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Results: 121 - 135 of 1662
Shelley L. Morse
View Shelley L. Morse Profile
Shelley L. Morse
2021-04-20 16:15
Thank you for inviting me here today.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members. I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak with you. I'm also pleased to be appearing alongside Hassan Yussuff. Many thousands of our teachers and education workers are also members of the CLC.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land from which I am speaking to you today is Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia.
I would like to preface my remarks with a brief overview of the impact of COVID-19 on our students, teachers and education workers.
Canada's education system is one of the world's best. However, that standing is under severe threat due to the low prioritization it has received since the beginning of the pandemic. Education outcomes for students in this country are in jeopardy and the federal government must continue to take action before more damage is done to our K-to-12 cohort and the economy.
Last September, the OECD estimated that Canada's present value of GDP lost over the remainder of the century due to coronavirus-induced learning loss could be as high as $2.5 billion. Of more immediate concern is the direct impact of school closures on the economy as Canada tries to recover. According to the C.D. Howe Institute's comprehensive measure, K to 12 schooling accounts for 11.5% of the GDP in Canada. Therefore, the disruption of the Canadian education system impacts the Canadian economy almost more than any other sector.
These figures paint a stark picture around the importance of creating and maintaining safe schools. Still, in Ontario and in many areas of Alberta and Quebec, school buildings are again closed and students and teachers are forced to adopt online learning, with its numerous shortcomings in terms of equity and quality.
Before going forward, I also want to acknowledge the tremendous stress on all levels of government. On behalf of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, thank you to your staff and the dedicated members of the public service. Your work is so important.
While we recognize that education falls under provincial and territorial jurisdiction, the CTF/FCE applauded the $2-billion safe return to class fund. We appreciate the efforts made through this fund and other federal initiatives to try to keep students and educators safe. Unfortunately, I cannot stress enough that funding has not flowed down to the classroom level. Our teachers and education workers are still paying out of pocket for their PPE, hand sanitizers, additional cleaning products for their classrooms and makeshift dividers between desks.
Likewise, the CTF/FCE was pleased to see the government think outside the box by announcing Infrastructure Canada's $3-billion COVID-19 resilience funding stream, which aims to support projects such as retrofits and repairs for schools. We are also happy to see Infrastructure Canada's recent announcement of $120 million to support ventilation improvement projects in public buildings, including schools. This is something the CTF/FCE has long called for.
We also have concerns. What are the reporting and accountability measures in place to ensure that projects being funded are not, for example, roof repairs that have been neglected for years? Similarly, how can the federal government work to ensure provinces spend the funds in a timely manner?
In Ontario, just last week, funding was announced under the resilience stream for space reconfiguration, such as new walls or doors, to enhance physical distancing. Don't get me wrong. This is a much-needed investment, but it's the end of the school year. This federal fund was announced last August. That is why the CTF/FCE has been advocating—and will continue to advocate directly with federal officials and policy-makers—for better tracking of school-related federal funds, either through a federal-provincial-territorial task force or other mechanisms to ensure the funds are used in a timely manner, reaching their intended destinations and making a tangible difference.
Additionally, the CTF/FCE urges consideration of other supports for people on the front line. The lack of mental health funding for frontline workers remains a deep concern. A recent poll of Canadian teachers tells a worrying tale, with over 70% of respondents concerned about the impact of the pandemic on their own mental health and well-being. Of course, a major reason for this is the almost constant worry for their students in this challenging context.
We were happy to see additional funding in the fall economic statement for the Wellness Together program, but more resources are needed, and they must be allocated specifically for services tailored to the unique workplace stressors of teachers and other frontline workers.
As governments plan for the coming months, we must also ensure that teachers and all education workers have priority access to the COVID-19 vaccines so that our children can learn in class, parents can work and our economy can begin to recover.
The CTF/FCE is grateful for the federal government's support throughout the pandemic, but as this third and most vicious wave makes clear, the pandemic is still very much with us. The challenges our country faces, including those experienced by teachers and education workers, will continue to require the government's full attention.
