but I believe that one of the things we heard before is that the medical profession doesn't understand. You can't simply say, “Go away from the farm. Stay away for a while.” That doesn't work when you live where your work is and where your family is. I think that becomes one of the critical things for training, to make sure we have a group of farm folks who have that.

Look at retired farmers. They're the ones who understand all of this. There's a pool of people you can also talk to and work with.

Ms. Bradley, can you think of any strategies that could allow that to be part of it?

Mr. Porteous, perhaps you could fill us in about some of the concerns you have with regard to government intervention, if there is enough time.

[Louise Bradley]

I do think there are strategies, in fact.

I mentioned one program that the commission is promoting and is now running in three provinces. It's a program called “Roots of Hope”. Training is an important component of it, but you have to bear in mind that it is one component. The philosophy around this particular program is that the answer lies within the community.

We didn't come up with this on our own. We learned this from 22 countries in Europe, and to a similar degree from Quebec, where the suicide rates dropped between 20% and 25% within two years.

There are specific components within that program. We currently have three provinces doing it, all in rural communities.

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

Thank you very much.

I'm mindful of my time, so I apologize.

[Murray Porteous]

Thank you.

I don't know any other government program that's run this way.

On March 1, I received notice that ESDC, for their investigations, were going to enter farms without the permission, knowledge or consent of the producer. Whether or not the producer was present, they would go where they wanted and inspect what they wanted.

Later that morning I received a communication from them that they would also be seizing farmers' computers. That's when I had my heart attack.

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

I think one of the concerns we have is we talk about farm workers and the employees and so on, and how important those are, and we have all of these programs, but the person who owns that farm is also working on that farm. You have situations where—and in Alberta we're at this stage now—if you have a certain number of people then there's a chance to do unionization, and isn't that going to help your operation?

These are the other sorts of issues that are coming at us because of the government not understanding what the farm is like. That's one of the situations you have.

Nobody understands a 90-hour work week. When you go and tell people that, they think you're full of it. Nobody understands that's exactly what you have to do.

Then they have other added stresses. It's one thing to deal with the weather, but it's something else to have somebody say, guess what, you're causing global warming so therefore we should be taxing you a little bit more, and I'm sure that will help.

If there's any time left, I'll let you rant [Inaudible-Editor].

[Murray Porteous]

When we raise the concerns about food safety, biosecurity and protocols that we have to adhere to, we're told, “We don't care. That's just an excuse. We're going to do our job.”

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

Thank you.