Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Vince Savoia. I am the founder and executive director of the Tema Conter Memorial Trust.
January 27, 1988 was a day that changed my life forever. Working as a paramedic in Toronto, I attended to the homicide of Tema Conter. What made that call so unique for me was that, as I stood over the bed and I looked at Tema, I was sure it was my fiancée who had been raped and murdered. The physical resemblance was so uncanny that my colleague, my partner, vocally asked me if this was, in fact, my fiancée.
After a couple of terrifying seconds and coming to the realization that it wasn't my fiancée, we had to make a decision, and that decision was whether or not we were going to resuscitate her. The decision we made was that we would not. That one decision of not at least attempting to resuscitate Tema caused me to go down the road of PTSD, and it took about 12 years before I even had a proper diagnosis.
Back in the late eighties PTSD wasn't even on the radar. Everybody assumed that PTSD was strictly a by-product of going to war. I don't think anyone really realized how the work of a first responder can truly affect one's psyche.
In 2001, with the blessing of the Conter family, the Tema Conter Memorial Trust was registered as a charitable organization. We originally started off with the mandate of providing a scholarship program to paramedic students at Humber College. What started off as a $1,000 scholarship is today a $30,000 per year scholarship program in which we encourage students in any public safety program, be that EMS, fire, police, correctional services, 911 communications, or even the military, to research psychological stressors of acute stress, cumulative stress, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and post-traumatic stress.
We offer $2,500 per province. We offer two scholarships in Ontario, and the best paper in the country receives an additional scholarship of $2,500.
Since then we have expanded our portfolio. We have partnered with numerous hospitals and universities in the Toronto area to conduct research. We recently partnered with the University of Ottawa and Nipissing University to conduct an OSI study involving police officers across the province. As a result of that research, we now offer peer support training, and what I'm truly proud of is that we host a peer and family support assistance line for any first responder or family member to call. It's a toll-free number, and the mandate of that particular phone line is to ensure that, when they do call us, they are safe and they are not suicidal. More importantly, we act as a referral agent. We really attempt to try to get them to see a mental health professional who can truly support them.
Although peer support is gaining prominence in this country as a methodology for us to assist our colleagues—and I truly do believe in peer support—what I must say is that it is very important that we truly get our first responders, or basically any Canadian suffering from any sort of mental illness or disorder, to seek proper mental health care.
My call to action that I'd like to table here today is the inclusion of psychological care within our provincial health care plans and even the federal health care plan. You've heard from our colleagues today that we need more funding, but where is that funding going to go? I think we've done enough research. I think what we really need to do is have better access to psychologists in this country.
In addition to that I'd like to partner with my colleague, Scott Marks, in calling for a national strategy for PTSD. We really need to look at our first responder community. Our first responder community today is in crisis. Since April 29, 2014, we have sustained 45 suicides, and my suspicion is that the number is higher and that the 45 is just the number of suicides that we have been able to confirm, but anecdotally I suggest that number is higher in Canada. My concern is that there is a lack of response by both our provincial and federal governments to this crisis.
There needs to be a program in place where we really look at raising the awareness of mental health in this country, and especially within the first responder community. There is a John Wayne-ish attitude within our first responder community. Our colleagues are afraid to come forward. They are truly afraid, and they're afraid because there are organizations in this country that ridicule, ostracize, and even terminate first responders who come forward and ask for help—and that has to stop.
As you can tell, I'm very passionate about this subject matter. I consider Tema to be the true leader in the first responder community. We do not receive any provincial or federal funding. We are run strictly by donations from the general population, and we run our organization usually on a budget of about $300,000 a year. If I could ask for anything, I would ask you to please consider funding our organization. We'd really like to expand our peer and family support line, and more importantly, we would really like to get our best practices model of peer support for emergency responders out across this country.
Thank you.