Thank you very much for the question.
I won't necessarily get into the politics of what's being released or not, but what I can say is that we do know that children have taken on a disproportionate negative effect. If we look at depression scores or anxiety from Statistics Canada or Public Health Agency of Canada statistics, we know that children disproportionally showed increased or elevated levels of these particular mental health disorders throughout the pandemic. Basically, the older you were, the less you were affected, at least from a mental health point of view. We very much downloaded the crisis. While the physical health crisis was on the elderly, the mental health crisis was largely visited upon our children, because their lives were the ones that were so disrupted. Anyone who has a teenager would know that. All those sporting activities and the rights of passage into adulthood were disrupted, and that has taken a toll.
I am very cautious. When I look at any imposition of new regulations, I am very cautious that most of those regulations are being imposed in zones like children's activities. The consequences are being felt most by kids, even though the impact or the benefit is being accrued in terms of health consequences for the adults: the care providers, the teachers and that type of thing.
There's a fine line to walk here between disadvantaging our children and trying to keep adults healthy. If you look at, say, the work of Sara Austin at Children First Canada, you would certainly see that what we're trying to do is advocate more, so that we can actually think about the needs of children before we put these policies in place. Indeed, let's be really clear that there are long-term consequences as we disrupt children's lives: depression, suicidality, long-term developmental challenges and, as my colleagues here on all the medical sides of this are showing, that whole sort of delayed diagnosis of pathology that is occurring in children's lives and that has lifetime consequences in delayed educational gains, delays entering post-secondary and delayed productivity.
I am definitely on the cautious side in terms of imposing new regulations. I was very much for them, previously, of course—we were in a pandemic—but I am very cautious about carrying these on too long-term in terms of children's mental health.