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Results: 1 - 100 of 342
View Sonia Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you.
My next question is for the representative of Ahmadiyya community. We have an engaged and committed Ahmadiyya community here in Brampton. I commend their work across Canada in fighting hate. We have a vaccine clinic at Masjid Mubarak...raising funds for the community, and we are always grateful for their work.
However, Ms. Choudhry, another aspect of this study is focused on cyber-bullying, which is more frequently experienced by young Canadians. Are you aware of young members of your community being cyber-bullied for their religion?
Faakhra Choudhry
View Faakhra Choudhry Profile
Faakhra Choudhry
2021-06-22 11:56
Many times, with regard to cyber-bullying, those who are going through it keep it private. Many times, even parents.... It can be happening in the same household. Their child can be feeling so many types of emotions and going through so many breakdowns, and they have no idea because when you have a phone, a tablet or whatever you use, you can keep your life very, it seems, in categories: your online world, your impersonal world, your home life, your school life.
In my personal experience, I know that there are people who, when they post things, for example, on Twitter, will get a lot of backlash just because they might be Muslim or just because they might be Ahmadiyya Muslim—especially on Twitter. If you go on Facebook, if you go outside of just your friend group and you post on another forum, if you go on any other type of social media like Instagram, if you're posting on a public picture, there are many, many people who will reply back with hateful things. Oftentimes, it's the same people who are just going to the different social media accounts and going to different posts just to copy and paste their same hateful comments over and over again. They don't want to have a reasonable dialogue with you if you try to engage with them. All they want to do is spew their hate.
I've had that personal experience for sure, but I do believe that the extent of it is not understood by myself or even parents, teachers or whomever it may be because many times people just keep it inside or just accept it as a normal thing that happens online, which is one of the worst things. It shouldn't be accepted as normal.
Tom Littlewood
View Tom Littlewood Profile
Tom Littlewood
2021-06-11 13:18
Thanks, Barb.
Regarding COVID-19 and its effect on mental health, overdoses, self-harm and psychosis incidents have increased 50% with our youth clients. We serve about 300 clients a year currently, and that is about to double. Hospitalizations, because of this, cost $1,500 to $2,500 a day and up.
Anxiety and depression are widespread. These mental health issues paralyze young people, causing many to retreat and hide in their single-room occupancy, SRO suites, or basement suites.
The opioid crisis has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. We predict that the situation will only get worse, as there are thousands of young people in line to become the next wave of addiction to hit our streets.
Every year about 1,000 youth age out of care in British Columbia, and a further 1,000 hit the streets, running away from dysfunctional homes. Over 60% of these youths aging out of foster care will descend into entrenched addiction to numb their psychological pain.
However, there is a critical period between the ages of 15 and 25, when these young people usually ask for help. If trauma-informed therapy is provided to them for free and without a waiting list, up to 75% of these youth will respond and achieve success in school, work, recovery, housing and job-skills training. They can be diverted from the path towards homelessness, entrenched addiction, overdose and suicide and on towards lives they will enjoy living.
The initial effects of past trauma, which include physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, poverty and intergenerational trauma experienced by our indigenous clients, are normally expressed, to begin with, as anxiety, depression, eating and sleeping disorders, and self-medicating behaviour.
Our therapeutic intervention of four months of trauma-informed counselling costs approximately $2,500. Once the youth descends into entrenched addiction, it costs the community millions of dollars when police services, first responders, hospitals, corrections system, etc., are factored in. This does not even begin to take into account what the addict has to steal, or the sex acts they have to perform in order to get the money to buy the drugs they need.
Harm prevention, specifically trauma-informed therapy, can divert a youth's path away from addiction and homelessness, which not only saves valuable lives but saves millions of dollars in costs to the community.
Trauma-informed recovery is a new idea, and it's still controversial. Rather than the 12-step abstinence recovery programs, which are not best practices with youth, especially regarding opioid addiction, trauma-informed recovery involves a doctor, a therapist and a client agreeing to a contract whereby the physician prescribes an opioid replacement for the client while the client is undergoing trauma counselling.
