Mr. Speaker, the question I asked the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness on April 8 came about as a result of the Canadian Police Association meetings held in Ottawa in April. The question was straightforward. Given the concern raised by the CPA with respect to the costs of policing, one of the major drivers of those costs is that front-line police officers are asked increasingly to serve as substance abuse counsellors, mental health advisers, marriage counsellors, and youth intervention officers, while maintaining their primary responsibility for community safety.
One of the major elements of this ever-growing list of responsibilities is that more and more often, front-line police officers are having to deal with individuals suffering from serious mental health issues.
In response, the minister stated that better services can be provided and claimed the government was doing just that by “improving the efficiency of our police services”.
One has to wonder if the minister understood the question.
If that is the case, the minister was paying no attention whatsoever to those who testified before the public safety committee on one of the most significant cost drivers for police services and one of the most inefficient uses of police resources—namely, police responding to calls whose origin is a mental health problem.
After listening to those concerns, in the most recent report of the public safety committee on the economics of police I proposed the following recommendation:
That the federal government through Public Safety and Emergency Planning and Health Canada develop a National Mental Health Strategy that would address the critical issue of downloading of certain responsibilities onto policing services.
The recommendation goes on to explain how these mental health issues could be better addressed and calls for this national initiative to be undertaken in co-operation with provincial, territorial, and municipal representatives.
The recommendation calls for the release of a white paper on mental health issues. Such a white paper should contain a comprehensive analysis of the issues and the response of governments to this health care crisis.
Moreover, it should focus on the relationship between policing and the increasing incidence of law enforcement officials serving as the first—and, in some cases, the only—contact between society and those suffering from mental health issues, addiction problems, and homelessness.
Finally, the resolution would establish a process to follow a set of timelines. The white paper should be released by December 31 of this year; cross-country consultations should be held and concluded by June 30, 2015; and the national strategy should be ready for completion and implementation by December 31, 2015.
My question remains: is the current government prepared to work with the provinces, territories, and police services across the country to develop a comprehensive national strategy on how to respond to a growing mental health crisis that is causing a lot of difficulty in terms of police forces and their ability to respond?