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Results: 31 - 45 of 1662
Jessica Reid
View Jessica Reid Profile
Jessica Reid
2021-06-08 11:05
Good morning, Madam Chair and committee.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak about the importance of including children with incarcerated parents in the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to provide recommendations to protect their rights, support healing and ultimately help break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and criminality. After witnessing the devastating impact of parental incarceration as an educator, 10 years ago I developed KIP Canada. Currently, we are one of the only organizations in this country that specifically provide support for children who've been affected by their parents' involvement in the justice system. As a practitioner, educator and researcher, I've seen the desperate need for policy changes to better support the over 370,000 innocent children who are affected in Canada.
For decades, children of incarcerated parents have been referred to as the invisible and forgotten victims. Despite the ripple effects of parental criminality on children's well-being, economic security and developmental outcomes, these children have yet to be recognized and supported as victims of crime in Canada. However, these effects are consistent with the bill's definition of a victim.
First, we must recognize and acknowledge that parental criminality often occurs in the context of intergenerational trauma and systematic oppression, where marginalized children are disproportionately impacted and are exposed to mental health and substance-use concerns, poverty and other adverse childhood experiences that only exacerbate the effects on their well-being. Parental criminality has consistently resulted in children enduring emotional harm, stigma and isolation.
Researchers have found that one in five children are present at their parent's arrest. In many cases, children witness weapons being drawn at their parents and their homes being raided. Due to the nature of this trauma, children often experience post-traumatic stress symptoms, separation anxiety and even developmental regression. Moreover, children grieve the loss of their parents, as they have difficulty maintaining contact during incarceration because of the financial, geographic and policy barriers that currently exist.
Scholars have now identified parental incarceration as an adverse childhood experience due to the lifelong impact it has on development and well-being. Specifically, research has shown that children who are separated from an incarcerated parent before the age of 18 years old have an elevated risk of mental health concerns, physical illnesses and negative developmental outcomes throughout life. Without support, it is estimated that children with incarcerated parents are four to seven times more likely to come into conflict with the law. These highlight the importance of recognizing children impacted by parental incarceration as victims in the bill and providing effective support to mitigate their effects.
Consistent with research, our programs and supports at KIP Canada have demonstrated the impact of providing early intervention and support for the unique needs of children affected by parental incarceration in Canada that are guided by their voices and based on trauma-informed, strength-based and anti-oppressive practices. In particular, counselling, after-school and mentoring programs, peer support groups and family visits have been effective in supporting children and youth at all phases of the justice system. Overall, these supports have been instrumental in enhancing their well-being, developing protective factors, and yielding positive outcomes while reducing the cycle of intergenerational criminality.
Based on research, practice, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and our youth advisory, we have five recommendations.
One, include the children of incarcerated parents in the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights.
Two, consider the best interests of children of incarcerated parents, as they identify them to be, at all phases of the justice system.
Three, amend policy to reduce barriers and enable children to maintain contact with their parents, such as by lowering age restrictions.
Four, invest in early interventions tailored to the unique needs of children of incarcerated parents.
Five, improve communication and collaboration between the justice, child welfare, education and mental health systems to increase access to wraparound support for children and families.
In Canada, every child's life and trauma should matter, yet children of incarcerated parents remain the forgotten victims. It's time for us to recognize the significance of the trauma associated with parental criminality and effectively respond by including these victims in this bill and providing the support they deserve. This proactive response would help to address the effects of intergenerational trauma, reduce systematic barriers and support the healing for the invisible victims, while being one of the most effective crime prevention strategies that our country can invest in.
Thank you.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you, Chair.
Ms. O'Brien ended her answer to my question talking about making sure that veterans are ready for the dog. I'm just wondering if that did come up in other testimony. One of the concerns is having a service dog placed and not having the capacity within the veteran's household to care for the dog.
I'm just wondering, Ms. Forbes, if you could start, and then maybe I'll come to you, Ms. MacKenzie, to just talk about how that assessment is done and what supports are in place, not only for the veteran but for the family to support the service dog.
Danielle Forbes
View Danielle Forbes Profile
Danielle Forbes
2021-06-07 17:01
For our part, we actually use the prescriber guidelines that were developed by Kristine Aanderson. She was also my co-chair in the CGSB committee. That is our first line of defence because that allows us to ensure that there's been a conversation with a medical professional about a state of readiness and whether it's the best fit. We often get looped into those conversations, so it doesn't happen just between our clients and their treatment professionals. It's usually a three-way conversation between National Service Dogs, the treatment professional....