When working with a therapist, typically over a period of four months, the client first learns self-regulation techniques. This is followed by the counselling trauma work, to help youth gain insight into their past trauma.
Once the trauma work is complete, the client has no need to self-medicate for the psychological pain, and this is when the physician steps in to provide something like an opioid replacement of Suboxone to help them come down without the drug sickness.
This approach is new and controversial, but it is becoming the best-practice model for young people with opioid addiction. Using prescribed stimulants as a replacement for street drugs like crack or meth is also being explored.
The side effect of the opioid crisis and the overdose crisis is the growing number of permanent brain damage situations caused when someone is brought back using Narcan or Naloxone. Some youth brag about how many times they have recovered using Naloxone; however, as therapists we can see the gradual deterioration of cognitive function after multiple applications of Naloxone over multiple overdoses.
A practical harm prevention idea that you can take from this is a CERB forgiveness program for young people who engage in recovery, education, work or training for a year. The money is gone; it's not going to be recovered. These kids don't have this, but it will create an insurmountable obstacle for these young people and cause thousands to give up and go underground to the street, speeding up the path to addiction and homelessness. I have had a youth end their life by suicide when faced with $1,000 in transit fines, which come due when they are about to get their first driver's licence. Imagine the chaos we're going to find when thousands are asked to repay the thousands of dollars they received from CERB fraudulently.
In summary, our goal is to get ahead of the curve of both COVID-19 and the opioid crisis by employing harm-prevention strategies of trauma-informed therapy, training and recovery.
Thank you.
View Sonia Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before my time starts, I have a point of clarification. We need to clarify that there's never been a contract between CanSino and the Government of Canada. I believe it was suggested earlier that there was one. This is not correct.
My question is for the witnesses from Dan's Legacy.
As many young people are going back to school, or will be going back in the fall, we know that all levels of government are looking at how to support our return to normal. Where do you think the federal government can be most effective in supporting youth as we reopen, particularly youth in similar circumstances to those your organization supports?
Tom Littlewood
View Tom Littlewood Profile
Tom Littlewood
2021-06-11 13:53
As I mentioned, thousands of young people have gotten CERB fraudulently. There were websites that showed them how to do it and what to say. These kids are not self-regulated, so they responded to this in droves. If we keep that repayment program that's in place now, we're going to see...I think it was 48 million that went to high school students. That doesn't count the kids that are not in school or anything. We really need to look at that as a potential way to solve a problem, rather than creating a barrier.
This is going to affect thousands of young people, and we're not going to get the money back anyway. We could encourage them to engage in things that will help them, like going back to school, working, recovery, etc.
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
Thank you, Minister, for coming today.
I'd like to ask you right off the top, on what date did the cabinet begin to discuss the issues of the allegations of sexual violence against young people on Pornhub?
When did cabinet start to talk about the Pornhub issue?
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
As you know, there is confidentiality around cabinet discussions, so I'm not at liberty to disclose this information.
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
Thank you very much.
Minister, the seniors I have been meeting with tell a different story. You brag about the increase of over $1,000 for last year, over the different buckets of money that you made one-time payments for, but the seniors I've been talking to read reports in the news about 40,000 15-year-olds getting approved for CERB at $2,000 a month—not yearly but monthly. They hear about over 92,000 16-year-olds who have been approved and about 17-year-olds living at home.
There were 184,000 kids getting CERB last year. Do you think that's fair?
View Deb Schulte Profile
Lib. (ON)
One of the things our government will not do is pit one group against another. We made sure not only that CERB was there for youth who could not work and who were potentially unable to get the income they needed for their studies and to continue on with their education but also that seniors were able to access CERB. Even if they had their pensions, their CPP and OAS, they could still qualify for CERB as long as they had a loss of employment income because of the COVID pandemic or because they had to stay home because they were isolating because of risk factors.
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
Minister, with respect, you should be ashamed of the decisions in this budget. You're saying we're pitting one against the other, but these are the decisions the Liberals made. We've had hundreds of thousands of kids living at home getting approved for emergency relief, while seniors have gotten a pittance, an increase of just over $1,000 for the year over all the programs.
