Thank you so much. It's an honour to be here with the honourable members of Parliament and my colleagues.
I'm going to get to the point and speak very honestly about what I believe are the top recommendations you know from the news, that mental health is an emerging crisis, but I really want to talk about what you need to think about.
In the proposed federal budget, you've looked at investing critical money into mental health services, particularly looking at vulnerable populations and our essential workers. I want to really emphasize two things. You have to invest today in the hot spots; you can't go across Canada. You have to look where it's proportionate, invest directly, and think about those communities. If COVID has taught us anything, it's that, if we aren't looking at the communities that are already impacted, then it's going to explode. The fourth wave will be a mental health wave, and we know from the data from past pandemics that those essential and frontline care workers are facing PTSD, and, for those people who are impacted by PTSD, they're 40% more likely to experience major depression and at more risk of suicide. These are the people who are saving lives today, and we need to be planning for the future.
My second recommendation is around how we plan for the future. It's great that you're using well-known, renowned hospitals and research centres, but the investments have to be in local community organizations that are trusted and have built comprehensive relationships with those communities where there are vulnerable people. When you look at the disproportionate effect of the COVID pandemic on marginalized individuals and BIPOC people, we need to look at those community agencies. Why? It's because those community agencies are the ones that provide the wraparound supports where people are vulnerable. Although you might want to do large Canadian institutions, you need to get the money on the ground so that it can be realized quickly for those individuals, because otherwise their vulnerabilities are only going to increase, which is what we have seen currently in the response to the pandemic in some communities.
My last point is that we have an emerging issue around substance abuse, particularly alcohol and cannabis. We know from the data that, for people who are using cannabis, over 50% report they are using more, and there is more binge drinking in other populations, particularly populations who have children at home, so binge drinking is going up.
My third recommendation, therefore, is that you need to have a public health approach to reducing the use of alcohol and cannabis. Look, I'm in mental health and addiction, and I'm telling you people are using more, and the long-term consequences of using more are that it's going to be harder to treat people as this pandemic continues to go on. We need to use the Public Health Agency of Canada to begin talking about that message to help people reduce the amount that they are consuming.
The Canadian Mental Health Association has done a lot of research through Pollara on the mental health impacts. It is disproportionate, as you know, for women and for women with children. Rates of anxiety are going up, and rates of loneliness are increasing for women. Now one in four women are reporting great anxiety compared with one in five men. It's still not great, but particularly for women with children, we're also seeing increasing rates of loneliness, particularly in the young people 18 to 39 years old. We're seeing also the impacts of social isolation and loneliness on our seniors. More and more, these impacts of loneliness, depression and anxiety are increasing, and people are feeling worse off. People are feeling less hopeful than they ever have; in fact, 80% of Canadians report that they no longer feel that their health is improving.
I will say that there are some good news points in here. People are feeling like they know how to access care, although they are very concerned about wait-lists and whether or not, if they access care, they're going to receive it. We need to make sure that those targeted investments are made so that there is easy access to quick supports.
One support we have in Ontario is the BounceBack program that's funded through the Ministry of Health. This is telephone-based cognitive behaviour therapy specifically designed to ease stress, worry, depression and anxiety. We're trying to promote programs like that to go across Canada. These types of services to help people manage and cope are going to be essential for the broad population.
I want to go back in my six minutes, which is getting less now, to what I really want to emphasize again. I want to talk about post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly in our health care workers and our frontline workers. It has a disproportionate effect on our nurses and hospital staff, our paramedics, our police, our long-term care homes, our home and community health nurses, and all of the staff that are working in congregate care settings. If this is a strain on the population now, it's going to have an impact on our other health services for Canadians. What we're seeing is that those people are beginning to suffer, and burnout is on the rise. If this happens, we are going to have a strain on our health care system. Again I want to urge you to look at those investments and at how we can invest properly.
Further to my recommendations, in my last few minutes I want to talk about trusted community relationships again.
I'm sorry, but I don't know what the yellow card means. Is that one minute left?