Thank you very much, Mr. Battiste.
I'm very pleased to be working with you again. We have worked together for a long time at the national level on youth issues.
As I said, young people are creating significant demographic pressure. Because of the situation in Montreal, the focus has been on elderly people in residences and long-term care facilities, which we call CHSLDs. Young people want to live their lives. It's not good for them to be cooped up at home. The psychological pressure of lockdown has put enormous pressure on family units in our communities.
We surveyed our communities to see how people are doing and understand the social context. We discovered that people are feeling a lot of pressure. People's first reaction was to protect themselves from the outside threat, from letting the virus into our regions, so they locked down. That meant other traumas in our young people's lives were put on the back burner.
Reopening means those traumas are coming back to light. It's spring, everything is thawing and it's nice out. What are organizations and the government going to do to help young people and encourage them to adopt good health habits given the prevalence of drug and alcohol consumption?
Violent incidents also became more frequent and severe. Right now, MDMA, or ecstasy, is in our community, and that leads to very risky behaviours and habits. It breaks down family units. When a user lives in a crowded house, as Chief Mckenzie said, that can affect 10 or 15 family members. That brings worry and tension into the home.
Young people today need to be able to grow, develop, have great experiences, and have access to solutions other than income support. They need to be able to achieve their full potential. They have the right to dream of a better future too.
We've talked about getting back to normal, but I think we need to really think and innovate because the future could be very different from what normal was before COVID-19.