I shudder to think of what you're hearing from the seniors you've been talking to. What I'm hearing is that you are pitting one segment against the other.
View Deb Schulte Profile
Lib. (ON)
I think it's really unfortunate that the seniors you're talking to have had their information twisted so that they are basically saying the youth who have lost their jobs don't deserve to be supported.
Listen, I'm the minister for seniors and not the minister for youth, but I can tell you from the youth that I know in my community that it has been very tough on them. They would normally be able to have a summer job at a local restaurant or a carnival. Normally, they would be working in the service industry, which has really shut down, and they don't have the ability now to earn the funds they need to be able to carry on with their education. There may be some who accessed it who shouldn't have, and that will be determined in time through the CRA.
Right now, we were there to support youth. We were there to support seniors, Canadians and businesses, and I'm proud that we were there to support them. That's helped us get through—
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
If you're wondering where they're getting their information from. I'll just read this quickly. It's from the National Post, a pretty reputable national news outlet. It says:
The documents show that 40,630 15-years-olds were approved for the benefit. The government paid out $81.2 million for that group. There were 92,784 16-year-olds approved, receiving nearly $186 million, and 184,576 17-year-olds received $369 million.
That's where they're getting their news from or information, as you call it.
It's concerning. It's concerning that we would not help seniors out during this crisis at the same level as we were helping out students living at home.
I'm going to switch gears just briefly on the dollar amounts you talked about, the $5 billion here and the $10 billion there that the Liberals like to gloat about. It's all printed money. It's all money that is printed, and when regimes across the world have tried to print money to get out of their fiscal crisis, it has ended poorly for society.
I am wondering if you think seniors are worried about inflation right now.
View Deb Schulte Profile
Lib. (ON)
I think everybody's worried about inflation, but more than anything people are worried about getting through the pandemic, and they need supports to do that.
I want to go back. When I was young, I needed a job to help pay for my family. We were not well off, and we all ended up working. I was working at 15. There are a lot of young people in this country who are supporting themselves, their families and their education. You might say 15 is a little early to be supporting your education, but you need a lot of funds to live, to pay for your food and clothes. These are things that families sometimes need to rely on their younger teenagers to help with.
Cory, it's really unfortunate that you're making a judgment call that all youth are somehow in a position to have excess. That is not true and I think it's unfortunate. Maybe it's because of a different upbringing, but I can tell you that I really appreciated my job. If I had lost it when I was 15, it would have made things very difficult for me. I know that is the story of young people across the country.
Let's go back to seniors, because we are not doing one versus the other. Seniors were able to access the same supports as youth and other Canadians. If they worked, lost their income and were making over $5,000 a year, they would have been able to access benefits as well.
It is important that we are fair and are treating everybody well.
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 14:36
Thank you very much.
I would like to thank all the members of the committee for inviting our organization to appear today. It is truly a pleasure for me to be with you. This is the first opportunity for our organization to be heard before you. I look forward to the opportunity to interact with you.
I would like to introduce myself. I am Simon Telles, president of Force Jeunesse. I have been involved with the organization for over four years. Coming out of a crisis like the one we've been experiencing for a little over a year, it's especially important to get involved.
Force Jeunesse is a nonprofit organization that was founded in the early 2000s to improve working conditions for young people, but the organization's mission has expanded greatly over time. It is made up of young volunteers, mainly between 18 and 35 years old, who come from different backgrounds. Some are young professionals in the health and education fields and others are students. In short, Force Jeunesse is a coalition of young volunteers who want to get involved and present concrete proposals to improve public policy.
Our mission hinges on three main axes: defending the rights and interests of youth, ensuring a certain intergenerational equity in public policy, and promoting youth engagement and the place of youth in decision-making spheres.
On a daily basis, we hear a lot of prejudice expressed about young people. In my experience, however, our youth are quite supportive, determined, and engaged.
