Mr. Speaker, Bell Canada is sponsoring a nationwide conversation today on mental health. I want to thank it for this initiative.
I suffered from depression when I was younger, and I greatly appreciate the social change being encouraged by companies like Bell Canada.
Mental illness is treatable and curable. It affects every family in this country. It costs billions of dollars to the economy and we need to all join together to help each another. The conversation starts with looking each other in the eye and asking “How are you doing?”, and then listening with care and attention when the answer is more than “Fine, thanks”.
It means national and provincial strategies on mental illness and suicide prevention to help our kids, our adolescents who are straight and gay, people coping with life crises of so many kinds and even more serious challenges that face literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
We must be leaders in listening, in caring and, finally, in acting decisively on an issue that touches all of us.