Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Malpeque.
I want to commend the hon. member for Toronto Centre and the leader of my party for showing such vision, wisdom, compassion and humanity by making the urgent need for our government to establish a national suicide prevention strategy the topic of today's debate on this Liberal opposition day in the House of Commons.
I also want to commend all my colleagues who have contributed to this debate by sharing their accounts and allowing us to better grasp and understand this troubling problem, the scourge that is suicide. I would like in particular to acknowledge the very moving speech by the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood who made us think about the priorities we set as a society and as a government. We cannot help but think about the government's crime agenda and the resources it might take away from our efforts to combat suicide.
I would like to dedicate my speech to the memory of a young man whom I unfortunately never had the honour and pleasure to meet, but whose doings throughout his far too short life were known to me because his grandparents and parents are long-time friends of my own family.
This young, brilliant, athletic and talented man who was deeply loved by his family and friends was named Jack Windeler. He was in first year at the prestigious Queen's University in Kingston when tragically, at the age of 18, he took his own life. That was just under a year and a half ago, when his life was so full of potential.
Jack's tragic passing highlights a public and mental health problem that to date has received much too little attention, that being the vulnerability of our young people who, despite appearances, are often in a difficult transitional period from late high school to college or university and to independent living generally.
In his honour and memory, as well as to help others in trouble before it is too late, Jack's loving parents Sandra Hanington and Eric Windeler have launched the Jack Project. Its goal is to transform a painful personal loss into positive transformational action that helps our society achieve meaningful progress in combatting the scourge of youth suicide.
Before I go on, I would like to comment on the mental health of our young Canadians.
The image that we have of young people—the image portrayed by advertising and the media in general—is of a dynamic, fulfilled, connected generation that is open to the world and walking or even running toward a promising future. However, one-quarter of young Canadians are dealing with mental health problems.
In fact, 50% of mental health problems begin before the age of 14, and 75% begin before the age of 24. Based on objective measures, 6.5% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 have experienced major depression in the past year. In addition, only 25% of young people with mental health problems were able to obtain the help they needed from a mental health professional.
Unfortunately, of all the age groups, 15- to 24-year-olds have the least access to the help they need to overcome their mental health problems and the pain that these problems cause them.
The mission of the Jack Project is to help our young people achieve and sustain their optimal mental health as they transition to independent living, which often occurs during the move from high school to college and university. The Jack Project is innovative. It does not work to reinvent the wheel. It focuses on two realms of particular relevance to young people: the online world and, of course, school.
There are many fragmented services available for those contemplating ending their lives. However, because of funding constraints, many are not available in the world where today's youth live: the world of computers and cyberspace.
First, the Jack Project works to interlink, and here I quote:
--Key youth-oriented and youth-servicing partners together in a coordinated online support system to pioneer e-mental health technologies in Canada. Invest in online chat and mobile applications linking teens and young adults to the trained professionals at the Kids Help Phone.
Second, the Jack Project is working with leading mental health organizations, namely, content developers, service providers, researchers and educational professionals, to create a mental health “model of care” and a best practices “toolbox” for transitioning teens and young adults across secondary and post-secondary environments. The goal is for this model of care to become a national standard to be introduced before too long in as many as 300 high schools and 30 colleges and universities.
I imagine that most of those would be in Ontario, but the potential for expanding this national standard, this model of care, beyond of Ontario to the rest of Canada is enormous. In fact, a national suicide strategy would probably help in the goal of making this model of care more widely available from coast to coast to coast.
To say suicide is a complex phenomenon is a profound understatement. Like all complex challenges we face as a society, preventing suicide requires a comprehensive, strategic and co-ordinated approach.
In Canada, that means federal leadership. It is leadership at the level of government that takes a national view of issues and that has the experience of bringing other levels of government together in common purpose to achieve goals of interest to all Canadians.
We need a national suicide prevention strategy in Canada to gather our resources and insights together for the purpose of saving lives threatened by mental health challenges, among others, that too often lead to the ultimate end.
Almost 17 years ago, at a conference held under the auspices of the United Nations in Calgary and Banff, held in these locations precisely because of Alberta's recognized leadership in the area of suicide prevention, a solemn commitment was made among nations, many of them G8 nations, to give priority to creating national suicide prevention strategies. Sadly, we still in Canada have not developed and implemented such a strategy.
The message of today's debate is that it is never too late. We lost Jack, but hopefully with greatly and urgently needed political will encouraged by the courageous and visionary work of his parents, Sandra and Eric, work further aided by this debate today, Jack's life and memory can help all of us save others.