Built into our policy, based on the ADI PTSD standards for military, we are required to make sure that we are engaging on that mental health piece. Emergency supports are put in place so that there are at least two other individuals in that client circle of support whom we can reach out to if they're in crisis, not only to deal with the safety of the dog but to make sure the client is safe. That is built into the ADI PTSD standards for military. We also make sure our follow-up process is intensive and that we follow up well with the clients. We made the commitment at NSD to have a mental health professional on staff, not just on standby.
I'm sorry. I probably blew through your two minutes.
Laura A. MacKenzie
View Laura A. MacKenzie Profile
Laura A. MacKenzie
2021-06-07 17:03
I'll just say that, yes, we follow pretty well the same thing Danielle does. We have a lifetime membership for our members. Most of our members come back even when they're done, so we see them typically for a weekly or biweekly visit. We call it the K-9 Country Inn family. Our members just keep coming back, but we do the same things. We talk to their health providers. We have meetings with them. We talk about what tasks are going to be required of the dog, and then we have people we can call if we think the person is in crisis. It's the same type of thing.
Medric Cousineau
View Medric Cousineau Profile
Medric Cousineau
2021-06-07 17:04
If you look at the prescriber guidelines, you will find that the service dog readiness decision tree is the second of three decision trees. I think that will lay to rest a lot of these issues.
Victor Kuperman
View Victor Kuperman Profile
Victor Kuperman
2021-06-03 15:55
Thank you so much, Chair Casey. I appreciate being here, and I thank you for your patience.
I'm an associate professor at the Department of Linguistics and Languages at McMaster University, and I am a member of the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging. I study two topics: the psychological and emotional well-being of seniors and the public discourse regarding seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic. I will touch upon both topics today.
I use language as my data: media and social media, stories written by seniors, and messaging by federal and provincial authorities. The present testimony is based on my own work and existing international research.
Our studies of stories written by older adults show that the psychological fallout of COVID-19 on Canadian seniors has been profound. Linguistic analysis of the choice of words and topics pointed to signs of profound psychological distress among seniors. We saw an increasing use of language markers of pessimism, anxiety, fear and uncertainty. This evidence maps well onto the Canadian statistics of deteriorating mental health.
We set up a longitudinal study that uncovered the dynamics of the emotional toll that the pandemic took. Psychological well-being of seniors did not decline immediately after the global lockdown in March 2020. Rather, seniors showed emotional resilience to stress, which set off this decline by roughly four months, yet since August 2020 and up until now, the seniors have remained at the same deteriorated emotional state—the “new normal”. If the lockdown continues, our data predict that this state will worsen, leading to further loss of health and lives. Our analyses further confirmed robust findings that loneliness, social isolation and pre-pandemic health issues are the key determinants of psychological vulnerability.
What brings relief to seniors? Many participants in our studies mentioned the success of intergenerational online projects involving storytelling and story-sharing, a creative and therapeutically relevant form of communication, yet these projects leave out those seniors that may need them the most, that is, the ones without access or knowledge to engage in online communication. Unless caretakers provide training in the use of online tools of social engagement to such individuals, the digital divide will grow and social isolation exacerbate.
Given available data, I recommend to support further development of social engagement programs, especially those across generations; provide reliable Internet infrastructure and access to technology to all seniors; and, support education in digital literacy for seniors with the help of trained caretakers.
Another topic that looms large in my current research and the international research is the rise of ageism in the public discourse on the pandemic. This discriminatory sentiment is not new, but it has now been fuelled by the greater vulnerability that seniors show to COVID-19. Ageism surfaces in media as an undifferentiated portrayal of all seniors as frail, helpless or burdensome. This negative perspective can even find support in social policies if they are formulated in terms of age as a number, rather than talking about individuals and their situation. In its most radical form, ageism surfaces as blatant disregard for seniors’ lives. It is illustrated in social networks by an offensive, insulting label: #BoomerRemover.
Ageism is not a prevalent sentiment in social media, but it is persistent, so it strengthens negative stereotyping against seniors in all age groups. It has been widely reported to bias triaging decisions in health care delivery against seniors, as well as employment decisions. Seniors themselves absorb this negative public discourse as well. It adds to their daily stress, harms their cognitive functioning and undermines their self-esteem.
With these findings in mind, I recommend to support educational and public awareness programs about aging and its physiological, cognitive and emotional components. In official communication, including policies and public health messaging, I recommend avoiding an emphasis on age as a critical group variable. Instead, public messaging should target socio-economic or health-related characteristics of individuals.
Thank you for your attention. I'm looking forward to further discussion.
View Tim Louis Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you.
Dr. Evans, I know we're talking about biosecurity and stopping diseases and that we're in the middle of a global pandemic, but in your experience with trying to protect the physical and mental health of both animals and farmers, are we learning? Would you say we're learning from the lessons of the global COVID pandemic that we're experiencing? Are there applications and lessons we can take moving forward to protect our farmers and our animals?