On behalf of the over 300,000 teachers and their students across this country, I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the important work of the committee and welcome the opportunity to answer any questions.
Thank you.
Sara Hodson
View Sara Hodson Profile
Sara Hodson
2021-04-20 16:34
Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be here today.
The Fitness Industry Council of Canada represents over 6,000 fitness facilities across this great country. They range from single boutiques to national chains and non-profit and municipal facilities. Pre-COVID, the fitness industry employed 150,000 people and served six million Canadians. Our industry has been severely decimated by COVID-19 due to closures and restrictions across the country. Today we have laid off half of our employees and lost half of our membership.
The majority of fitness facilities have been closed over the last year despite worldwide data showing that fitness facilities are not transmission sites of COVID-19. Facilities are operating at somewhere between 10% and 50% of their revenue. The wage and rent subsidies have been very much appreciated by our industry. We still experience severe financial hardships. We continue to have small business loans, equipment leases, property taxes and debts from PPE. As well, our industry had to very quickly invest in and create online platforms in order to continue to keep Canadians active at home. Facilities are losing currently $15,000 to $30,000 per month per facility.
We have a lot of fitness brands and facilities that were opened the year before the pandemic hit. Those facilities are not able to benefit from some of the subsidies we have. I want to bring that to your attention today.
Fitness facilities in their current state across this country have anywhere from two to six weeks of remaining capital and have taken on significant debt. They have defaulted on their leases and their loans. Currently, looking across this country, we see that about a third of fitness facilities have already closed. Some have gone in silence. Some have gone publicly. We know that a third of facilities have closed. We will see that number double as our industry bears the weight of reopening.
We foresee that once Canadians are fully vaccinated, it will take about six to nine months for our industry to just gain the three million members we lost. To offset the debts and the other costs that we have now taken on, we need to increase our membership base by 20%, meaning that we have to serve 7.2 million Canadians. We project that this will take an additional six to nine months. Overall, the fitness industry is 18 months away from any type of return to the February 2020 state of the industry. That will take us to February of 2023. This is a three-year critical financial impact on our industry.
As we all know, the federal budget was released yesterday. As much as there are great initiatives included for mental health, we as the fitness industry are disappointed that our proposal was not considered in the 2021 budget. I do believe that as much as we did include mental health in the budget, we really missed an opportunity to help Canadians' mental, physical and social health. This is where fitness and fitness facilities come in.
On January 28 I had the great pleasure to present to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland an economic recovery plan for the fitness industry. Our proposal was to have fitness memberships and services considered as a medical expense on our personal taxes. That's line 33099. Our proposal included financial modelling that actually showed projected health care savings ranging from $500 million to $2 billion a year by combatting physical inactivity in Canada. Our proposal supported the employment of young people, the recovery of our industry and the health of Canadians. We were endorsed and backed by Heart and Stroke, Diabetes Canada and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.
Why does fitness even matter for Canadians right now? Well, the reality is that exercise is medicine. There's so much I wish I had time to share with you. Exercise is known to reduce hypertension and cancer and diabetes by up to 60%, stroke by 50%, and Alzheimer's by 40%. Exercise is just as effective as antidepressants.
We know that we are in a physical inactivity pandemic, and this was echoed by the World Health Organization in 2018. We are fighting COVID as a country, and the access to physical activity right now is at risk. We are on the verge of losing two-thirds of fitness facilities, eliminating Canadians' access.
What is the solution? We need to make this tax deductible. As a country that funds the research that teaches and supports exercise as medicine, we now have to give Canadians the opportunity to benefit from exercise as medicine. This is Canada's opportunity to gain global attention and recognition for incenting the people of Canada to get active, to make a bold statement that physical activity is fundamental to our health care system.
The time is now. We are losing our fitness industry, but together we can create change and empower Canadians' physical, mental and social health.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Lieutenant Macdonald, Ms. McIlmoyle, Ms. Tulloch and Ms. Batek, your testimony sheds light on this sad reality that survivors are going through.
My initial questions will focus on this topic, which is important to me.
