Evidence of meeting #15 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pandemic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
2:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Kelloway.
Mr. Thériault, you have the floor for six minutes.
2:45 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Bradley, the Mental Health Commission of Canada prepared a very good brief on e-mental health in Canada. That said, I'd like to make a general comment. We often say that happiness is in our head, meaning in the way that we see things when we get up in the morning. At the same time, the pandemic is showing us that, throughout history, mental illness has never had the same status as all other illnesses. It has always been overlooked in our health care systems. This is coming back to hit us square in the face now that we're in a crisis.
I gathered from your presentation earlier that we must continue to invest in the determining factors of mental health, to intervene proactively and to improve our ability to reverse poor mental health situations that lead to suicidal conditions. Obviously, there were suicidal conditions before the pandemic, but these conditions may have been exacerbated by the crisis. As decision-makers and as a society, we don't have the right to repeat the mistakes of the past. We have the opportunity to right the wrongs. This pandemic may give us the chance to review our priorities. A society can't tolerate an individual in perfect physical health wanting to take their own life as a result of profound suffering related to how they see reality.
I now want to talk about your brief entitled “COVID-19 and Suicide: Potential Implications and Opportunities to Influence Trends in Canada”. You stated the following:
While history demonstrates the potential for COVID-19?and the resulting anticipated economic recession?to impact suicide rates, an increase is not inevitable.
How could we avoid the worst-case scenario? What would be the priority actions? What most urgently needs to be done, here and now, to prevent this avoidable increase from taking place?
2:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Mental Health Commission of Canada
Thank you very much for your question. I will try to answer the various parts of it.
Certainly your initial comment about this being important to address upstream is critical.
With regard to historical events impacting mental health and mental illness, you're absolutely right on that one as well. That stigma, while we have certainly gone a long way to reducing it, is still alive and well. I think that is impacting, in particular, structural stigma. It's impacting why we aren't making the important decisions that are needing to be made, particularly during a pandemic.
If I could reference the previous question in answering yours as well, with regard to the Wellness Together portal, it's based on a stepped care 2.0 model. I want to point out that was piloted in one province first, and it's now available in three others, including Nova Scotia. In that first province it was shown to decrease wait times by 68%. That's a very significant number, particularly when you're looking at wait times in Canada of about 18 months for youth and adults.
I agree that with serious mental illnesses, it does need to be dealt with differently. There is a big concern that the pandemic is probably impacting a lot of vulnerable populations, but in particular people with serious mental illnesses. There was a study that came out this morning that showed that people with schizophrenia are dying more from COVID-19 than are other populations.
I do believe that suicide rates are avoidable. The difficulty with suicide rates is that we don't have very good data. We know that approximately 4,000 people every year in Canada die by suicide, and those rates supposedly have not increased, but they haven't decreased either. In order to address suicide, we need to know exactly what the rates are to begin with. There is a community program to speak to avoidable suicides, which is now being rolled out and piloted in eight communities across the country through the Mental Health Commission of Canada. A number of others are now joining that provincially.
It's a very complex question that you've asked, but I do believe that there are definite ways to ensure that suicide rates do not increase, but we do have to look at the plight of people with serious mental illnesses and chronic illnesses.
2:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Thériault.
We go now to Mr. Davies.
Mr. Davies, please go ahead for six minutes.
2:50 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Adams, back in May of 2020, you wrote, “We are social beings who crave social contact, human contact. These are being blocked during the pandemic and there will be fallout.”
Can you describe for us what that fallout is, in your view?
2:55 p.m.
Member, Canadian Grief Alliance
We know from the research that complex grief, by which we mean people who are not allowed to grieve in the normal way, the natural way for those who are privileged to have family, friends, space and time to recover their normal lives, can tip people into more serious mental health issues. That can be suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression or enduring features of mental health that make it difficult for people to recover their balance and to rejoin their community and their lives, their work and their family in the way that healthy grieving allows us to do.