It is true that, coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, our youth are weakened. Therefore, it is important to show special concern for them in all policy and program decisions put forward. One need only think of the very significant job losses experienced by young people, who often work in more precarious fields. In addition, compared to the rest of the population, youth have much more worrisome mental health indicators and higher rates of psychological distress. In short, young people already face many barriers in their daily lives, and these are even higher for minority youth. The crisis we just went through only accentuates these inequalities.
We are not experts on all the areas addressed in the federal budget, but we looked at it through the lens of intergenerational equity. There were four items that particularly resonated with us, and those are what I'm going to talk about today. They are mental health, federal health transfers, the environment and climate change, and finally housing.
Let's start with mental health.
As I mentioned in the introduction, young people have been particularly affected. So we are pleased to see that the budget has provided $100 million over three years for those most affected by COVID-19, including youth. The challenge now will be to get that money on the ground quickly and to increase access to psychological health care for young people, because that's what we're finding to be most lacking right now.
What we are concerned about is that youth group insurance, whether for students or workers, determines whether or not a young person has access to mental health care. For us, this situation is not acceptable. We must find solutions that will guarantee all young Canadians access to mental health care.
Many proposals are possible, but the one we favour is universal access to psychotherapy. In Quebec, we already have access to universal drug coverage. In Canada, we have access to universal health care almost everywhere. For us, it would be completely consistent and logical for mental health care to also be covered for all Quebeckers and all Canadians.
The second topic that is of great concern to us is the issue of federal health transfers.
This topic has been the subject of much discussion in the news over the past few months. We note that across the country, the population is aging and health care costs are rising faster than other government spending and the economy. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the situation and exposed the vulnerabilities of our health care system. Additional investments in health transfers are therefore urgently needed.
We note that health care spending is placing increasing pressure on provincial public finances. The federal government's share of funding for the system is declining, because the growth in federal transfers is not keeping pace with the growth in provincial health spending. We are therefore disappointed that the budget did not provide for an increase in health transfers, even though this is a unanimous demand from all provinces. There are few issues that bring us together to this extent, but this is one of them.
This is a real issue of intergenerational equity. You might think that young people are less concerned about health because, statistically, they have fewer health problems, but it's quite the opposite. If we don't take steps now to ensure that the health care system is adequately funded, it is our generation that will be faced with agonizing choices later on. Access to health care is one of the foundations of our social model.
The other topic I'm happy to talk about is the environment and fighting climate change.
When young people are asked what issues matter most to them, the environment and fighting climate change often come out on top. That really resonates with me. So we're very pleased to see that in the federal budget, a significant amount of funding has been dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is a $5 billion investment over seven years. This is a step in the right direction.
That said, we believe even more needs to be done, particularly to reduce greenhouse gases, but more importantly to put in place eco-tax measures that will truly change consumer behaviour. In our view, we need to subject pollution to consequences, largely financial, and ensure greater accountability of stakeholders and polluters, whether consumers, citizens or businesses.
Finally, the last topic I would like to address with you in a general way is the issue of housing.
We are facing a real shortage of affordable housing just about everywhere in Quebec, and this phenomenon is not limited to the big cities as one might think. It affects young people in the job market particularly, because they generally have a slightly lower income at the beginning of their career. We find that the portion of their budget that goes to housing is continually increasing, which impacts other aspects of their lives and other equally basic needs.
We believe that the overheated housing market is jeopardizing the ability to afford home ownership. Young people can no longer afford home ownership, or they have to wait much longer than their parents to do so. So it's also an issue of intergenerational equity.
We find it interesting that the government, in its budget, has proposed a 1% tax to reduce foreign speculation in the market. On the other hand, for us, this is not the crux of the issue. It is a measure, but it is not the most important one. What the government should be doing is building more affordable housing, helping young people get into home ownership through tax credits and subsidies, directly assisting young people who are most in need and don't have enough income to adequately house themselves, and most importantly, rethinking programs to make sure they meet the objectives.
