Evidence of meeting #135 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was indigenous.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Indigenous Cancer Care Unit and Indigenous Health Equity and Coordination, Ontario Health
I don't know who he or she is, but they're obviously very out of touch with the topic. I'm sure there was a task force struck at one time that created residential schools, and look at how well that went over.
They need to be more in touch with the topic. They need to have an understanding of what's happening with communities and people. They need to have the pulse of what communities are saying and what people are saying. They're very out of touch.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Shelby Kramp-Neuman
Thank you.
Emmanuella, you have the floor for four minutes.
December 2nd, 2024 / 12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being here with us today to answer some more of our questions.
A few of the witnesses today spoke about the role, perhaps, that intergenerational trauma plays in this, especially with indigenous and Black Canadians. Professor Daniel spoke a bit about epigenetic changes and changes in genes due to stressful situations.
I've known people who had experience with cancer at a young age. They were white but had it very early on and very aggressively because they had very severe trauma in their early lives.
Based on what you've been looking at, Professor Daniel—and anyone else who wants to can chime in—do you have any kind of recommendation on taking a look at how trauma and epigenetics play a role in this? I think we would probably be tackling different minority communities. We would be tackling indigenous communities and Black communities, but generally all women who may have experienced very significant stressful issues in their life.
Prof. Juliet Daniel
That's a fantastic question. I know we're short on time, so I'm going to say, yes, I would recommend that we have a longitudinal study or a clinical trial—depending on how it's done—that looks at the impact on women of environmental factors, racism, the social determinants of health and trauma. The epigenetics study I referred to in the U.S. was actually based on a longitudinal study looking at women who developed chronic disease in their forties. The only evidence or factor that correlated with the development of a chronic disease in their forties was having a trauma, and that was irrespective of ethnicity.
To your point about younger white women having breast cancer at a young age, it was definitely linked to trauma before the age of 10. If a woman experienced any kind of trauma before the age of 10, whether it was the loss of a family member or parent, being in a car accident or anything incredibly traumatic, it correlated with the epigenetic changes that were seen on their genome and with having a chronic disease in their forties, whether it be diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer.
I would therefore recommend that we engage and look at the data coming out of the U.S., where they're doing these studies. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can use some of that data in our Canadian context and do it faster and better.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Dr. Caron, would you like to chime in as well? You spoke about intergenerational trauma, and so did Dr. Kewayosh. If you guys want to chime in on that, you can.
First Nations Health Authority Chair in Cancer and Wellness, University of British Columbia
Thanks. I know we're very short on time.
First of all, ditto to Dr. Daniel. I agree with everything. The one thing to note is that this will take time. We cannot wait. We've heard it. We believe it. We think it. I've been to hundreds of first nation, Inuit and Métis communities. I hear it repeatedly.
What we need to do is move upstream, fix it and then ultimately prove that we were right, rather than have more lives lost and say we should have started it earlier.
That's what I've noticed over my career in the world of cancer in particular.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Shelby Kramp-Neuman
Thank you. I think that was a fitting wrap-up.
That concludes our panel for today. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank all of the witnesses for their testimony.
At this point, we will be suspending for approximately five minutes to transition to the in camera portion of today's meeting.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
