Good afternoon everyone.
Thank you very much for having invited the Canadian Paediatric Society to participate in these pre-budget consultations.
A society's good health is key to its economic growth and sustainable development. Jeffrey Sachs estimated that poor health accounts for about 50% of the growth differential between rich and poor nations.
Policies and programs based on effective health promotion strategies are needed to ensure a healthy society. These represent an investment in the future.
Our brief focuses on the starting point of that investment, the health of our children and youth.
Unintentional injuries are the number one cause of death in children, adolescents, and young adults. More children die of injuries than of all childhood diseases combined. The cost of these injuries is staggering, an estimated $9 billion in Canada in 1995. The potential economic benefits of investing in injury prevention are equally impressive. European data show that one euro, for example, spent on child safety seats results in a saving of 32 euros to the economy.
Canada has certainly made remarkable progress in this domain over the last several decades, but we retain a misconception about so-called accidents. Accidents are not accidents. We can sharply reduce death and disability by providing safer physical and social environments.
The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends that the federal government allocate $20 million this year for the development of a federal-provincial-territorial strategy on injury prevention, together with a multi-year financial commitment, which would facilitate the implementation and evaluation of related policies and programs.
The disease prevention strategy we know best, and with good reason, is our immunization program. The $300 million allocated under the national immunization strategy for new childhood vaccines has been an outstanding success, including vaccines against bacteria causing meningitis and serious pneumonia. Almost all provincial and territorial governments now make these vaccines available as part of their routine funded immunization schedules. The result is that parents who may have been unable or unwilling to pay for vaccines can now readily obtain these vaccines for their children at no cost to them. The impact of these expanded programs has already been felt.
Infectious disease prevention is especially important with the threat of an influenza pandemic. The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that 15% to 35% of the Canadian population will become ill during a pandemic. Sherry Cooper compared the prospect of a flu pandemic with the Great Depression. Infectious disease outbreaks have the potential for huge costs. The Bank of Canada estimated that the 2003 SARS outbreak caused a 0.6% drop in the GDP. While it was devastating to those involved, the scope of the SARS outbreak was very small compared with that of an influenza pandemic.
The CPS recommends that current funding for the provincial childhood vaccine programs be made permanent and that it be reviewed annually to ensure that all Canadians, regardless of where they live, have equal access to new vaccines approved by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.
Lastly, we recommend the continued allocation of $10 million annually to the Public Health Agency to ensure that the objectives of the national immunization strategy are achieved.
The costs associated with treating mental illness affecting youth have increased in recent decades. These costs are expected to increase by 50 per cent over the next 15 years. Twenty per cent of children and adolescents are afflicted with emotional, developmental or behavioural problems.
The cost to the Canadian economy of mental illness is estimated at $30 billion a year. This includes direct costs to the health and social services as well as indirect costs from family breakdown, poverty, disability, and crime.
In May 2006 the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology released an outstanding report on mental health in Canada called Out of the Shadows at Last. Among its findings it concluded that “children and youth are at a significant disadvantage when compared to other groups affected by mental illness, in that the failings of the mental health system affect them more acutely and severely.”
The CPS calls on the federal government to invest the $536 million annually recommended in the Senate Report Out of the Shadows at Last. It had many recommendations, but principally it called for developing a national and coordinated strategy for mental illness and mental health.