Public Safety Committee on Sept. 26th, 2017

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

I am wondering if your organization also makes sure that you can avoid even getting to the point where R2MR is necessary to begin with.

[Liane Vail]

I can only speak to the experience that I had with the RCMP. They obviously developed a psychological health and safety strategy and identified the R2MR from the commission as one of the important factors in their pillars to help their members psychologically.

That's what we're talking about. There are different safety things. One is your physical safety and one is your mental safety. The R2MR and the commission are working at pairing the two together so that they merge, so that not only.... I oftentimes say, “Sure you can fill those boots, but are those boots well?”

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

Sure.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Damoff.

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

I want to first thank you for coming today, and also for all your efforts to reduce stigma and present a program to our public safety officers to highlight the issues that are out there.

As you know, our report was called “Healthy Minds, Safe Communities”, because we recognize that if our public safety officers aren't mentally well, then our communities aren't as safe.

We heard clearly that veterans versus first responders versus corrections officers are all different, and very clearly that veterans and public safety officers need to be treated differently. I know this program was initially developed for the military and then adapted for public safety officers.

Even within that subset, if you have paramedics versus corrections officers, police officers, do you adapt this program for each group that you're presenting to?

[Liane Vail]

Yes. It's quite a process, and the commission can speak to it.

I've been involved with the policing, with paramedics. I've been involved with quite a number of groups. My understanding, and what I like about this program, is that they tailor it to their audience. With regard to those videos that you see, they'll be paramedics if we're speaking to paramedics. I was in St. Catharines last year and presented to paramedics. We did the one-week train the trainer course, and they came from all over Ontario.

They really tailor it. When I went to Quebec and I was doing the corrections officers program, we were talking about corrections issues. Those are the focus groups and the behind-the-scenes conversations before the program is even rolled out to that organization. It is definitely tailored.

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

You mentioned in your presentation that this is one tool. Certainly that's what we said in our study as well. This isn't the fix. This is one tool in the tool box to deal with it.

When you're doing these presentations, do you focus on that, in particular with the managers? I'll be honest with you. One of the things I've heard is that, in some cases, managers feel they've done this training and therefore the problem is fixed within their department, without dealing with all of the other things that are necessary.

I'll give you the example of Halton where they have an organizational wellness unit. They're dealing with all the things that they need to be doing. They're doing an excellent job. They have peer-to peer-support. They have a lot of different options to deal with the officers.

How much do you deal with that when you're doing the training? I'm sure you've heard that as well.

[Nicole Boisvert]

That question is normally addressed even before we deliver the training. When somebody approaches us when an organization is interested in having this training, one of our team members has a conversation with them about what the needs of the organization are and why exactly they are looking for this. What need are they thinking it's going to fulfill for them?

We have a conversation with them that this is one piece of a whole suite of things that the commission offers and that they should be implementing. That conversation with the management and the executive that this is just one piece happens even before we get to the training.

We also present them with other things that the commission does and also advise them that, if they present us with needs they are thinking this is going to fulfill, and we feel like it doesn't, we let them know that, and we say they need to get those pieces elsewhere.

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

Certainly we had recommended that we need a national strategy on this, and we need to be able to provide some guidance to public safety officers across the country.

What are your thoughts on that? Do you have any?

[Liane Vail]

I'm here representing the commission. However, if I were to look at the broader spectrum just based on experiences, I think this is a very good tool, and I know the commission is looking at booster sessions. If you noticed in the statistics, at three to six months—you have even said—they think they have it and now everything's good to go when in fact retention has been proven at three months.

The commission has even gone further than that and developed booster sessions that would be provided by those who are already trained going into their own organizations and redoing a booster on the priorities of the things they have seen in either the leadership package or the primary package.

Then there's also the fact that you have people who have taken the primary who are now managers, so having both.... I think it's a very internal question to each organization, but as a whole of public safety, there also has to be a monitoring system in place that will differ within organizations.

What happens is, first responders are very untrustworthy. They don't trust much, let's put it that way. I can speak for myself. They question everything. The bottom line is that these are programs that are peer-related that will help them trust that the process is going to work.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

My thanks to you for being here and for the important work you're doing. Over the course of the last decade, there has really been some terrific work done, and we're getting somewhere in this very challenging issue and domain.

I have a question and comment relating to the exportability of what I see as the emerging Canadian approach. A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to visit UN headquarters in New York, the United Nations civil service. The context was International Day of Democracy, but I had a chance to have some side discussions.

I connected with a former colleague of mine who is now a senior official in the UN medical service. He and I served in a combat zone for more than five years as civilian UN employees, and we've lost colleagues to suicide, in the vast majority of cases because of access to a service weapon, either military or civilian issued.

