Human Resources Committee on Dec. 13th, 2016

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

That's helpful. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

For six minutes, we have Wayne Long, please.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thanks again, Chair.

Thanks again, to our witnesses.

Mr. Diette, I'll give you two quick examples that I think we all know. I read a story about a business professional who got laid off, had trouble getting a job, fell into mental illness, and unfortunately dropped through the system, if you will, until he hit the bottom. He was homeless and couldn't get support. Another situation was that somebody who had mental illness had trouble finding employment, and similarly ended up homeless on the streets.

We tend to have people on both sides. As I believe a lot of your research shows, they continue to drop through the system without a lot of support. You don't really believe that getting a job is the only fix to the situation for them?

[Prof. Timothy Diette]

I think having self-worth is important, however that's defined for individuals. Many individuals develop that potentially through a job.

I'm starting to move outside of my area of expertise, so I'm a little....

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Do you not concur that there's a lot more support needed by those people who are in need other than just employment?

[Prof. Timothy Diette]

It gets to be a chicken and egg problem a bit there. I do think that it's a very complex problem, and to an earlier comment, the idea of reducing it to one single thing to do is overly simplistic. I think there's a lot of nuance here.

I think a job can be a central part of organizing a day and that sort of thing.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

You would agree it's part of the solution, but it's certainly not the solution.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

He's leading the witness.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

We're not in a court of law.

I wanted to get your comment on that, and I also wanted to get your advice about what policy changes you recommend that we, the federal government, make to help with employment challenges for those who are experiencing mental illness. What policy changes can we make?

[Prof. Timothy Diette]

Unfortunately, one challenge I immediately have is being a citizen of the United States. I'm slightly ignorant—

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

That's okay. You're here to testify before us, and we really appreciate it. Like I say, I think your research is very good, but again, we're looking for ideas as to what we can do as a government to help. We can implement changes to help those with mental illness. Do you have any ideas for us?

[Prof. Timothy Diette]

The target is helping individuals with mental illness only...?

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Yes, employment programs.

[Prof. Timothy Diette]

I think there are other experts in the room, including Dr. Lipman, who can probably speak to this question more accurately than I can. It really is a challenge of best practices. I think we all often share the same goals, but we all have constraints and budget constraints as far as what we can do.

The issues of stigma are really very important, helping employers realize that they can employ individuals who have mental health histories and challenges with mental health. I would imagine that would be quite important.

I don't have other ideas specifically for those suffering from poor mental health.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Fitzgerald, I think one of the things that frustrates me on the mental health file, if you will, or the poverty file in general, is just the lack of innovation and the lack of new ideas and new ways of trying to do things. Can you share with me some of your ideas, innovative ideas, that you've seen over the past few years on mental health and what ideas you may have moving forward?

[Dr. Peter Fitzgerald]

Mental health is a very complex field.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

It is.

[Dr. Peter Fitzgerald]

I'll start with saying that, but the innovation I think we've seen in our region has been, again, trying to move upstream, more community-based services, and more group services so that we can serve a hundred families at a time as opposed to waiting for an appointment with a psychiatrist. That is scalable across Canada. There are many different ways of doing that.

Again we need—and I don't want to be a broken record—to know where our best opportunities are. As a paediatric surgeon, I wouldn't go in and do an operation that I had just thought of the night before. I would look at the best evidence and the best outcomes, and apply that thinking to the operation. We need the same kind of rigour as we look to the very difficult problem of dealing with child and youth mental health and its relationship to poverty.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

As you said before when we talked a half an hour ago, you are confident and comfortable that best practices are being shared.

[Dr. Peter Fitzgerald]

I think we can do more, particularly in the mental health field. I think we're better at it in other areas of health care.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

How so?

[Dr. Peter Fitzgerald]

We have large national and international collaboratives around patient safety and quality, for example, but we don't tend to apply those principles as much to the area of mental health. I think there is great opportunity there.

We've come a long way in standardizing approaches for diagnosis and management in mental health, but I think there is still a lot of variation, and I think Dr. Lipman would agree and could speak to that.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Do you have anything to add to that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We're out of time. I'm sorry about that.

For the last word, you have about four minutes, MP Warawa.