Many of you have spoken about post-traumatic stress disorder. We now know that the Canadian Armed Forces has evolved and are supporting soldiers with PTSD.
As survivors, do you feel that PTSD is treated in the same way among victims of sexual assault or misconduct?
Some of you have addressed this question. I invite those who would like to respond to me to do so.
Heather Macdonald
View Heather Macdonald Profile
Heather Macdonald
2021-04-20 11:44
I'll take that a little bit. I would say that it's not taken the same way, and that because you don't get that diagnosis, you don't get the same supports as someone who is diagnosed with PTSD.
As well, there's a reluctance to be diagnosed, because for all that we've made progress and it's “you can still be promoted if you have a permanent medical category,” the medical system we have was originally constructed around physical ailments. If you get a broken leg, you get a temporary medical category, and then to come off that, you have a medical doctor say that you're a 100% fine. If you have a mental health issue, it's very hard to ever come off the temporary medical category, because there is no way that a doctor can say that you're a 100% fine. It quite often will lead to a permanent medical category.
There is still a lot of reluctance, if you have a permanent medical category, especially for something like mental health, like PTSD. They don't want to put you in positions that might have a lot of stress or might.... That will cripple your career in some cases. They, first, don't treat it the same as PTSD, so you're closed to a lot of the help that you'd get for PTSD, and second, there's a lot of angst around even getting a permanent medical category with regard to mental health, because our system is set up for physical ailments much better than it is for mental health ailments.
We need to separate those systems so that mental health ailments are treated by mental health professionals and not the same as physical ailments. Sexual assault should also be given the same support systems as PTSD.
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
BQ (QC)
As you said, there's a difference in PTSD following missions abroad. The consequences are much more severe.
Ms. Batek, I'd like to come back to what you said about the difference in what is experienced abroad. You said that this culture of toxic masculinity had consequences that included child abuse, rape of civilians and domestic violence.
I imagine that the assaults we see in the Canadian Armed Forces can happen again in the case of the rape of civilians in missions abroad.
MJ Batek
View MJ Batek Profile
MJ Batek
2021-04-20 11:49
I am a military domestic violence survivor. I endured 15 years of violence that did end up with civilian charges against my perpetrator who was retained by the military and was allowed to continue his career despite having a criminal background in domestic violence. I'm not alone. When I finally reached out to other people, I realized that, especially among veterans' spouses, women or men who served and then found themselves in a military relationship or marriage, there was a high incidence of abuse, whether that was emotional abuse, violence or whatnot. It's a problem that I think has been downplayed over the years. It's not something we talk about. We talk about things happening in the workplace or whatnot, but the fact is that those things are coming home.
When you have a group of people who have this mentality and they go out into the community, say they go to the bar. Let's use an example of a group of men coming off a rough deployment or whatnot, they are going to treat the people, the civilians in that bar, the same way they were treating the women in the workplace, if not worse.
View Lindsay Mathyssen Profile
NDP (ON)
Lieutenant Macdonald, you also talked about medical officers. We heard before from one survivor about a complete dismissal, especially around mental health issues. Can you talk about their training? You mentioned there are medical techs? Are they trained sufficiently? Is that something that needs to be looked at as well? There's a lot of training that needs to happen in leadership and so on, but in that medical sense, what do you think needs to happen there?
Heather Macdonald
View Heather Macdonald Profile
Heather Macdonald
2021-04-20 11:56
We have a petty officer who is a physician assistant, and then we'll have a medical tech as the assistant to him. The highest rank in the medical is generally a petty officer. I think they're looking at maybe making them officers, but.... For mental health, I think that if you're deployed we have our padre, and I think that people will go to the padre a little bit first before they go to the actual doctor, if you will. I don't think there's a whole.... You talk to your buddies a little bit more.
We can only take so many people on ship, and the people we take on ship have to do multiple things. When you're doing multiple things, you don't become deep experts in that one thing. You have to be more of a generalist. We are very limited on the bunk space we have to get the job done that we have to do, so we have to choose where it's going to be most effective, I guess.
