Evidence of meeting #36 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
No, I appreciate it.
I'm just trying to get in as much as a I can. I appreciate your answers.
9:35 a.m.
Medical Doctor, Child and Youth Mental Health Program, McMaster Children's Hospital
Okay.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Mr. Fitzgerald, I'm just curious. Does the hospital work with other hospitals to share best practices? Does there need to be a government approach to sharing the best practices with solutions that work? Do you often compare notes with other hospitals?
9:35 a.m.
President, McMaster Children's Hospital
Yes. I think that's a great question. It actually leads back to your policy comment, or question: how do you share best practices?
9:40 a.m.
President, McMaster Children's Hospital
There are academic institutions or a variety of mechanisms in doing that. To segue into your previous comment about policy, where the federal government can have an impact is providing resources for research, where we can look at best evidence and where our best opportunity is. We're not going to solve all the problems, even some of the ones brought up today, in a short period of time. We need to concentrate on where we are going to get our biggest opportunity. It's identifying it through best evidence that's the key.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you very much.
Sorry, I'm cutting you short there.
We're now going over to Mr. Ruimy, please.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Thank you everybody for coming in today.
We seem to be going around in circles. It's the same thing. If we know that mental health is critical to poverty, what are the barriers that are stopping us from moving forward here, Dr. Lipman? What's stopping us?
If we know that prevention of mental health...and we know that mental health is a big factor in poverty. We have government. We have municipal, provincial, federal, and we all have jurisdictions that we have to try to monitor. What is stopping us from actually moving forward? Is it strictly a money thing, or is it a policy thing? What are some of those barriers?
9:40 a.m.
Medical Doctor, Child and Youth Mental Health Program, McMaster Children's Hospital
I think it's multi-dimensional. I think that access to resources is one part of it. I think that evidence of good interventions or things that can be helpful is.... We have a good body of evidence but we need more. I would echo Dr. Fitzgerald's idea about the ability to increase research to find out what really works in that population.
The other thing is just really the stigma that is attached to mental health problems. I think things are a lot better than they were 20 years ago, but I might be much more likely to tell you about my diabetes than I would be about my anxiety disorder or my depression. I think that some of the celebrities talking about their mental health problems have been helpful in some ways—although, in some ways, there's misinformation out there. However, that has helped a bit. I think access to the Internet and finding information instantaneously has probably helped as well.
I think sometimes there is some reluctance to come forward if youth are concerned or parents are concerned about their kids. They don't really know what's normal and what isn't. They think they might grow out of it. They'd rather not address it.
I think, again, that more systematic stigma, while better than it was 20 or 25 years ago, is probably still a contributor to some extent.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Again, we come back to the same thing. We're talking about jurisdictions. We're talking about stigma, which does not seem to go away.
I met with my youth council a couple of weeks ago, and they spent two hours talking about youth mental health. These are students in schools. What they're saying is that these pamphlets, these programs, don't work. For whatever reasons, they're not working. If we are ever going to try to resolve things, we need a direction.
We keep saying, “Start early”. What does that really mean? How does the federal government help in starting early? Is that strictly a provincial matter?
That's open to anybody who wants to jump in on it.
9:40 a.m.
Medical Doctor, Child and Youth Mental Health Program, McMaster Children's Hospital
I would say that it's of national interest for people to understand what is normal growth and development, and what are the early signs that we might be concerned about for which you should look for some extra evaluation or help. I think that's an important national stance to take.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Okay.
Mr. Fitzgerald, is there anything you want to add to that?
9:40 a.m.
President, McMaster Children's Hospital
I would agree. I think there is a significant role for the federal government to lead in this initiative around child and youth mental health. Of course, the federal government is not the care provider. That is rolled down to the provinces. However, providing “thought leadership” is very important because we want to have a consistent approach across the country. Variation in practice decreases quality.
I think there's a real leadership role the federal government can play in setting standards.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
9:45 a.m.
Prof. Timothy Diette
Both to address your question and a few of the earlier questions with respect to education, which I focused on, education also means helping parents be better parents. There are some nice programs out there that intervene from birth, and then start to assist. Nurses visit the household and offer help. They also help to create a community by identifying other new mothers in the area, so that they can have a network of support. In the end, this reduces anxiety and stress in the household.
