Status of Women Committee on Sept. 26th, 2022

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for having me.

I'm very pleased to be here. I'm the Bloc Québécois youth critic, so it really makes sense for me to be here today. I was with Ms. Austin on the weekend because I spoke to some young people from the Quebec Youth Parliament who are interested in democracy. Madam Chair was there with me as well.

My question will be for Ms. Austin specifically but if others would like to speak, I'd be happy to hear their comments.

I wonder how social media are affecting young women. We're seeing social media taking up more and more of our lives and millennials' lives, due in large part to the the advent of the internet.

We've seen this before. TV, movies and advertising have an impact on women's body esteem, what young women think of themselves, their self-esteem and their self-confidence. I feel the pandemic has exacerbated this with the increased use of social media. More and more studies on the subject show that young women feel frustrated and have comparison tendencies.

Ms. Austin, do you see a correlation, a direct link between social media addiction and the mental health issues some young women are developing, such as eating disorders and lack of self-confidence?

[Sara Austin]

Thank you very much for the question. We were really honoured to welcome you to the young Canadians' parliament on the weekend and to hear from Mégane and many of her peers.

Certainly social media is prevalent in the lives of girls and young women, and the lives of all children and youth, even from the very early stages of life. We know that young people are using technology from the earliest days. It's playing a role in preschool years and certainly well into their teen years.

We have heard about this extensively from young people. Back in 2017, we created the Canadian children's charter through extensive consultations with kids from coast to coast to coast, identifying the challenges they face growing up in Canada and the solutions they envision. They named the role of changing technology in their lives as one of their primary concerns, and it was framed in the children's charter as an area that they believe warrants urgent action.

Again, the young Canadians' parliament, in their most recent report and in the bills they tabled in February of this year, highlighted the role of technology in changing their lives and its pervasive role in impacting their mental health.

Our latest “Raising Canada” report is full of data on this, and we'd be pleased to share that with you as well. It's extensive. It's a problem but also, in many ways, young people see technology as playing a role in creating the solutions that they need. We use digital technology to facilitate programs like the young Canadians' parliament. We see the harms that it caused, but we also see the role it can play in helping provide access to support.

We heard from other witnesses how technology is being used to deliver clinical services to young people and make them accessible to young people in their homes, their schools or other places where they need support. We need to continue to fund those innovative and evidence-based solutions to ensure that they have access, and we need to have them at the table when decisions are being made around how to deliver these services.

Mégane and many others want to be able to have a role in the policies and programs being delivered for them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks so much, Sara.

We're now going to move on to Leah for three and a half minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

I have a very brief amount of time and two questions. My first question is for Ms. Pinto.

You spoke about climate anxiety and the impact it is having on youth. I know that, in the DSM-5 or something—I'm not a psychologist—that's one of the categories they're looking at in terms of mental health stress on youth. I'm wondering if you can expand on that. I just feel that, as legislators, we're a disaster zone in terms of dealing with the climate crisis, and we're leaving an unlivable world for young people.

Can you please expand on that?

[Rowena Pinto]

As everyone knows, we're confronted with the climate change situation every day, most recently in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes just over the weekend. I think this is having a huge impact on youth, and it's coming out. We're seeing youth take to the streets around climate change, and we're seeing that, in many cases, they're demanding a place at the table. I think that really is the crux of all of it, that we're potentially leaving all of these issues that are going to have the most effect on youth, but we're not bringing them to the table as part of the decision-making.

All of you have seen how amazing it has been to have Mégane here, because she is such a strong voice, and she knows what she is talking about.

We can do that more, we have thousands of youth—

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

I have one last question, for Charlene Senn.

You spoke about how we will not improve the mental health of young women and girls if we don't deal with sexual violence. You indicated that one of the ways to address it.... You spoke about the importance of sex education. I'm wondering if you can expand on why that's critical.

[Dr. Charlene Senn]

Thank you for the question.

There are a couple of ways. One, we know that without comprehensive sex education, which most youth do not have and most adults have not had, we are not talking about the important issues around our sexual rights. We're just talking about bodies, anatomy and those kinds of things, which are not what we need as tools to go into relationships or tools to go into the world and actually interact with people who are attempting to get us to do things that we may or may not want to do, or even to initiate sex that we do want.

We know that this is a foundation. Without that, we're limited in what we can prevent. It's possible to do that really well, as we know from research, starting really young with what is developmentally appropriate and then expanding. That is a foundation. In fact, my program, which is the only university-based program that actually shows substantial and sustained decreases in sexual assault, has a three-hour emancipatory sex education unit as part of it. We think that really helps with the verbal resistance and response to verbal coercion. Knowing what you want is a foundation for then being able to deal in the world with all of these kinds of attempts to get women and girls to do what they don't want to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I'm now going to pass it over to Mike Lake.

