Evidence of meeting #37 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 first.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Centre for Health Promotion, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
I'm not sure that I made the link between social assistance....
Did I? I'm not 100% sure. Do you remember if you had a statistic on that?
12:45 p.m.
Chief, Health Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
We have the statistic, but we don't have the causality or the reason.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
Okay.
I was sharing my time with MP Long, so go ahead.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Thank you.
I'm going back to Stats Canada. You knew I was going back there. On slide 15, you refer to “Previously Homeless population” and have some statistics there: 22% of people with a history of homelessness reported a mental disorder.
My group in Saint John, New Brunswick, serves breakfast at the men's shelter every Saturday morning. I can tell you that, unfortunately, the percentage of those who are homeless who have issues, mental disorders, whatever you want to call these, is obviously much higher than 22%.
Just for the record, I'm glad that our government did reinstate the long-form census so that you can start to actually get some more information that we can use as government.
How are you reaching out and how are you collecting statistics, if you will, from shelters, from homeless people? Obviously, you're not going to get them through a cellphone. You're not going to get them at their house. Again, I'm down there at least once or twice a week. They're there. They're back on the streets. How are you accounting for them and what ideas would you have to account for them?
12:45 p.m.
Director, Health Statistics, Statistics Canada
They're a very difficult population to account for, that's for sure. I think that in our first slide we say that in the survey on mental health we have not captured the homeless population.
This slide is from another survey and it was a retrospective question. I think the question was whether there was a period in someone's life when they didn't have a place or a regular house or something. It's people living out of their cars or on the street and it's still a population that we're reaching. People who are maybe chronically homeless, we don't reach.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Surely, it must have been discussed or thought of. Do you have ideas as to how you would reach out to that population in cities and get them counted in the system, get their numbers, that kind of thing? Are there other counting mechanisms that you could maybe partner with?
Mr. Murphy seems to want to jump in there.
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Social Development Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development
Yes. There is a homelessness information system that collects information from shelters.
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Social Development Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development
No, it does not.
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Social Development Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development
But it does collect basic demographic information from over 200 shelters in Canada, so I don't know about the potential to—
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Is that not an issue, that obviously one side is not talking to the other side?
12:45 p.m.
Director General, Social Development Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development
I think that's something we can explore.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would also like to thank our colleague for his testimony. It will be a privilege for us to go to Medicine Hat and to meet with stakeholders on the ground. I agree with him entirely as to the importance of decisions we have to make and the impact they may have. I also think it is important to listen to the stakeholders who obtain results in the field.
My question is for Mr. Murphy and is in the same vein.
In your opening statement you shared consultations that are now ongoing, with more to come. The community organizations in my riding that are fighting homelessness had the opportunity in early fall to meet the minister in Sainte-Julie, Quebec. I know that the reports from these consultations are not yet finalized, but can you tell us what came out of these consultations with these stakeholders who work on the ground? After all, they are the ones who deal with people day after day who are grappling with poverty and mental health issues. What was the outcome of these consultations with the stakeholders and those organizations who work on the front lines?
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Social Development Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development
Thank you. I believe those consultations were for the national housing strategy. I will have to get in touch with my colleagues from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We will be connecting the relevant information from that engagement—
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
We talked about the importance of multisectoriality and of implementing such an approach. How do you take that into account in your sector?
We saw that housing is crucial to the whole issue of poverty and mental health.
12:50 p.m.
Director General, Social Development Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development
We will be having a series of engagements that will look at.... We won't be doing housing again, not specifically, because we are working with Canada Mortgage and Housing to identify the relevant issues that came out from that. However, we will be talking to people with the lived experience of poverty. We'll be talking to key stakeholders, and through communities, there will be engagement.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Fine. Thank you.
Mr. Perron, I want to take advantage of the brief time I have left to ask you a more specific question.
We broached the topic to some degree, but I would like you to tell us more. I am not referring to the discussions the minister held with the provinces.
How did you co-operate with provincial governments—for instance, I talked about youth protection services earlier—in order that your actions be complementary and aimed at the same goals?
12:50 p.m.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Department of Health
In most areas of the country we have a bilateral or trilateral approach. We include provincial partners, as well as first nations and Inuit partners. Our purpose is to ensure that our actions are as integrated as possible. For instance, we are making additional investments in mental health in Northern Ontario. We work in co-operation with the Government of Ontario because it has also announced additional investments. However, once communication has been established between the two governments, we work with the first nations so that issues are approached in a manner that respects their authority over the services.
Our co-operation models vary somewhat from one province to another. Earlier I mentioned the coroner's report on the situation on the North Shore in Quebec; this report was filed earlier this year, in January. The people in our regional offices are working with the provincial departments concerned and with the first nations. We have to determine how to respond to these agreements, and take steps.
One of the components of that recommendation is to adapt services. The response must be culturally safe, as you say in English. We are talking here about access to services. Services exist, but access or continuity is lacking. We have to ensure that the services offered to the community align with those offered in provincial institutions, so that those populations are also well served.
In each province we have bilateral and trilateral co-operation mechanisms in place. That is really very important, because it is impossible to offer comprehensive service if we do not work with the provinces. In Canada, the federal government funds additional services for first nations and Inuit peoples, but in practice the provincial and territorial authorities deliver health and social services. Consequently, we must work in close co-operation with them.
I think we have made a lot of progress over the past four or five years with regard to the transparency of our actions. Before intervening on health issues with first nations and Inuit peoples, we hold a lot of talks with our partners. It is far from perfect, but there is a high level of co-operation.
When there are unfortunate incidents in certain provinces, the first question I ask people is whether they communicated with our first nations partners and whether they were in contact with the community chief to determine whether there were needs to be met. The second question consists in verifying whether the province or territory is doing anything, and whether additional assistance is required. We have to try to align our services. When there is a lot of turbulence and chaos due to a crisis, we can quickly redress the situation because we have co-operation mechanisms in place to improve the situation. Not having coordination is pointless. In fact, I can say that this level of co-operation really works very well in most provinces.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you very much.
Before we adjourn, we're going to be going through the next two sections of the study, housing and neighbourhoods, fairly quickly as far as our calendar is concerned, because of the doubling up of sessions while we're travelling.
There's one logistical issue that I've been asked to address, and that is establishing a deadline for briefs. The last day of witnesses is going to be February 21. Obviously we want a later deadline to give organizations an opportunity to submit a brief if they aren't able to meet with us either here or during our travel. We want to give them some significant time, so we can even promote that while we're travelling—especially with Kuujjuaq, because we're not going to be able to hold meetings with witnesses up there. Having spoken with the clerks and the analysts, I think we can negotiate a little bit. March 3 is the proposed date.
Can I get agreement from everybody that it is sufficient? It's almost two weeks after the last witness statements. We'll add that to the website. There have been quite a few inquiries to the clerk from across the country asking when the deadline is for those submissions. We do need to get that out soon. Is there any discussion needed on that?
Seeing none, we'll move forward.
Thank you to all of our witnesses today.
And to all the committee members, welcome back. We didn't lose any strides with the break.
Thank you to all who made today possible: the analysts, the clerks, the interpreters, and all the technicians. Have a great day.
The meeting is adjourned.