At the federal level, the only program I am aware of that has been introduced was the national aboriginal youth suicide prevention strategy. That was approximately 10 to 15 years ago, and there was an Inuit-specific framework associated with it. It largely funded community-based programming and was not specifically focused, in many cases, to counselling or intervention in suicide prevention.
What we need to do first is a better job of intervening for those who are at risk, and of identifying those at risk, ensuring that they have the care, the mental health services, and the supports they need.
With regard to postvention for those who have gone through trauma, virtually nothing has been done for Inuit who have experienced trauma in relation to suicide or who have attempted suicide but then not received any sort of follow-up.
There are some very specific immediate things we can do that help fix the situation in the very short term. However, the larger issue, the upstream public health investments that Canadians have talked about in a very nuanced way for other public health issues, must happen in relation to our communities. The environment of risk for suicide specifically, as it is created through a person's life and then as it is created in a societal sense, needs to be addressed.
There are often people in our communities who question why a particular individual died. Usually they start off the conversation by saying that the person came from a loving home and they graduated from high school. Often we don't get to the next part of the conversation, which is that the person was in a society that has risk factors for suicide. No matter who you are, no matter what individual situation you have, you are connecting with risk. Even the idea that exposure to suicide is actually a risk factor for suicide needs to be better understood and appreciated in the way we look at this issue within our communities.