Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us today and sharing their experiences with and concerns about the pandemic.
It's a great honour to be able to welcome a constituent to the committee and have their voice reflected in the work we do here, so I will be directing my questions to Rebecca Shields from CMHA York Region and South Simcoe and acknowledge that she serves a population of over 1.2 million people across more than 10 different municipalities.
Firstly, Rebecca, I want to thank you for the many projects that you have undertaken in conjunction with community partners like York Regional Police or Southlake Regional Health Centre. You have put together teams to respond to situations that are urgent and often call for a police presence, but also will have the presence of your team so that you can respond effectively to these.
Last fall I moved a motion in this committee to study the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health and the well-being of Canadians. That was well more than four to five months ago. I referred to mental health as being the third pandemic, and it has become the fourth pandemic now, and I very much understand what your concerns are.
You supported the call for the study and said that to achieve full economic and social recovery, we must understand the true impacts of the pandemic on the mental health of Canadians. I completely agree with you, and I thank you for that support.
I know it's critical to invest in comprehensive community-based research to understand the impact and to identify the most promising strategies. You made some references to hot spots. While the scope and the scale of this committee is more broadly countrywide, how would you suggest we go about trying to identify the community-based strategies?