Brian Evans
View Brian Evans Profile
Brian Evans
2021-06-03 15:57
Thank you for the question. I think it offers a number of insights.
Certainly, as Scott has touched on, the reality of disease emergence is constantly changing, and it's emerging on an ongoing basis. We see up to five new diseases emerge every year, and 60% of those have an animal base or an animal origin to them that can affect human health as well.
I would like to say that lessons get learned, but I would be remiss if I said that with sincerity, because I think that while often there are lessons noted, our reality is that history tends to repeat itself all too often.
Canada itself is not immune to the introduction of diseases on farms, obviously, like all nations. The committee might recall two of the more memorable ones. One was foot-and-mouth disease in Saskatchewan in 1952, which obviously predates the vast majority of the committee members, I'd suggest. It was concluded that the foot-and-mouth disease in Saskatchewan was ultimately related to a farm worker who moved from West Germany to Saskatchewan in 1951. The area in West Germany where he resided and worked with livestock was suffering from an outbreak of foot-and-mouth type A, which was the same type of foot-and-mouth that emerged on farms in Saskatchewan over the subsequent time period. It's postulated that it may have been the result of boots and clothing that he brought with him that were not cleaned and disinfected. Obviously those issues of disinfection and cleaning weren't as prevalent in industry at that time as they are today. Again, that was an incident that was determined to be caused when a farm worker actually introduced the disease.
More recently, in 2009, we dealt in Canada and globally with the outbreak of H1N1, which unfortunately picked up the misnomer of “swine flu”, which was totally inappropriate, given it was a triple-reassortant virus. In this situation, Canada was one of 22 countries around the world where infection with H1N1 was finally detected or confirmed in swine populations. Again, in the vast majority of those circumstances, it was determined that these pigs had been infected by people—
View Neil Ellis Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Neil Ellis Profile
2021-06-03 17:02
I have one last question, and I'll give it to you, Darren. Don't feel that I'm picking on you here, but this question was asked already of Marcel. Mr. Barlow explained in his testimony to the committee on May 6, 2021, that protecting the mental health of farmers was a key motivation for introducing Bill C-205. I wanted you to touch on this. If enacted, would this bill improve the mental health of farmers? If so, how?
Darren Ference
View Darren Ference Profile
Darren Ference
2021-06-03 17:02
This act would improve the mental health of farmers. Having all these people come in is stressful for the farmer. It's like invading your home or your place of business. Your home is your private place. Our farms are our private place, no different than our homes. If we have 30 people sitting there demanding things, it is very stressful to deal with. Our animals are actually a part of us. When the animals become stressed, we're also stressed. This would help improve mental health.
View Richard Lehoux Profile
CPC (QC)
View Richard Lehoux Profile
2021-06-03 17:17
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses for joining us this afternoon.
My first question is for you, Mr. Groleau. You have placed a lot of emphasis on the psychological impact on the farming families of these incursions onto farms. You spoke at length about the Grégoire family and then you talked about a dairy farm in the Estrie. Those incidents had consequences later.
Could you tell us a little more about that, Mr. Groleau?
Marcel Groleau
View Marcel Groleau Profile
Marcel Groleau
2021-06-03 17:17
The farmer in the Estrie managed to stop them, as they were only two. So it was easier to limit what they were doing. Only two animals ended up being driven outside the barn. So the damage was limited.
View Richard Lehoux Profile
CPC (QC)
View Richard Lehoux Profile
2021-06-03 17:18
But there was another case that was reported to us at a previous meeting. Those farmers were a young couple, who had a pig operation for about a year. After the incursion they had on their property, they left farming. That's no real incentive for the next generation of farmers.
Marcel Groleau
View Marcel Groleau Profile
Marcel Groleau
2021-06-03 17:18
Exactly.
I would also like to bring up the point by saying that Bill C‑205 is certainly not about protecting farming families. It is about protecting the health and well-being of the animals. I feel that is important, and you in the federal government have the tool with which you can respond. If your response is for the health and well-being of the herd, you will also be protecting the health of farming families.
As for the stress, we as farmers are all concerned that it may happen to us. It's inevitable. No one can predict when or how it will happen, but we know that it can happen to us. We are under that stress as well.
View Louise Chabot Profile
BQ (QC)
Ms. Porter, you have conducted several studies and made a number of observations regarding seniors.
In your experience, are there additional costs and expenses associated with illness that may contribute to increased stress and anxiety among seniors aged 65 to 75?
Results: 31 - 45 of 1662 | Page: 3 of 111

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