I can say that one of the places that helped me and our two teenage children when my wife died was a local cancer organization that had a bereavement group. That organization, like many charitable organizations, has lost funding and donations, and it's been laying people off at a time when the need for these kinds of supports for people is greater than ever. There are all kinds of things that can happen. Remember, too, that just because you lost someone close to you doesn't mean that you haven't also lost a business or a job, or that you don't have other strains of the pandemic, of trying to work with children at home or going into a stressful or even a dangerous environment. It's the complexity of pressures that is particularly difficult.
2:55 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thanks.
Ms. Rattner, in December you co-authored an op-ed in iPolitics that said the following: “Three seasons into this pandemic, there’s been no comprehensive government response to the growing 'crisis within a crisis' of grief.”
Have you received any reason or explanation from the government for why it has been so slow to respond to this, I guess, foreseeable grief crisis that was warned about last May?
2:55 p.m.
Member, Canadian Grief Alliance
We haven't received a concrete response. I think there is percolating interest, but obviously there are lots of things to focus on for the government. The fallout of significant numbers of deaths maybe wasn't front and centre back in the first couple of seasons.
We do know that Wellness Together was a major response from the government around supporting people across Canada with mental health. We've met with the leadership of Wellness Together, who acknowledge the significant limitations of their portal around grief. We are kind of making inroads for different departments within government to understand this issue. The distinction between how to treat and respond to such mental health issues as depression and anxiety versus grief isn't something that's necessarily well understood.
I'm happy to elaborate on that, if that would be helpful, but I don't know if that—
2:55 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you. I have limited time. Maybe we can follow up on that.
2:55 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Ms. Bradley, the Royal Society of Canada recently issued a report entitled “Easing the Disruption of COVID-19: Supporting the Mental Health of the People of Canada”. It recommended that Canada “increase funding for mental health services to at least 12% of the health services budget to respond to the longstanding unmet need that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic”.
Can you please tell us what percentage Canada spends currently on mental health, and whether you agree with that recommendation?
2:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Mental Health Commission of Canada
I do agree with that recommendation. Currently, Canada spends around 7% of its health dollars on mental health. With the recent investments, over the next 10 years, if memory serves me, which it sometimes doesn't, that will bring us up to approximately 7.2%. What we are advocating for, if we are going to aim for parity between mental and physical health, is that it needs to go to at least 9%. That will require quite a significant influx of dollars.
I would hasten to add that it's important to say that it's not just the amount. It needs to be done with innovation involved in that, and with different ways of providing services, some of which we've talked about.
3 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Lalonde, I often hear that the answer to addiction isn't sobriety—it's connection. We know that in recovery, so much is delivered via peer support groups, 12-step programs and other such very important recovery models. I'm wondering what impacts you have seen or can tell us about in terms of the recovery of people suffering from addiction and how that may have been affected by the COVID-19 restrictions.
3 p.m.
Executive Vice-President of National Medical Services and Chief of Staff, Homewood Health Centre Inc.
That is a very good point. Many of our folks with significant substance use disorders rely very heavily on community support, on their sponsors, on 12-step meetings and other peer support meetings. There is something to be said about physical presence in the environment. That, of course, isn't able to happen currently, but I am glad to share that many of these peer support groups are still meeting through online platforms. Many of our patients here at home are still accessing these online platforms. I have heard from various patients and people seeking out treatment for addictions that it's beneficial but not quite the same.
My hope is that as the stay-at-home order in Ontario eventually is removed and we're able to get back into at least socially distanced groupings, we are able to reimplement some of these important strategies in terms of those social connections of peer support groups but, in the meantime, are able to take full advantage of the online platforms that are available to all of us.
3 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Davies.
That brings our round of questions to a close.
Witnesses, thank you for your expertise and for sharing your time with us as well as your care and concern.
That being said, I see that Mr. Van Bynen has his hand up to speak.
Mr. Van Bynen, please go ahead.
3 p.m.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I want to thank the committee for pursuing the issue that we have just concluded. I think we've had a very extensive understanding of a very important study, and what I refer to, of course, as the looming silent pandemic. I think what we've heard today reinforces that.
What I think is important, though, is that we now take some time to consolidate what we've learned. I request, and in fact, I move:
That the committee instruct the analysts to prepare an interim report on the topic of the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of Canadians based on the four meetings held on this topic as part of the study on the Emergency Situation Facing Canadians in Light of the Second Wave of COVID-19.
