Public Safety Committee on March 10th, 2016

[Louise Bradley]

I will answer this question to the best of my ability with a great deal of caution because I'm not an indigenous person. Therefore, I think that the solutions that you would need in an indigenous setting are going to be quite different. We need to be culturally aware and sensitive, and certainly the approaches need to take that into perspective. I don't think there is just one approach that would work there. In fact, I would suggest that there are probably quite different approaches from what I've heard from my indigenous colleagues. That's something that they caution us about on a regular basis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Merci.

Mr. Di Iorio.

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon and welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

I want to echo my colleagues' expressions of thanks and welcoming, although I won't repeat everything, considering our time constraints.

Ms. Bradley, the doctors who appeared before you indicated that some people were at higher risk, were more vulnerable, and more likely to have reactions that are harmful to their health.

Could you comment on the work, research, considerations, and steps your organizations has taken to identify those individuals?

[Louise Bradley]

There are definitely people that are at higher risk because of the work that they are doing and the situations that they find themselves in. Some are definitely more vulnerable. Youth—

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Let me interrupt you, since we are running out of time.

Can you tell us about any work or research that has been done in that regard? We can share personal opinions, but more importantly, I want to know if your organization has taken a science-based approach to this.

[Louise Bradley]

The commission has not done any specific research on PTSD other than with the road to mental readiness training. We've certainly done a great deal of research in the area of stigma. Of anything that we talk about in this regard, that has a major impact. It's huge in that people simply will not go to get care. We are conducting research right now into how well various areas are adopting the psychological safety standard. These are all very important areas, but we have not done any specific research in those two.

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Bradley.

Mr. Stamatakis, as you know, this committee is a federal parliamentary committee, but the situation we are talking about also exists within organizations that fall under provincial jurisdiction. It also exists in the U.S., in Latin American countries, in European countries, and elsewhere around the world.

Has your organization taken any steps to identify best practices, especially when it comes to prevention and treatment, in jurisdictions outside of Canada and in the provinces?

[Tom Stamatakis]

There's nothing specific. We are just starting to survey our own organizations in Canada. We have a network of affiliations internationally where this is now something that we've added to the agenda to start having a discussion about, to discuss best practices and similarities.

I think you touched on the key point, and where I think there is a role for the federal government to play. It is around research identifying what's happening in the different provinces and creating some kind of a broad overarching framework that everybody can look at to find consistent information, particularly when it comes to research about how to build resiliency.

What should we be looking at when we're recruiting brand new police officers, for example, to ensure that they have the tools or the capacity to manage the situations that we put them in? How do we recruit more diversity into our organizations? We want to have more women in policing. We want to have our police organizations reflect the diversity in our communities. How do we build the capacity to manage different values and religious beliefs? How do we manage women who come into policing but then want to have families, so that we remove the stigma that Ms. Bradley was talking about?

These are the things that we have to have a conversation about and create some consensus around, so that we can consistently respond across the country in each of the provinces.

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

In response to a question from my colleague, Mr. Spengemman, you used the expression “totally avoidable cost”. What you are telling the committee, then, is that concrete action could be taken and that certain projects could become a reality.

I would like you to elaborate on this. You mentioned it, but did not have the opportunity to discuss it in further detail.

[Tom Stamatakis]

In my opinion, and I think you've heard a lot about this from Ms. Bradley as well—and I agree with her—we have programs like the road to mental readiness that are being adopted. She referred to the psychological standards in the workplace, which organizations are very slow to adopt. If we build, adopt, and create policies and practices that recognize these features in our workplace and then build the capacity to manage them better, then I think the costs can be avoided. We can avoid the long absences. We can avoid the dysfunction in the workplace and the dysfunction in the home.

For example, on the road to mental readiness program, we're now for the first time educating our members around why they're feeling the way they're feeling and giving them some options around what they can do about it.

What's missing so far, though, is that if I identify that I'm in crisis and I need some assistance, we haven't yet built the capacity organizationally for me to be able to get quick access to that support so that I can stay at work and so that I can stay productive, and not think I have to take advantage of sick benefits, and not start to rely on medications or alcohol or other substances to manage my feelings or the stress that I'm going through. That's what I was alluding to.

[Nicola Di Iorio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I think we have to end there. It goes by quickly.

Monsieur Rayes.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being with us today and helping us in our work.

Before I was a member of Parliament and a mayor, I was a school principal and teacher. On a number of occasions, I saw people who were suffering from depression, burnout, or anxiety. I saw how they felt ashamed and weak. They were afraid of being judged by their peers, and they didn't understand what was happening to them.

We are talking about training, awareness, and research tools, but there is a need for cultural change within organizations, in the institutional environment. Some tools have been put in place, and it has been a difficult process. From what I understand, the Canadian Police Association is just getting started. You haven't started talking about this at the international level to find out what other countries are doing.

