There's no pressure. Everybody likes to break the ice. Thank you.
Thanks for having us here with you guys this morning. We really appreciate the opportunity to speak. Let me get right to it.
This is our story.
On the morning of April 26, 2016, I found our son, Manuel, cold and stiff in his bed. I ran back into our bedroom holding him in my arms and woke up my wife begging her to save him. I called 911 as she was screaming at him to please wake up and fighting to breathe air into his tiny lungs while attempting to not wake up our newborn daughter.
First responders arrived with the police, and they asked us to find someone to watch our daughter as we would need to accompany them to the hospital. I called my father. It was 6:15 a.m. on the day of his 65th birthday.
This scene replays itself in my head daily. The hours that followed were just as damaging and played a large role in the trauma suffered by our family. In the first hour after our we arrived at the hospital, our son was declared dead. We were asked to consider donating replacement heart valves to a child in urgent need. A grief counsellor, who was already in tears, came into the room and tried to console us. The police began their interrogation of us in the same room where our son's lifeless body was. Once they were satisfied there was no foul play or that there was no risk of contagion, we were told we could go home.
A hospital worker told us that a certain funeral home had a cost-free package for families of stillborn children and that perhaps they could help us, although our circumstances were different. We were later told that since we had agreed to donate heart valves, funeral arrangements would be delayed for an undetermined period of time. The doctors told us there was nothing they could do. They didn't know why our son had passed.
That is what we remember. That was it. There was no one to turn to. There was no one to guide us or redirect us to any foundation for help. There was no assistance in place to offset the financial or emotional costs of the following weeks.
In a country that prides itself on caring for its most vulnerable through its social programs, every single door we knocked on was shut, from our family doctor stating that the best she could do was refer us for psychiatric care—and when we were unable to answer some of her questions due to our state of shock we were flat out told that if we weren't more forthcoming we'd have to find a new family doctor—to the NGOs stating that they only catered to families whose children were victims of SIDS or cancer or whatever cause, but not us because ours wasn't the right age and the cause of death was unknown. We had to deal by ourselves with the coroner's office to release our son's body for cremation, with the funeral home, the ordering of a death certificate, the planning of our child's funeral and informing the government of the passing of our son.
All the while the bills kept coming in. We had to pay for my wife's family to come in from the U.S., and then we had to pay for our son's funeral. Thankfully, our employer generously allowed me time with my family and compensation for the weeks following our son's death. Friends and family helped us with funds to offset the immediate costs and with some meal preparations.
After eight weeks, I returned to work. I had no choice. While my employer told me to take all the time I needed, my direct boss hinted that I should be okay by now and I should really be grateful for what I was given and head back to work. It was too soon. I often cried at my desk or took extended breaks to deal with anxiety and anger. Colleagues looked upon me with pity and well-intentioned people came up to me and admitted they were surprised that I wasn't better yet. Having to keep up appearances and put on a brave face took its toll on me and on my family.
Finally, through the Internet I found an organization called Baby's Breath. They referred us to the SUDC Foundation, an American foundation that deals with families whose children have passed from sudden unexplained death, which is the fifth leading cause of death in children between the ages of one and four in the U.S., where statistics are available. While they did not provide financial support, they did provide much needed moral support and counselling to us and our extended family. We are forever grateful to them.
Like many of the families who have testified here, we have taken what life has thrown at us and attempted to make the best of it by making a difference in other people's lives. We are in the process of setting up a charitable organization that will help families navigate through the grieving process. We submitted petition e-1558 asking that April 26 be designated as an awareness day for sudden unexplained death.
We firmly stand with the other families in asking the Government of Canada to help orphaned parents with financial compensation for 12 weeks immediately following the loss of a child, no matter the age. What we would like to see as a recommendation from this committee is an automatic service similar by design to when a baby is born, done by the hospital, not the funeral home or the family. This automatic process would also serve as a trigger for two different financial aids, one from EI because grieving parents are incapable of working, and a second one from child benefits to help offset the costs of burying your child.
Thank you all for giving us a voice in this process.