Health Committee on May 12th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Okay.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I remember that in high school there was someone who was schizophrenic and we were told nothing about her condition. It was assumed that we would understand the situation.

Have tools been developed in that respect?

[Louise Bradley]

Thank you for that excellent question.

Yes, we have done quite a bit of work in this area. I will tell you about one recent initiative that we embarked on specifically for teenagers. With our Opening Minds, our anti-stigma initiative, we have something that's called Headstrong. Last spring we brought together about 130 teenagers from every province and territory in the country. We've learned from our research in anti-stigma that the most effective thing to reduce stigma and how we think about people with mental illness and more importantly discrimination, the behaviours that result from it, is contact-based education.

We had these kids together for a whole week. They were exposed to peers with mental illness. We heard their stories and then we equipped them with education and a tool kit to go back to their own high schools to conduct similar summits. I was at one just a week ago in St. John's where one of the participants brought together over 400 students from every high school in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There was also another one in B.C., where it was a much higher number of course. There are plans to hold individual summits. It's a bit like a spiderweb going across the country.

We also work collaboratively with things like the Jack Project and other groups.

We do target youth in particular. In terms of our strategy, by the way, for any of you who don't want to read through the whole mental health strategy for Canada, if you read the youth version, it's about a third of the length and is very direct and straightforward. The youth council took the entire strategy and rewrote it in youth-speak, so to say. They have caricatures throughout all of the strategy, and neither Michael Wilson nor I was particularly happy with ours, but it was a wonderful initiative by our youth to talk about the impact of them in their school system.

I can speak to the workplace specifically as well. I will first see if I have answered your question or if you would like me to elaborate more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

You have 40 seconds left, Ms. Moore.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Maybe you could address the subject of the workplace.

[Louise Bradley]

Yes.

About a year and a half ago the commission, again the world's first and as far as we know still the only psychological safety standard in the workplace, was developed. We did this in partnership with subject-matter experts. We did it with the Canadian Standards Association, BNQ, and several other corporations. It addresses the whole issue of mental health in the workplace.

Once upon a time, and this probably still is for a large number, mental health was something outside that you did. It was separate. Yet the place where we spend most of our waking hours is fraught with mental health dangers, if you will, and the opportunity to have mental health promotion and prevention. The psychological safety standard for the workplace is designed just in the same way that we all have health standards in our workplaces. For example, we know that everybody in a construction site needs to wear a hard hat. The psychological safety standard actually looks at what's happening inside the hard hat. We now have a guide that shows companies, businesses, governments, and organizations how to implement the standard. It's a very comprehensive, easy-to-read, clear, outline as to how to do it. We're now halfway through a three-year study following 40 businesses and organizations that have implemented the standard to see about the costs, how it impacts morale, how it impacts disability, absenteeism, and that sort of thing. It's also been adopted in other countries around the world. We are continuing to pursue that, but it's a very promising initiative.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ms. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you for joining us here today and talking about where we're going to go next. I want to look backwards a bit. I think it's important to congratulate you on the workplace standard. In my prior role, I was at the provincial and territorial ministers meetings, where everyone endorsed the standard, both federally and provincially, in terms of encouraging its rollout. It's certainly something that has legs, and I'll be very interested to see how the results of the study actually turn out as you follow these 40 organizations.

I did host one of the #308conversations. It was interesting, because we were really left with this feeling that there needs to be something next. Of course, doing something next requires someone to take the leadership and actually do it. At some point, maybe not here, I'll have a brief comment in terms of what our group is doing next, because when you are the person who initiates, I think it's important to ask where we are going to take this. You've had some pretty powerful conversations, so to sort of drop them, where are you going as a community...? We're certainly going to be providing feedback to the commission. I think the letter was just signed off on. But where do we as a community go?

You can make a few comments about that, but really, I'm interested in the mental health action plan for Canada and how you perceive it addressing emerging issues within the health care system and really laying a foundation. Could you talk a bit about any of those issues?

[Louise Bradley]

Sure.

Jennifer, do you want to talk about the #308 one?