Leslie McBain
View Leslie McBain Profile
Leslie McBain
2021-04-19 11:21
I am the co-founder of a non-profit national organization called Moms Stop the Harm. Two other moms, Lorna Thomas and Petra Schulz, and I lost our beautiful sons to drug harms in 2013-14. The next year we decided to act. By early 2016, we had an organization of 18 people. Today our members number well over 2,000 families across Canada.
Our aim was, and still is, to advocate for evidence-based drug policies that support rather than punish people who use drugs. We do not want any other family to experience the deep and lifelong pain of losing a child, especially to a preventable cause. We continue to advocate for humane drug policies, and we now have a network of trained peer-led support groups that support families in grief and support families struggling to keep their loved ones with addiction alive.
With the help of provincial and federal grants, we have expanded the groups across Canada. In the past 12 months, our membership has soared. It has expanded to dads, friends, siblings, religious leaders and first nations people. This is a result of the exponential rise in the number of toxic drug deaths and survived overdoses in Canada during the pandemic and the attendant rise in drug use.
How has COVID impacted these families and their communities? The impact has been and remains profound. Given the conditions that the pandemic has imposed on all of us, and the community of drug users and their families in particular, we find that families have increasing levels of stress, fear and anxiety if their loved ones with problematic drug use are still alive. More often now, families receive desperate phone calls as services disappear through COVID restrictions, or the one phone call that no parent ever wants to receive.
Treatment and recovery services are as ridiculously expensive now as they have ever been. There are longer wait-lists and people are dying while they wait. Many families who are fighting for the lives of their loved ones have already faced COVID-related economic hardship. This turns into desperation. Mental health services are inundated and unable to cope with the rise in need.
One of our members, a single mom with two teenagers at home and a son with mental health issues and addiction, has lost her job as a retail manager because of COVID cutbacks. When she had a dependable wage, rent was affordable, child care was within reach and she was able to connect with her addicted son, who chooses to live on the street. She often gave him money or another phone, or bought him clothes or another backpack. Given the reduction of services to help him, she is now his sole protector. Now she does not have enough money to help him much, and she now has a serious gastrointestinal disease caused by the stress. Her doctor says, “Reduce your stress and take these pills.”
The grief within families and communities that have lost loved ones to toxic drug death is a tear in the fabric of Canadian society. Since COVID appeared, the grief felt by families who lose a child to drug death is exacerbated by not being able to gather for funerals, wakes or other traditions. People do not visit or bring casseroles. The surge of the psychological impact of solitary grief rages side by side with COVID fears.
People who have a substance use disorder, which in normal times is challenging, stigmatized and a dangerous disorder to have in this country, have been cautioned to isolate during COVID just like the rest of us. What this means to people who are addicted is extreme vulnerability.
The previous message given for many years, which was “never use alone; always have a buddy nearby”, is almost null. People who use drugs take COVID warnings just as seriously as the rest of us. Using alone is more dangerous now, during COVID, than it has ever been, because of the increased toxicity of drug supply. If a person overdoses, they will likely die alone or suffer permanent brain injury in the absence of help.
COVID has interrupted the normal flow of illicit drugs into Canada. Drugs that traditionally come into Canada across borders, although toxic, were somewhat comprehensible. People who are addicted had some idea of the strength and the inherent dangers. They were still dying and they were still ending up in the ERs, but not in the numbers that we see today.
Local illicit drug manufacturers, not willing to ignore a very lucrative market that suddenly appeared, have hastily started producing powerful substances, throwing in highly toxic drugs in amounts that kill. Toxic drug deaths have increased 120% since 2019.
During COVID, like the rest of us, people with substance use disorder are disconnected from their communities, their families and their living situations. Shelters have closed. Services have closed or become very limited. Safe consumption services have closed or have severely cut their hours. These things often cause increased drug use as connections have disappeared, and connection means everything to people who use drugs, as well as to the rest of us.
I am not an academic. I am not a scientist. I am a bereaved mother who has heard 2,000 stories. I know the wash of grief over this country and I have seen the physical and psychological toll on our members before and now especially during COVID.