That's the end of the motion.
I think it's important for us to sit down and take a look at what we've heard before it gets lost in all of the others, and there's an opportunity, if the committee so wishes, to do the same thing for other topics. I really think it's important now that we consolidate and take a look at what we've learned and put together a report so that it can be a chapter in the overall study that we're undertaking as a committee.
3 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen.
I will ask the analysts if they want to jump in here and give us some advice on doing such a report and on what they require and so forth.
3 p.m.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Mr. Chair, if I can just pipe in on a point of order really quickly, you may want to let the witnesses go. I see that they're still on here, and there's really no reason for them to be sticking around.
3 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Barlow.
Witnesses, thank you so much for your time. We certainly welcome what you've told us, but we will be going into a bit of committee business right now, so feel free to leave if you wish. Thank you.
3 p.m.
Executive Vice-President of National Medical Services and Chief of Staff, Homewood Health Centre Inc.
Thank you very much.
3 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
We'll go ahead.
Once again, I'm asking the analysts if they wish to step in and give us some advice on how to proceed here.
3 p.m.
Sonya Norris Committee Researcher
I think writing an interim report would be very helpful. It would help to focus the committee on what they heard during those first four meetings, and it takes the study into some easier-to-consume bites. We're fine to go ahead and to start to draft an interim report. If the committee wishes, they could also go the way of each of the members submitting what they hope will be in the report. That could be submitted through the clerk.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Sonya, for the information.
Mr. Van Bynen, I see that your hand is still up. Do you wish to speak again? Okay.
Next we have Ms. Rempel Garner.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
The testimony we heard from witnesses today was deeply impactful for me, to the point where I was—as, I'm sure, some of my colleagues on the meeting today were—almost brought to tears. The impact of the pandemic is felt across all political stripes and demographics in this country.
I'm sitting here trying to manage news that the Moderna shipment of vaccines has been deeply cut today. We have more restrictions on Canadian civil liberties, with no end in sight. The EU is looking at trade restrictions on vaccines. I'm trying to manage all this news, and what I don't want to have happen with an interim report is for the government to use that as a way to stall witnesses on vaccine delivery or the ministers in front of committee next week on vaccines.
I don't mind if the analysts want to start writing an interim report, but if this is what this committee is going to do, then they can expect us to be providing recommendations as a committee on vaccine delivery.
We're in a national crisis. On a Friday afternoon, with no makeup on, I'm trying to absorb the fact that our country is not in a position to be receiving vaccines any time soon. In the middle of what is essentially a wartime effort, when we don't have vaccines, I don't want our health committee—the federal Standing Committee on Health—to be wasting meetings deliberating things like punctuation on a report that's not material to getting the tools to end this pandemic.
If that's the intention of the Liberals on this committee, it is a no go for me and it's a no go for the Conservative party. I don't mind if the analysts want to start writing stuff up, because I think reporting on the mental health impact of the pandemic is fine.
I'm going to look to colleagues, particularly from the NDP and from the Bloc, for agreement that if we are going to support an interim report on mental health, the deliberations on the report happen outside of the meetings that are scheduled on vaccines for the next couple of weeks, or over the break. If we want to deliberate an interim report on mental health, I would suggest that this committee do that over the parliamentary recess and not during the regularly scheduled meetings that are coming up on vaccines.
This committee needs to work across political stripes to encourage the government and come up with bold moon-shot positions to get our country vaccines.
As I'm sitting here, my phone has just been blowing up today with people asking, “When are we getting vaccines?” and me going, “I don't know. The government won't say. They say September, but it's not looking great.”
Put bluntly, that's my concern. I don't think we should be passive-aggressive on this. If the Liberals want us to be taking meetings away from a vaccine study, I do not support that. There will be no improvement in the mental health of Canadians unless we get vaccines, rapid tests, therapeutics and variant-testing capacity to every Canadian.
I'm not sure if any of the rest of my colleagues are of this opinion; I would like to hear it. However, I do not want to take committee business or meetings away to be looking at punctuation on a report, when we need to be getting vaccines to Canadians.