Mr. Speaker, imagine people driving the streets searching desperately for their child. Imagine them waiting for a call late in the night telling them that their son or daughter has been found dead. It is a pain many of us cannot imagine.
A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a very informal round table in my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha, listening to parents who have a child struggling with addiction or who have lost a child to addiction. These are some of the quotes that deeply resonated with me: “Stop assuming I am a bad mom“; “No one told me what to do”; “I was waiting to be told how to fix it, but it is not about fixing them.”
I chose to run for politics to bring better awareness and treatment for mental illness and addiction. The reality is that recovery centres are desperately needed, especially in my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha, but so is a social shift to understanding that addiction is treating pain.
I urge everyone in this House to replace judgment with empathy. I urge the government to hold true to its election commitment and invest the $4.5 billion it promised for the Canada mental health transfer.