Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I need to say at the outset that this is my first time appearing at a committee on this side of the table, so I thank you for your warm welcome and your understanding.
A lot of misconceptions exist regarding suicide. A stigma surrounding suicide exists that prevents an honest conversation. There are a lot of questions to which we simply don't have answers. Studies say that 96% of Canadians believe that discussing suicide openly will reduce the number of suicides. We don't know how many Canadians are comfortable engaging in that conversation.
A stigma definitely exists. Since raising this issue in Parliament, many constituents, friends, and members of the media have asked me who it was I knew whose death by suicide had motivated me to table this legislation. I'd like to briefly share my journey with you.
In March 2008 a young woman from Brampton, named Nadia, was suffering from postpartum mood disorder and insomnia. A student here in Ottawa, she felt isolated, and sought help online. Instead of help, Nadia found a predator. Instead of comfort, she was encouraged to hang herself in front of a webcam. Instead of finding a friend who would encourage her to find help, she found a predator who entered into a suicide pact with her, a pact she completed four years ago this month.
It turned out that the young woman with whom Nadia thought she was communicating was, in reality, a middle-aged man—a middle-aged male nurse from Minnesota who posed under an online pseudonym, and was linked to numerous other suicides in several countries.
It seemed that the digital cross-border nature of the crime was impeding prosecution. When I met Nadia's family, I quickly understood their pain, how their pain was extended each day, and how they were denied closure.
At the time, I was a grandfather to eight beautiful grandchildren—now nine—growing up in a world where wired communication is the wild west. That led me to introduce Motion 388, which called on the government to address in the Criminal Code the barriers that law enforcement agencies faced in Nadia's case. That motion passed unanimously in the House of Commons in November of 2008.
Through discussions on Motion 388, I met many people working on the front lines, such as Tana Nash, who tried their best to educate me on these issues. I met many Canadians affected by suicide who shared their pain with me, and I started to pay attention in a different way. Obituaries for young Canadians that didn't list a cause of death stood out to me like never before. Then one day I looked at my BlackBerry to find an email from Tana with news that both brought a chill to my bones and turned my stomach. In the space of just one week, three students from Waterloo region schools had died by suicide in unrelated incidents.
If there were a single thing, one single accident, to which I would attribute my reason to introduce Bill C-300, it would be that conversation.
The need for Bill C-300 is obvious, and I thank Parliament for recognizing this by such a strong vote in favour of it. I shared many statistics during the debate on Bill C-300, but today I would like to take the opposite approach, and share the things we don't know.
It's estimated that on average 10 Canadians die by suicide each day. That number in and of itself is terrifying, but we don't know how accurate it is. We know that the stigma surrounding suicide causes under-reporting, but we don't know how severely.
We know that suicide is a public health issue, but we have developed no best practices to treat it as such. Teachers in a position to recognize suicidal behaviours are rarely trained to do so, and it's uncommon even for medical doctors and nurses to receive specific training in this area. We know that there exists, in our society, groups more vulnerable to the threat of suicide than the general population—veterans and aboriginal Canadians are notable—but we struggle to develop a suitable evidence-based response.
We know that suicide is most often preventable, as I stated in Bill C-300's preamble, by knowledge, care, and compassion, but we do a poor job of sharing the knowledge regarding suicide prevention, which we have accumulated with those whose care and compassion compel them to work to save lives.
Finally, we know that addressing this challenge will require collaboration across jurisdictional, geographical, and sectoral lines, and increased lines of communication between agencies. But we also know that, between 1993 and the most recent election, only one piece of legislation relating to suicide prevention was introduced, and that private member's bill never reached second reading.
That's not to say we haven't made progress.
I understand you will be hearing today from the Mental Health Commission of Canada. I've been briefed on some of the projects they have been working on, and I would say that the MHCC has built a solid foundation on which the goals of Bill C-300 can be achieved. I'm happy to respond to your questions, but I would remind you that I am not an expert on preventing suicide. I would ask you to refer the more technical questions to the expert witnesses who will be here today, and whom you will be calling in the future.
I'm not superstitious, but I notice patterns. The number of my bill is C-300. Three members of Parliament voted against it. This committee is devoting three days of study to it. I will close by noting that coincidence and thanking this committee for ensuring that Bill C-300 is ready for third reading. Somewhere along the way, I started referring to Bill C-300 as a message of hope. I thank you for sharing in that message.
Thank you, Madam Chair.