As was mentioned earlier, housing is one of the things that does that. Some of the research I have done on homelessness and how it increases the likelihood of being a victim of violence speaks to the issue of reducing that. Those would be a couple of comments.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Thank you.
Ultimately, to me, right now we're failing. All of our governments are failing our children. The role we have today, and what I hope we can pull out of this, is to form concrete policies and best practices, which you mentioned. That is the key here, and that's what we're hoping to get out of this. Ultimately, we are failing our children.
I just found out that in my riding we have 15 young people—children, youth, 14, 15—who are living on the streets. We have another 30 who are couch surfing. I sit here trying to figure out how to help them. I keep hitting up against, “That's not our problem. That's provincial”, or “That's medical”. This has to stop. We have to find a way of working together in our policies.
I think I'm out of time.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Thank you so much to the witnesses for being here on this very important topic. Among the thoughts that my colleague Mr. Ruimy shared regarding the struggle of jurisdictional responsibilities—whether something is provincial or federal—I think the common theme is the importance of the federal government's providing leadership. I think that's what was shared, and we've heard it before. Whether it's seniors' care or dealing with homelessness or creating a healthy economic environment in which people can prosper, we need to see leadership from the federal government.
Dr. Diette, I really appreciated your testimony and the importance of finding out the causal link, what's causing poverty. I heard an interesting discussion a couple of weeks ago about what creates wealth, how wealth is created and how poverty is created, and whether it is a choice.
In some cases, it may be, but the federal government leadership we need to create is an environment in which there's an opportunity not for hopelessness, not for depression, such that people feel trapped long term and end up with possible mental illnesses, but for creating an environment in which people have hope, there are opportunities for growth, and people can choose to get out of poverty, if given opportunities.
While flying back—I live in Vancouver and fly to Ottawa every weekend—I saw in the Financial Post a very interesting article. It's called “Arrested Development”. It highlighted that 129 billion dollars' worth of infrastructure projects is stalled or stopped in Canada right now. This year alone, $8 billion to $12 billion will be lost.
We've heard that there's an indigenous band—I can't remember the name of the person saying this, but he's going to be testifying, hopefully—in which the unemployment rate on the reserve had been 80% and is now zero because of development. If we have a natural resource development that creates jobs and prosperity in mining, forestry, oil and gas, and hydroelectric, when development stops and there's no opportunity for jobs in these communities, then you have the environment of hopelessness.
I found that very interesting, and this is again an example of the government's needing to provide leadership in dealing with this issue. They did make an announcement that there needs to be consultation and working with communities. There also needs, however, to be wise decisions to take us in and create an environment in which people are able to work.
Among your causal factors, you talked about the different stressors. Is a high tax burden also a possible cause for hopelessness, when you have people actually working and working hard to support their families, but never seeming able to get ahead because of the level of taxation? Is that another possible cause of depression and hopelessness, seeming never to be able to get ahead?
9:50 a.m.
Prof. Timothy Diette
That was outside the scope of the research I was doing, but I certainly would agree with the idea that generally these sorts of things, the anxiety and stressors and certainly the notion of a high tax burden that constrains family resources, would generate that sort of stress, absolutely.
December 13th, 2016 / 9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
There's also an article that I read flying back called “Pension delays contribute to putting more veterans into financial crisis”. It says:
The federal government's inability to get pension cheques into the hands of retiring soldiers in a timely manner is one of the factors contributing to a sharp increase in calls to an organization that deals with veterans in crisis, says a leading member of the group.
There are veterans—in this year alone, we've had hundreds of veterans—who are becoming homeless because they do not have the financial support they need.
These are just a few examples of areas in which the federal, not the provincial, government has responsibility. I'm not going to put the blame on this specific government, but we need to do better. As Mr. Ruimy says, we need to do better in providing. Much of the discussion has focused on provincial, but there are many of ways in which the federal government has been falling down too, and if we create an environment of hopelessness, that puts everybody at risk. Would you agree?
9:50 a.m.
Prof. Timothy Diette
Yes, I would agree with that.