If the federal government, in partnership with provinces, could act on the evidence and implement a safe supply of drugs to people who need them, decriminalize possession of personal amounts of illicit substances, and make investments in a system of care that makes rapid access to treatment and recovery and mental health services accessible to everyone, the effects of COVID, the effects of the current drug scene, and the deaths and the desperation of families would definitely be mitigated.
Thank you very much.
View John Barlow Profile
CPC (AB)
View John Barlow Profile
2021-04-19 11:28
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses for being here today.
Ms. McBain, I'll start with you if that's okay. I certainly appreciate your sharing your personal story. Sometimes it's beneficial when we don't have academics but people who have lived experience, and I know, unfortunately, that too many of us have lost friends or relatives as a result of the opioid crisis, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Certainly we've seen the numbers, as a result of lockdowns and restrictions, and the use of substances and opioid deaths and suicides increase dramatically over the last year. In my province of Alberta we had the second-highest number of suicides in the country ever over the last six months.
Would it help to have a one-stop, single 988 suicide hotline manned by mental health experts? It's something we don't have in Canada right now. Currently we have a different system in every province. Many times when people call they get an answering machine or a recorded message. What kind of a difference would it make? It could be a quick and easy step, a 988 suicide hotline manned by mental health experts. What kind of a difference would that make?
Leslie McBain
View Leslie McBain Profile
Leslie McBain
2021-04-19 11:29
I think anything helps. Everything helps.
If it were a hotline that could address suicide as well as other mental health issues—and I should say including even drug use and addiction—yes, that would be a great idea. It couldn't hurt, but at the same time we need, across the board, connections through a phone line or through a phone app whereby people who are using drugs are able to connect with somebody who is listening.
I don't know if you've heard of the app, but it's like the Lifeguard app, where they have to respond within certain key number of seconds or emergency services are called.
Anything that helps keep people alive during this pandemic is invaluable. Suicides are up, and we need whatever supports are available, so the answer is yes, of course.
View Don Davies Profile
NDP (BC)
I don't know if it's possible, but could you give us a bit of a glimpse into the mental health of students right now? They've been particularly dislocated. People can't go to class. They're learning online. They're isolated. Can you give us a general idea of how students are feeling in this country right now and whether there are specific challenges facing them that we should know about to respond to in policy?
Brandon Rhéal Amyot
View Brandon Rhéal Amyot Profile
Brandon Rhéal Amyot
2021-04-19 12:52
Of course. It's difficult to capture in a short answer, but from my own experience, as much as the university and the student union and other organizations and friend groups have tried to maintain a sense of community, it is not the same. That's the case across Canada, not just for students, despite the whole point of being on campus being to build a sense of community student life. That aids in our education, in our coming out of these institutions, in getting jobs and finding community and volunteering. We've lost a lot of that.
In terms of the impact on mental health, some students have been working at grocery stores and if you're a health care student, you've probably been on the front lines in some capacity. From looking at the intersections, we see that students are struggling with mental health across the board, but some students in particular are more challenged by the pandemic.
I don't have access to my cultural ceremonies as much as I did before the pandemic, and that's of course because I want to keep my elders safe, but it's not the same over Zoom. You can't exactly [Technical difficulty--Editor].
View Chris d'Entremont Profile
CPC (NS)
Thank you.
I had a great question for Brandon, but unfortunately he's not here.
Mr. D'Angiulli, my wife is a teacher. She and her colleagues have gone through a lot of instances where classes had to be shut down. Classes were not on today. There were two instances where schools had to be shut down in Halifax region.
When do you think we will see truly negative effects on our children as we start to recover from this pandemic? Will there always be a level of anxiety as we talk about pandemics or the effects of certain sicknesses, as it rolls around?
Amedeo D'Angiulli
View Amedeo D'Angiulli Profile
Amedeo D'Angiulli
2021-04-19 12:55
I think it will be different for different age groups. We probably will see the largest impact on the younger kids who started kindergarten and grade 1, and then I would guess, if everything goes well, things will get really hot this fall at the beginning. I think the first three months or so will be hard for everybody.
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