Status of Women committee  I'll jump in on the issue of the health system and the role it can play. One thing that is important to note is that this area of work continues to mature and evolve in the health system. For many years, these issues of violence against women and girls were really considered justice issues.

Status of Women committee  In the case of health, it will differ by community, but there are many community organizations that we are funding federally to play just that kind of role. Just to build on the trauma-informed concept, that's something that.... Through the funding programs that many of us are administering, we are supporting community-based organizations to expand their ability to work in a trauma-informed way.

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for that question. I believe you're referring to the investment in the three children's programs I talked about earlier, just to confirm the figure of $112 million annually.

Status of Women committee  Okay. The data we gather on those programs, because they are for very young and vulnerable children, have not in fact looked at victimization and violence in terms of longer-term impacts. It's a good question that you're asking, and it's a timely one, because at this point in the evolution of our children's programs we are looking at what data we need to be collecting in the future, and since we know that many of the women coming into these programs are the victims of violence and that therefore their children are being exposed to violence, we're looking at that data collection.

Status of Women committee  One gap we are trying to fill is from a public health perspective with regard to further supporting victims in coming forward. We're coming at this through the public health system. The work we're doing now, and the funding led by a team of qualified researchers and professionals at McMaster University, is to equip front-line health professionals with the skills they need to better relate to victims of violence and make them feel comfortable in the context of the health care experience so that they can help them come forward.

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to address this committee regarding its study on violence against young women and girls in Canada. The Public Health Agency of Canada has a mandate to address family violence, which includes intimate partner violence and child maltreatment.

Health committee  One of the things I learned at the Arctic Council meeting on suicide prevention was that hope and stigma reduction go hand in hand. The youth who were there really brought that home to me. It was something that really affected me, and I've been thinking about it a lot since then: how you do need to join up the ways that we think about stigma reduction by providing better information and engaging people in dialogue and on the hope dimension of a life after depression and a life that allows you to recover.

Health committee  I'd be glad to. From the point of view of what's happening in schools today, we hear from partners who are working in schools, who are teachers, and who are designing curricula for schools, that bullying is a significant issue affecting the health and well-being of schoolchildren.

Health committee  That's a great question. One of the most important things we're learning as we do our surveillance and we bring the results of our analysis to those who are developing programs and making a difference in communities is that we need to be better integrated. We need to join up the efforts that we're making in surveillance with the efforts that communities are putting forward to address their own unique needs, because there is no one size fits all as you well know.

Health committee  I think often the barrier is not having a clear agenda on how we want to move forward together. We now have a mental health strategy for Canada, and that's a really important foundation to get us all rowing in the same direction.

Health committee  As with most national data collection, we are always challenged by identifying comparable data across the country. For that reason, we work with our colleagues in the provinces and territories on developing specific indicators so that we can all collect the data in the same way and report on them in the same way.

Health committee  Yes, we do, if the suicide is reported on the death certificate. That's the question that we look at when we are looking at the quality of our data. Are we getting good reporting that the cause of death was suicide? That's not always the case, and it's not always consistent. The other thing we worry about is understanding attempted suicide and getting better data on those types of variables as well.

Health committee  Yes. Our most recent data indicate one in three. Those data come from the Statistics Canada Canadian community health survey. As this information gets out into the public domain more and more and is reinforced, you'll start to see that number change from one in five to one in three.

Health committee  No, we have not. That would be a research question that we would look to our colleagues in the research community to address.

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to highlight the Public Health Agency of Canada's work to improve the mental well-being of Canadians. We are working closely with our partners to contribute to the implementation of the Mental Health Strategy for Canada.