Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his service to our country. I cannot imagine the trauma caused by observing the results of some of these unfortunate incidents. In my comments, I referred to the fact that suicide does not stop the pain, but simply transfers it to others who are left to bear that burden.
If there were a simple solution, or even 10 simple solutions, I am sure everyone in this room would be sharing them with us tonight, but there is none.
One of the suggestions I have that I think is a help, not the answer, involves our front-line workers, and I listed a few of them. I think of hockey, baseball and lacrosse coaches. These men and women are working weekly, if not daily, with our young people. I think we do a disservice by not equipping these kinds of volunteers with the skills. Yes, we teach them first aid and how to apply a splint to a broken ankle, but we could also teach them how to use safeTALK. It is an effective mechanism that has been developed to teach lay people like me how to possibly intervene. I do not have to solve the problem, but I have to listen and possibly discover that a person is crying out for help and then get them to the available resources.
I think that implementing safeTALK across Canada, especially on our reserves, would be one way of possibly reducing the number of unfortunate premature deaths that we are observing today.