Mr. Speaker, while my time might be short, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this legislation.
I want to thank the member for St. Albert—Edmonton for choosing this issue to address in his private member's bill. It is an extremely important issue, and as he has heard tonight and knows himself, it is a nonpartisan issue.
I am a member of public safety committee. The first report that we did was also on PTSD and operational stress injuries. It too was a unanimous report, just like the justice committee report.
Mental health is an issue that crosses party lines. It is an issue that all of us need to work on together. When people serve their country, we need to make sure that we look after them.
I was quite surprised when I heard that jurors are not able to seek support from medical professionals when they have finished a trial. I first learned about this during a public safety study. Both nurses and jurors reached out to my office to ask if our study could incorporate the mental injuries they had suffered. That was of course outside the scope of our study.
We probably first became aware of mental injuries from our veterans. For me personally, that was the first time I learned that people could suffer mental injuries because of what they saw or heard.
We have come a long way with our veterans and are starting to make strides with our first responders and public safety officers. With both of those groups, we have a long way to go, but with jurors this is something that just has not come up before.
I am so happy to be able to speak to this issue and that the justice committee took the time to study it broadly with jurors. Much of it falls under provincial jurisdiction. Right now, four provinces provide some kind of services to jurors, but this really is something that should be provided across the country.
I quite liked the suggestion by the member for Mount Royal that there should be someone who looks after jurors. Would that not be a lovely way to support jurors?
From the testimony that members heard and I read in the report, after jurors have gone through a trial they have intrusive thoughts, nightmares, trouble sleeping, and develop phobias and anger, and lose their appetite and have a sense of isolation, and are hypervigilant, depressed, anxious, and suffer from substance abuse problems.
It is critically important that all parties support this legislation. We have limited time left to see it get through the House and then hopefully through the Senate to become law.
I am very pleased to offer my support to the member. I will be supporting the bill and will certainly be advocating within my own caucus to ensure that we get this important piece of legislation passed.