Mike, you have three minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you.

A lot of you on this panel are friends and people I know very well. I respect so much of your work.

Rowena, I've had the chance to work with Jack. I was just down at the UN General Assembly and talking a lot, actually, with others about the incredible resource you have with the BeThere.org website. Could you explain a little bit about the partnership you have with the Lady Gaga foundation and BeThere.org?

[Rowena Pinto]

Sure. Thank you.

We put together a certificate program, which can be done completely online, called BeThere.org. The program is about four hours. We ask young people or other people who have young people in their lives to go through the program. It teaches you not only how to identify when you are undergoing some mental health struggles, but also how to support people in your life. As Mégane mentioned, so many times she went to her peers and they didn't necessarily know how to respond to her. This will actually walk you through. There are role-playing exercises. At the end, we actually see uplift in terms of mental health literacy as well as people feeling more confident in terms of supporting people in their lives.

This is a partnership we have with the Born This Way Foundation, Lady Gaga's foundation. We launched it just a few months ago, but about 10,000 people have completed it. I really do recommend that all of you who have young people in your lives look at it. It's a great online program.

Thank you.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

I think that reinforces what Dr. Singla and Dr. Vigod were saying about peer support and those kinds of things.

As we're having this conversation, one thing that jumps out at me is that these are issues that we talk a lot about right now. My concern is.... We have these great conversations. We have fantastic witnesses here. We're doing a lot of talking, but the reality is that there's very little action. During an election campaign almost a year ago, all parties had significant initiatives put forward on mental health, but the party that won, the Liberal Party, promised $4.5 billion for a Canada mental health transfer, and $875 million was to have been delivered by now and hasn't been. We're a country that is spending more money than we've ever spent, by far, and yet we still can't find the money to deliver on promises that were made in the election campaign a year ago.

How much of a difference could the $875 million make if the money was invested by now, as promised?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 15 seconds, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

That's for anyone.

Go ahead, Dr. Vigod.

[Dr. Simone Vigod]

I think it would make a huge difference. The federal government could fund specifically these coordinating centres to get everything on board and get the standards going so that we could monitor and really make sure we're doing a good job. The bottom line is that it could fund people, because we still need people to treat people, whatever—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Perfect. Thank you very much.

I see we have other hands up, but we're coming to the last three minutes, and I'm passing them over to Jenna. You may be able to respond to Jenna's question.

I'm passing it over to Jenna for the next three minutes.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for the incredible work you do every day and for sharing your expertise with us today.

As we've heard a lot today, this is a difficult topic and one that I know is touching so many young people and women across our country. We've heard again and again from our government that mental health is health. It's important as we move forward to continue the dialogue with the provinces and the territories to ensure that we move forward collaboratively and make the progress that I know we all want to make.

I'd like to go back to Dr. Singla, if I may.

You mentioned in your testimony that there are not enough professionals to meet the needs of young women who are seeking mental health support. I'd like to dig into that a bit, because we haven't touched on it today. Can you elaborate? Is this a problem with retention? Is it training opportunities? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

[Dr. Daisy Singla]

This is a multifold problem where we simply do not have enough people in Canada, or in the world, due to a lack of trained individuals who are available to deliver these effective interventions.

The good news is that we don't need folks like me or my colleagues on this panel to deliver these effective psychological treatments. We have shown time and again, in all corners of the world, that individuals without a specialized degree—that is, peers, lay providers, nurses, midwives and teachers—can all be supported and trained to deliver these effective treatments for conditions across the youth period and the perinatal period.

Investing in non-specialist providers will allow us to have a return. Every dollar invested in this initiative would allow for a return of three dollars in savings to your health care system, as well as to work productivity. These are data that have been accumulating for the last 30 to 40 years.

Here in Canada and across the U.S., we are implementing non-specialist-delivered psychological treatments led by nurses and midwives, and I'm quite confident we will show that they are as effective as psychiatrists and psychologists delivering the exact same treatments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's fantastic. Thank you so much.

We have come to the end of the panel for today. I know we have had some expertise here and absolutely not enough time.

On behalf of the committee, I would really like to thank Sara, Mégane, Rowena, Leslie, Daisy, Simone, Peter and Charlene. Thank you so much for bringing your voices here. I'm sure there will be more conversations coming out, because I've written all your names down, saying, “I think I need to learn more from these ladies and gentlemen.”

We are now going to suspend for a few minutes and go into a closed session.

[Proceedings continue in camera]