One example I can give you is the famous HBP, the Home Buyers' Plan, which allows young people to withdraw a certain amount from their RRSPs as a down payment for their first home. Intuitively, we tend to think that this is an interesting measure, but most young people have not yet accumulated enough money in their RRSPs. So it is a measure that is available, but it only helps a small portion of the population. We thus need to find direct ways to make housing more accessible for all young people.
Of course, in its strategy, the government really needs to ask whether every person who needs housing assistance is actually receiving assistance. What we see in the budget right now is that there are several blind spots, and we think there should be more help.
There also needs to be more federal collaboration, in our view, with provincial and municipal governments to ensure that efforts are coordinated, to avoid duplication, and to ensure that no one is left behind.
In conclusion, we find it very interesting that the government is assessing the intergenerational impact of each of the measures in the budget. For us, this is a very inspiring exercise, because it makes us aware of the impact of our decisions on future generations. Provinces and municipalities should even take a similar approach.
That said, to make the exercise even more interesting, rather than simply identifying the target population, i.e., whether the measure is aimed at youth or seniors, we should ask what the real impact of the measures put in place is on intergenerational equity. We believe that this would allow us to go even further and implement more structuring and sustainable measures.
I'll close by saying that we young people want to contribute to the work of commissions, committees, and decision-making entities in general. Please feel free to consult with us in advance of the various programs. It will always be our pleasure to contribute to the work of the committee.
Thank you for listening. I remain available, should you have more specific questions.
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much.
Thanks so much for being here with us again. I hope you don't have to come back, because then we will have been doing things to satisfy the industry.
I'm going to go to Mr. Telles.
Thank you for your presentation.
I don't speak French very well, so I'll speak to you in English.
I want to say thank you for being here. I have a nephew in university right now, and I follow his progress all the time. I want to say a huge thanks to you and, through you, to all youth for everything you do. I know it's the youth who step up in our coffee shops and who step up to help us in a lot of the short-term and more contractual jobs that are in our society, and I just want to say a huge thanks to you.
In our budget, we've put an additional $5.7 billion. There's a very deliberate desire to make sure our youth are not going to be the lost generation. Mr. Telles, it's really important if you could let us know if the measures we've put in here are actually helpful or a complete miss.
For us, we have increased the threshold of when you actually have to start repaying the federal student loans to $40,000. I've been told this is a game-changer. Can you let me know whether this is actually helpful to youth?
We've also doubled the Canada student grants, so that's an average addition of around $2,600. Is that helpful? Also, we've continued to suspend the interest on the federal student loans until March 2023. Is that helpful? Last, we've put a lot of money into making sure we have a lot of job opportunities available for youth. Is that helpful? In my own riding, I have only 12 square kilometres, but I have 400 jobs available for youth right now. Is that helpful?
Perhaps you could address those, and then I'd like to talk to you about climate change.
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:10
I thank you for the question. I will respond to it briefly.
With respect to the massive investments that have been made in post-secondary education, these are welcome and impactful dollars. You may know that in Quebec we have a student financial assistance program. The money is transferred to Quebec and then they distribute it. These are important amounts for us. The federal government must continue, in our opinion, to invest in students.
On the other hand, these investments only affect students. We're concerned about what's happening with young workers between the ages of 18 and 35, who aren't necessarily in school anymore. The budget kind of forgot about that segment of young people, or at least devoted fewer measures to them.
You talked about job creation, which is one of the main concerns of these young people. There is a new generation coming out of universities, trained and ready to contribute to society. However, these young people are not necessarily able to find a job in line with their skills or their fields of interest. So, this is a particular concern to monitor.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to begin by congratulating you on your masterful chairmanship of the committee.
Ms. Hnatiw, Ms. Grynol, and Mr. Telles, I welcome you and thank you for your presence and your presentations. You have addressed extremely important topics and critical issues.
My questions are for Mr. Telles.
What is the situation among young people? Since we've been in a pandemic for over a year, how is their morale and what are their economic challenges? You were talking about mental health, for example. How are things on the ground, for young people?
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:12
Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie.