I was very excited to learn that the UN civil service is now taking this issue head-on and is commencing initiatives that are long overdue. I think there's an opportunity to potentially connect with the Canadian approach. He's very interested in the “Healthy Minds” report which this committee has issued, but I think there may also be an opportunity for the commission to connect with the UN.

I have three questions relating to that. The first one is to drill down a bit more into the question my colleague Pam Damoff had on the connection between the civilian and the military component of this work. Is there a set of factors you could differentiate? The UN, as you will appreciate, is right on the pivot of that, right? We have operational peacekeepers who are armed forces, we have security officers, and we also have purely civilian employees who are doing work in the war zones and facing all the violence that's surrounding them, so there are very different dimensions of this. Are there some factors that you could point to that differentiate the military side from the civilian side in terms of how you deliver this particular program?

The second and third questions are, what do we still need in terms of data, and is there a gender dimension to the work you're doing?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Good luck with that.

[Liane Vail]

I'll do my best to answer the three questions.

The first question is whether or not...I think Nicole mentioned how it can be tailored. There would be a lot of communication between the commission and the UN as far as what their wants and needs are, and perhaps even doing a little bit of research as far as what the trauma is, what are the prevalence rates of what. I'm sure there is a whole psychological department in the UN that monitors the wellness of their employees, so what are you looking at? That again is a conversation with the commission.

Is there a gender issue with respect to mental illnesses? The research that I know of shows that certain mental illnesses affect females more, like depression, just based on more responsibilities, being at work and looking after families and so forth. But I would say that is not a statistic written in stone anymore because of paternity leave; there are fathers who are staying home with their child and so forth. There are some mental illnesses that you will see are symptomatically different between genders, but at the end of the day, more research needs to be done.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, with your indulgence, on the data gap, to your knowledge what are we still missing in terms of reliable data to help you improve these programs or to approach areas that we're not too—

[Liane Vail]

It's more Canadian research. If you're looking at what happens to a police officer or a first responder in Canada, you're looking at research that's dated from the U.S. Unfortunately, though there are lots of excellent researchers out there, the problem is that these research studies take time, sometimes 10 years, and being part of another umbrella of the Mental Health Commission, there is the SPARK training program, which is knowledge transfer, where you're immediately taking an innovation and creating an implementation. Sometimes the research is good and qualifies or quantifies something, but what is the innovation and what is the purpose?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Mr. Paul-Hus.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I served in the military for 22 years.

[Liane Vail]

Thank you.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

My experience was very different from how it is now, which is also true for some of my colleagues who are former police officers with over 30 years of experience. At the time, in the 1980s and prior to that, there was a form of military and police selection. The methods used were very harsh. During basic training, it was sort of the mental predisposition that was evaluated and that made it possible to screen out many people.

Then came the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Changes were subsequently made in the early 1990s.

Do you think screening based on mental predisposition should be important? Should we re-establish a more rigorous form of assessment before enlisting military or police officers? In some cases, police or military personnel must live with post-traumatic stress disorder. If you did a screening assessment, you would avoid having to deal with such situations.

[Liane Vail]

Mr. Rodrigue, do you want to answer the question?

[Michel Rodrigue]

I will begin by making a broader comment, and Ms. Vail can round out my answer.

As we saw earlier, the statistics show that one in five people will experience a mental disorder or a mental illness at one age or the other. More than 500,000 Canadians are not able to report to work week after week.

I am not convinced that screening is the answer. The solution is to make sure people can recover as quickly as possible.

I will give you a practical answer. What motivates some major employers to implement the National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace and to train their staff in first aid and mental health is that their long-term disability costs are very high. The reason for the high costs is the lack of access to mental health services.

Sadly, we also found that after eight months to a year of absence, the return to work becomes more and more difficult.

So there is an economic imperative and a social imperative to ensuring the recovery of people with mental illness and to focus our efforts on that side.

[Liane Vail]

I cannot answer your question, and the reason is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

According to the statistics, a good number of adults affected by depression have had symptoms, warning signs, or episodes before they are 18. Now, does that mean that everyone with symptoms of depression before they become adults will not be able to be a good soldier or a good police officer? We cannot make that assumption. It is very difficult to know whether those screening tools help us to identify people who may be susceptible to such problems.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Screening could be done during training. Once they enlisted, soldiers used to go through basic training. The training was really difficult, which allowed people to see which of them were cut out for the job.

[Liane Vail]

Absolutely.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Now, you have to be a lot more careful. I know that human rights are important. I am not saying that you have to do the same thing as in the past, because that would no longer be appropriate. However, if you want soldiers who are ready to go into combat or police officers who are ready to go into the field, and you want to avoid problems, should there not be a very rigorous selection process like the one that the Joint Task Force uses? If someone does not pass the test, they can't be part of that force.

To the extent possible, we want to have armed forces members and police officers who will not have problems later.