[Jennifer Vornbrock]

What I would probably want to say very quickly about the #308 is that we were really moved by the information that was provided from each of the communities. We got letters. We got stacks of information.

As Louise said in her opening remarks, and as we've spoken about here as well, our intention is to implement the community model next. What we're also seeing is the incredible amount of strength and resilience that already exists in each of the communities in a lot of work. What really needs to happen, as you just said, is to have an organization play a key coordination and leadership role. We believe that we're in a position now, as the co-chair of the national suicide collaborative, in working with all of our partners, to have the commission take on that role next as part of our next mandate. Our hope is to move forward with that.

[Louise Bradley]

Thank you very much for hosting one of the #308conversations. That was very important.

With regard to the mental health action plan, we have now hosted round table discussions in all but two or three provinces and territories, and our intent is to hold them in every province and territory.

We're hearing from people as to what they think needs to go forward. We think we know, but we don't know for sure. It's been a while since we've consulted with them on the strategy. We also have an online survey. We also have a mechanism for consulting with average Canadians next month. That will give us information from people who haven't traditionally been invested in the topic, but we would like to see that.

We don't want the strategy to sit on a shelf and collect dust, as lovely a document as it is. Even though we're two years ahead of plans, I think it's really important to now look at what this means and what it would look like to have the mental health strategy. What priorities should we concentrate on now and in the long term in order to really bring the strategy to life?

We've done a bit of a provincial and territorial environmental scan to see how well it is or it isn't happening. Of course, not surprisingly, it's done differently in each of the provinces. That's not to say that one is any better or worse than the others. They're simply different.

Where should we concentrate next? I think that's in line with our work on mental health indicators, which is the first time that we've had them identified in the country. That will really put us in good stead to present to our board of directors in June the findings of the culmination of all of these discussions, the survey findings, and our citizens panel. I think that's really where we need to go during the next phase of the commission's work, along with all our stakeholders and partners.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ms. Morin, go ahead.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I asked my three colleagues if they knew anything about the 308meeting that you talked about earlier, but none of them did. I do not know what the problem was with that, but perhaps you could tell me more specifically what we could do to help you.

[Louise Bradley]

Which meeting? I'm sorry.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

The 308.

[Louise Bradley]

Oh, I see. Okay.

Yes. We believe that the answers lie within communities, so last spring we wrote to all 308 parliamentarians and outlined our intent. It's not an easy topic to discuss; we're aware of that. So what we provided for people were the tools needed to host a conversation. These included everything about where or how you could hold a meeting, questions you could put forward for discussion, and a mechanism to give feedback to the commission so that we could then share those results with all members of Parliament.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

All right. Thank you. One of my assistants probably did not see that, but I would be really happy to look into it.

In the document you provided on the Mental Health Strategy for Canada, you mention six strategic directions: promoting mental health; fostering recovery and upholding rights; access to the right services, treatments and supports; reducing disparity; working with First Nations, Inuit and Métis; and mobilizing leadership.

How did you allocate your budget to these six directions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ms. Bradley, a brief response.

[Louise Bradley]

I think that's where we are hoping that our mental health action plan will help us.

One thing we have been very cognizant of at the commission is trying not to presuppose things beforehand, or that we or any experts have all of the answers. It's difficult, and it may be different in different parts of the country. I think there are always ways of grouping things under different headings, but the mental health action plan for Canada is designed to do just what you are asking in your question, and that is, how we prioritize and what should be dealt with first, and how we can engage with our stakeholders and governments across the country to help it come about.

The mental health strategy does have a very large number of recommendations in it. Those were made knowing that one size doesn't fit all. Each province or territory, or department within the federal government, is able to take the recommendations that speak to them most in order to make their own plan. We've worked with every single province and territory to help them develop those priorities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Great.

The bells are ringing. Our next job is to go vote.

Thank you to the Mental Health Commission of Canada for appearing today.

Thank you to the officials and to all our MPs who took the time to be here today. That's great.

We're going to close this meeting and we'll see you on Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.