That is an important question. I can tell you that things are better than they used to be. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Canada Student Emergency Benefit are among the things that greatly improved the situation for youth, of course, and provided direct financial assistance to young people and students in need. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, young people are often employed in particularly precarious fields, such as the service, restaurant and tourism industries. Young people have lost their jobs at a higher rate than the rest of the population, and needed this emergency federal assistance. This mattered a great deal in the lives of young people.
Vaccination prospects also make a big difference. For perfectly normal reasons, established by public health departments, young people are often among the last groups to get vaccinated. They are beginning to regain some hope for a return to normal life. On the other hand, the crisis has done significant damage.
There are two specific topics that I talked about in my speech where there is still work to be done: housing and mental health.
Already, under the mental health aspect, there was a sense on the ground that there was a lack of investment, long waiting lists, and a complicated process to access psychotherapy; only a small portion of the population had access. Now the demand is even greater. The pandemic has brought out problems, has brought out new, quite significant stress related to personal life, work, prospects, employment, the projects of young people, which have had to be put aside. So they need some extra help.
Housing is not just a one-time issue; it is a very pressing concern. Young people sometimes have to move from one area to another in order to get housing. Often, housing is going to make up more than half of a young person's total budget. It's too much. It prevents them from meeting their other basic needs.
There is still a lot of work to do. There are some positive things in the new budget, but we shouldn't stop to analyze the programs and measures that are being proposed and wonder how they will affect young people. They will certainly still need to be supported as they emerge from this crisis, to make sure they have all the tools they need.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
Indeed, the housing situation is appalling, given the explosion in prices. For a young person who needs to find housing or wants to buy a condo or a house, it's appalling. Many economists will say that what is needed is to build more housing, but in your presentation you named measures that could be targeted to help young people. Can you repeat those for us, with more explanations, please?
I think I have two minutes left, so you can take them to respond.
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:15
Thank you very much. I will be happy to respond.
As you mentioned, new affordable housing needs to be built. In practical terms, the federal government could subsidize construction projects, along with the provinces and municipalities. Initiatives at all levels of government are being put forward to build housing. This is the case in Quebec and I am sure it is also the case elsewhere in the country. The federal government can play an important role in subsidizing these projects and coordinating with all the players to ensure that the projects are carried out properly, while ensuring that the housing remains affordable. The goal is not to build housing that will be subject to speculation, but to have rents remain affordable for young people and others in need.
With respect to home ownership, there is another idea, which I didn't have time to present. I think we need to start thinking about taxing or putting a tax on the sale of buildings, even those that are used as primary residences. There is still a lot of construction, purchase and renovation going on, and prices are rising so fast that young people are no longer able to buy a first property. So, we think that an interesting solution would be to tax the profit generated when selling a residence, even a principal residence. The money raised could then be reinvested to help young people buy a first property.
I was also talking about grants to people in need. We need to continue to directly target younger people with lower incomes to allow them to adequately house themselves. This can be done through the various programs already in place, but we really need to rethink our programs, like the Home Buyers' Plan. We really need to re-evaluate whether it is an effective tool, how many young people have used it and how it has contributed to home ownership. We need to try to re-evaluate the programs that are in place and ask if we could create new programs that would have a more direct effect.
View Peter Fragiskatos Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Chair.
I'll have to go back to the record afterwards. I think I heard Ms. Jansen say that she may not be voting in favour of the budget, which stunned me a great deal. I think we're all very surprised by that.
I would also point Ms. Jansen and Conservative colleagues, if they wish to take a look, to the most recent data, which has regularly for the past several weeks put Canada in the very top tier—either first some days, second other days, third other days, but no worse than third—in the G20 for vaccinations per day being administered.
It's really something that I think needs to be corrected here. Yes, we can do better, of course, but we're doing extremely well right now. The effect of that rhetoric, Chair, is that it generates a sense of concern and I would say even fear that is not well placed. If we're going to be seized with issues at this committee, let's focus on the facts rather than contribute to these myths that opposition colleagues have been peddling recently.
It's a different issue altogether, but we've seen what has happened with Bill C-10, concerning which Facebook has been alive and well with conspiracy theories about censorship in recent weeks, and we all know they're not true.
