Status of Women Committee on Oct. 27th, 2022

[Dr. Diane Whitney]

Certainly, Internet service is essential. I'm not saying that's the answer totally for care, but it makes such a difference.

With regard to my group I was describing, at least I was able to include some people from outside of Thunder Bay, rather than having to do it in my office. I was a big proponent of using Zoom. I did not use phone much, because with Zoom you can see somebody. You can see what somebody's house looks like. Is it messy? You do an evaluation on a person and their house. I'm passionate about that.

The infrastructure is multi-faceted. With regard to the transportation to get people into a major centre for the care they need directly, the transportation and hotel costs are through the roof. I had a young woman come in with her mother, and I helped them deal with some of the hotel costs. Those practical kinds of things about getting people around in northern Ontario are not easy. We're not talking about small distances, as someone mentioned.

For the indigenous patients, I'll be honest: Sometimes the structure for them to access their benefits is very difficult. I can't remember what administrator.... My husband deals with it. However, with one of the indigenous organizations, we have to send a letter to the organization before they can book their travel. That's crazy. There are a lot of very practical—as you can tell, I'm practical—day-to-day things that are barriers for patients getting care. I worry about the patients who don't get to me.

The other thing I do is work with the maternity centre. This is a plug for this, because it's a nightmare trying to get a young indigenous woman seen and following through with appointments, for various reasons. We're talking about the unborn child, the other children, the mother. A lot of times, they don't end up in my office after the initial assessment because there's no support to get them there. It's one of the barriers to getting them there. It's significant.

That's work that I'm passionate about.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

I guess that's what continues the cycle of intergenerational trauma. The mother doesn't get the help she needs, and then it passes on from generation to generation.

Karen, I'm going to let you go ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks so much.

I'm going to build a little bit from where Emmanuella was. Thank you, everybody, for giving me the opportunity.

I'm going to take this question to Dr. Jetly.

I have your paperwork from earlier, and you were talking about mood and anxiety disorders that occur in women. It's one of those things that I think, if only I knew.... As a 51-year-old woman, I reflect on what it was like as a teenager, and raising my own teenager girls and what that was like.

We talk about mood and anxiety disorders. We talk about hitting puberty. We talk about prenatal care and all of these different things. I do not think we're doing enough in talking about the fact that women's hormones are going like this all the time. We're up and down.

What should we be doing to ensure that women and young girls are aware that this is normal and that we need to regulate ourselves?

[Dr. Rakesh Jetly]

That's a great question. Thank you for that.

I think part of it is to separate normal from disease. Having raised two girls, and continuing to raise—I guess you never stop—two girls through this whole period.... One is 20 and one is 18. The problem is that we have these classifications of diseases. If you are in this check box and you have these symptoms, then you have a disease. However, people are so different.

Let's take depression. With a 56-year-old post-menopausal woman who is sleeping 18 hours a day, eating carbohydrates and gaining weight, and a 19-year-old male student who is losing weight and can't sleep, we call it the same disease and often give them the same medication. We have to understand the differences and individualize things. I think what is normal, what is not normal, and when it is a disease are almost three different categories. I think that's really important.

I'm going to quickly jump in for my friend, Peter. The interesting thing in the Netherlands is that it's 0.05% the size of Ontario. The beauty of the Netherlands is that every single soldier in their military is within two hours' train ride to the Central Military Hospital.

This is the problem we face. I'm in the NATO group quite often, and the Canadian solution is going to be different. We can borrow and help.... If you think about a map, it's smaller than southern Ontario.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

Today has been an absolutely fascinating panel. I think that if people actually watched our committee, they would see that, in our own way, we're doing a little bit of counselling here because it's helping us understand how this all is going forward.

On behalf of the status of women committee, I would really like to thank our panellists for being with us today. Thank you bringing your expertise and adding to this. If there is additional information that you have not submitted to the committee, I will remind you to do so because I know that someone mentioned, “Hey, I'll just send that forward.” Please do. All of this information is very helpful.

I'm just going to remind the committee that, with respect to our human trafficking and sexual exploitation study, we need to have all of our witnesses in by tomorrow, October 28.

Also, I will remind everybody about the recommendations. Everybody would have gotten their version one today of our study. Please review that. We would like to have recommendations for our study number two—this is very important—by 3 p.m. next Friday, November 4. Please send those in to the clerk. Thanks.

We are adjourned.