We see police officers, firefighters, and members of the military as strong people who are immune to weakness. I imagine that there must be work to do, even when it comes to the corporate culture.

Have you taken your research further and involved the managers of these sectors and the police stations to see what could be done?

My question is for all three witnesses.

[Louise Bradley]

Thank you.

Yes, the points you raise are excellent points and they're extremely accurate. Again, I harken back to the research that we've done on stigma and the workplace.

We're finding that getting past the stigma is really the biggest challenge. It really is. We have discovered at the commission through our research that contact-based education is what makes a difference, so I as a nurse can tell you the signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, but to actually be able to talk about it, my own experience has a much more significant impact.

We're seeing in a couple of police conferences that we have co-hosted that when police officers and other first responders are able to talk about their own experiences it really makes a big difference in terms of others feeling free to be able to talk about it. That's one of the biggest things.

Until we have work environments and cultural settings that will allow us to talk about depression in the same way as I would talk about having the flu, we're simply not going to get past it.

All of these pieces that we're talking about here today are working together. They can't be looked at in separate little pieces. Things are coming together quite nicely, but there's a great deal left to be done structurally.

[Phil Upshall]

There's no doubt that corporate cultures have to change from the ground up, but when you start changing corporate cultures and you start asking people to be prepared to talk about their stories and discuss these issues, a lot of it boils down to the fact that maybe we need to get them some help.

Try going to get help. There is none. In many instances you can talk all you like about research and everything else that's going on at our levels but on the ground across Canada, people can't get help. There are no waiting lists for people with mental illnesses, whether they're first responders or not. Why aren't there? Because there's no help. People go to see their doctors.

We have an instance going on today where a person's gone six months trying to get in to see a psychiatrist. They can't get in. They're willing to talk about it. They're out there and self-help groups are doing all that neat stuff. They're listening to people who say they should get help but when you knock on your doctor's door, you find out that the help is not there. Our solution is to get the doctors and health care providers involved. They're the gatekeepers to help change the corporate culture.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Upshall.

I would like to hear from the president of the Canadian Police Association, Mr. Stamatakis.

Of course, I hear the stories about doctors, but within the organization, if the culture prevents these people from speaking out, they may not even get to the point where they are seen by a professional.

I imagine that in police forces, the fact that this is being studied must be a very sensitive subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Be very quick, please. We're over time.

[Tom Stamatakis]

Specific to your question, I alluded earlier to some surveying we're doing directly with our members. We're identifying some pretty startling outcomes particularly around PTSD, where we're including some diagnostic skills on the survey tools we're using. On average about 30% of our members in major police departments are suffering from PTSD or diagnostic for PTSD. There are similar rates of people suffering from depression, anxiety. We have very few people in the normal range for depression and anxiety. That's our first step. We're trying to create a baseline in terms of what's happening in our organizations across the country.

To your point around the cultural or the organizational piece, we're trying to introduce a different approach to some of the organizational structures that contribute to operational stress or PTSD. which I eluded to as well. Another finding we're getting from our surveys is that a lot of the stress also comes from organizational practices.

We're introducing new methodologies around how we promote people, how we deal with issues around tenure where people are going into assignments and are becoming embedded in their communities, because they engage with their community quite extensively. Then they're being told they have to go to a different assignment, so they lose these relationships and that has a huge impact on them.

We're starting to make some proposals around looking differently at how we promote people. Let's look differently at how we deal with people, how we assign them, so we can take away some of the pressures and stigmas that go along with it. That's just one example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I have to stop you.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all our witnesses. We've come to the end of our meeting.

Committee, I want to mention two things before we break. First, in the middle of that meeting I asked our analysts if they could prepare a short note on some terminology on the object of our attention—first responders and public safety officers—what is included, and how we can find a short form without having to list everybody every time. They're going to give us some advice on that, based on some work we've done. We'll get that for our next meeting.

Second, I wanted to get a quick poll about the meeting on March 22, which is budget day. There has been some conversation lately that some members want to be in lock-ups that day and others would like us to continue with our study. I wanted to get a nodding or a shaking about whether people would like to cancel that meeting and be available for budget issues or whether they would like to continue with this study that day.

Mr. O'Toole.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Chair, the position of the Conservative Party with respect to budget day, or as we're describing it “Black Tuesday”, is that we would still want the committee to work that day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

That's all right.

Monsieur Dubé.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I agree with Mr. O'Toole.

I think there are enough resources so that members can do their work on budget day and the meeting can still take place.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I am going to suggest that we meet that day. If one of the members wants to be away from committee, they can get a substitute so they can engage, but we will meet on the 22nd.

The meeting is adjourned. Thank you.