Public Safety Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm going to turn over to you, Ms. MacDonald. You had talked about the round table, and I'm really happy to see the federal government taking some leadership on this issue. I'm wondering if you see your department as a place through which some of these best practices in research can be coordinated?

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question.

Actually, we're very fortunate in Public Safety to have such a huge responsibility in terms of our public safety officers. Our minister has a pretty significant role in terms of the Emergency Management Act and his responsibilities in working with the provinces and territories, so we do think we're uniquely situated to support this initiative and provide leadership to it.

We have a number of different forums and opportunities in place to actually support this through our relationships with the provinces, territories, and municipalities and through our responsibilities under the portfolio. So yes, we think we can provide some leadership to this through Public Safety.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

How can we ensure that our corrections officers are also included in this conversation? I was quite shocked and disturbed by the number that you provided to us. I think they're sort of the forgotten group when we talk about post-traumatic stress and operational stress injuries. How can we ensure they're included when we are talking about these strategies? I know they fall under your department, but....

[Lori MacDonald]

It's a very good question. When we looked at some of the numbers for first responders and we looked at our responsibilities in our portfolio, we made a definitive decision to include them as part of our steering committee because we have to have their voices there.

Their numbers are very high, and they face a unique situation given that not only is it their community that they go into that experiences trauma, institutions are like a community within a community, so they go back into the community within a community every day to re-experience those same traumas. It's a really important issue for correctional officers and so, from our perspective, we needed to have them front and centre with respect to the steering committee.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

If we were to come up with a national action plan, would that help within your department then? I'm assuming the answer's yes.

[Lori MacDonald]

It would.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay.

Turning back to you, Dr. Lanius, your colleague Dr. Frewen has a PTSD-based practice that is focused on mindfulness and emotion. I think it's called the Working Mind. Can you speak to that a little and let us know if you think that would be something we as a government could be sharing as a best practice?

[Dr. Ruth Lanius]

Absolutely. There's evidence now that mindfulness is also effective in the treatment of post-traumatic stress, and Dr. Frewen has developed a website that is available. I can't speak for him, but he's made it available to a lot of different populations, and if you contact him I'm sure he would....

I think it has been a very helpful tool for a lot of people to help them improve their attention, to help them be in the moment and not get pulled into flashbacks, and to improve their quality of life.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

There's a term that's used for family members and children of people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress. I can't remember what it is, but they actually start suffering from post-traumatic stress themselves.

Can you speak to that just in the remaining time we have?

[Dr. Ruth Lanius]

Yes. Often, when somebody comes back into the family with post-traumatic stress, they're really dysregulated and they're angry and they can't control their emotions. That can be very traumatizing for the whole family, so sometimes you can have this intergenerational piece to the trauma, and children suffer from psychological difficulties because they can't cope with the disruption in the family.

I'm so glad Ms. MacDonald mentioned this. In treatment it's also a priority that the treatment be geared not only towards the person suffering from PTSD but also towards the whole family structure.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Family members need to be aware, to look out for that type of thing, right?

[Dr. Ruth Lanius]

They do absolutely. Awareness is key.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid we need to end there for today.

Ms. MacDonald, could you do one thing for our committee in a written response? We're wondering how Public Safety Canada defines first responder and public safety officer. Who's included in each of those definitions and who is not? We're struggling a little with some of those definitions with regard to the federal responsibility, so that would be helpful for us. Thank you very much.

Thank you to all our witness. I'm learning something there. I think I'm going to need to pay a trip to western Ontario.

Thank you very much, committee. We'll see you on Tuesday.

The meeting is adjourned.