I will, however, focus on the issue at hand here, Chair. I just wanted to put those points of view on the record.
Mr. Telles, thank you very much for representing youth here today. Thank you very much for being an advocate.
Ms. Dzerowicz took my question, unfortunately, which was to ask you about student debt. It was great to see that there were a number of measures put in place in budget 2021 to help students with debt. That matters a lot for me, because prior to taking on the role of a member of Parliament, I taught at Western for a number of years, where I saw students really impacted in such negative ways by student debt.
What I also saw was the mental health challenges that young people faced. I think we all know—we've heard the stories in our own communities—about the way the pandemic has exacerbated that challenge for young people. Could you speak to that? I know the budget provides a very sizable investment for mental health in this country and for improved services.
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:33
Thank you so much for the question.
I would like to clarify that the assistance given to students was very welcome. However, the young people in the workforce, fresh out of college, seem to have been forgotten. In our view, this is the blind spot in the budget.
With respect to mental health, there is already a lot of awareness and taboos are being broken more and more, which is very positive. However, when young people ask for help, they are told that the waiting lists are long and access to professionals is difficult. I'm talking about the public system, of course. When they finally get help, their therapy is terminated after a few sessions, even though they still have needs, because the number of sessions is limited. Public access to psychotherapy is truly deficient. Additional support to improve funding for the public system would be more than welcome.
The other concern we have is that access to the private network is limited to young people who have insurance that covers psychotherapy, through their education or employment. We need to find a way to make that care available to all young people, whether they have insurance or not, and that's where provincial and federal governments can play an important role in increasing accessibility to care.
View Peter Fragiskatos Profile
Lib. (ON)
I also saw that for my community in London—and I know we're at a distance, Mr. Telles—there is an investment that will secure placements and workplace opportunities for young people. I know university associations and other youth advocacy groups have been calling for this for a long time.
I have just 30 seconds with you, but could you put on the record your thoughts on that?
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:35
Certainly.
We're very pleased with this investment. In the past, this sector has sometimes been forgotten. It's true that we need to create employment opportunities for young people. This isn't only about regaining opportunities lost during the pandemic, but also about creating new ones. We welcome this measure in the budget. We hope that there will be more of these measures in the future.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My questions are for Mr. Telles.
Thank you for your very eloquent testimony.
For the first time in our history, in the middle of a crisis, the government is encouraging excessive profits. Billionaires have made over $80 billion during this crisis. The banking system and the major Canadian banks received $750 billion in liquidity support measures, while the banks made over $40 billion in profits. These are huge amounts of money.
You're talking about extremely important issues that should be considered emergencies, such as housing and mental health. We should put youth first. Unfortunately, our government is doing the opposite. It's putting billionaires and banks ahead of youth.
Given the needs that should be met, do you find that young people are receiving crumbs?
Would you like to see a shift in the government's approach to helping young people thrive in our society?
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:40
Thank you for the question.
While significant investments have been made in youth, these amount to a small portion of the overall budget. We can see and recognize the specific impact of the pandemic on youth. We appreciate what has been done, but we believe that it's possible to do even better.
Of course, taxing billionaires and companies more is one way to better redistribute wealth. However, we must try to target young people more in our strategies. My comment about intergenerational equity at the start of my presentation touched on this.
At this time, we assess the intergenerational equity of the various measures in the budget by specifying whether the measures affect youth or seniors. For us, this goes much further. We should be able to determine that a recurring investment made over several years is more robust, in terms of intergenerational equity, than a one-time investment made over one year. We believe that, by developing this type of tool and by further assessing the impact of the measures on intergenerational equity, the government could better target its investments in youth. In our view, this would be the real change in approach needed.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to congratulate Mr. Fraser on his vaccination. We're on the right track.
Mr. Telles, a number of economists and analysts say that the economic recovery and the end of the crisis will be a K-shaped process. Some will come out ahead or will benefit from it, while others will have difficulty recovering or will take longer to do so. One example is the industry that Ms. Grynol represents, where it will take longer to get back to full employment levels. We need to provide all the support needed for this industry, because we can't do without such important industries.
Mr. Telles, it seems that many young people aren't part of the group that will emerge from the crisis the fastest. What are your thoughts on this?
Simon Telles
View Simon Telles Profile
Simon Telles
2021-05-18 15:55
Thank you for the question.
I share your thoughts. I know of few, if any, young people who have improved their living conditions during the pandemic. Instead, we've seen young people who had to study remotely throughout the year; young people who lost their jobs; young people who had to temporarily put their life plans on hold, such as buying a house, starting a family and travelling; young people who lost job opportunities; young people who are struggling to find housing now; and young people who have mental health issues. That's the reality. Young people haven't benefited from the pandemic. On the contrary, the pandemic has exacerbated all the vulnerabilities that come with their life situation, where they're at a bit of a crossroads, facing many opportunities. All this has worsened over the past year.
So, no, the situation of young people hasn't improved. That's why we're asking for a particular focus on them and a targeted strategy to help them in all the programs implemented by the federal government.
Sean Smith
View Sean Smith Profile
Sean Smith
2021-05-10 15:52
Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, honourable members, good afternoon.
My name is Sean Smith. I served in the Canadian Forces primary reserve as an armoured crewman, with the British Columbia Dragoons and the South Alberta Light Horse, from 1986 to 2001. Thirteen of my 15 years of service were full-time, including tours of duty with the United Nations in Cyprus and NATO in Germany.
I am the ninth generation of my family to serve Crown and country, dating back to Sergeant Robert Perry, a Loyalist who served with Jessup’s Loyal Rangers during the American Revolution. My family has been involved in almost every Canadian conflict, foreign and domestic, from the War of 1812 to the end of the Cold War. For me and my family, remembrance is not a day or a month in the year, it is every day.
It is with this history in mind that I have the honour of presenting my suggestions on how we, as a nation, can better remember those who have served and sacrificed for Canada, while continuing to recognize the ongoing service of those who proudly wear the uniform of our country today.
Veterans, serving or retired, are living history of our nation in war and peace. Unlike memorials of stone or steel, they have the ability to share the experiences of wars fought and peacetime duties done. Growing up, I listened to my father telling me stories of service in the UN in the Belgian Congo in 1963-64, and I read my great-grandfather’s memoirs of serving with Sam Steele in South Africa during the Boer War. It is these stories that connect me to remembrance. While well-known stories of valour and sacrifice of some of our nation’s heroes are important, they are not stories that directly connect the majority of our youth—the carriers of our memory—to our collective history.
I am sure MP Brassard can attest to the difference between a child simply seeing a firefighter and a child who has a chance to talk to a firefighter or watch them work. I am sure that member of MP Samson can attest to the difference between a child learning something from a book and a child learning something from an experience in person. Making those connections embeds a memory with meaning.
Throughout our country, there are people and organizations that have committed themselves to creating living memories. Al Cameron, of Veterans Voices of Canada, has been recording veterans and their stories for years, so they do not get lost in time. The Memory Project, an initiative of Historica Canada, works to connect veterans to schools and organizations, allowing veterans to tell their stories and experiences first-hand. They are people who are passionate about ensuring these memories never get lost or forgotten. I strongly believe that connecting these organizations to the government resources, archives and support, aiding them in furthering their efforts and supporting their passion, will help ensure that so many of these stories will be shared and recorded and not lost to the ages.
As a person who works with youth, I can tell you with certainty that to engage our youth in remembrance, we need to make a greater effort to connect them to that remembrance. We need to challenge and aid our youth to discover their own connections to the history of war and peace in our country. A youth who looks at a photo of the Vimy Ridge memorial might remember it. A youth who looks at a photo of Vimy Ridge and says that his great-great-grandfather fought at Vimy Ridge, that will most definitely be remembered.
In closing, I would like to stress my belief that the future of remembrance does not lie in the hands of you and me. While vital to remembrance, memorials and markers are only physical touchpoints to the people and places of our past. To create real remembrance, we must work harder to connect our youth and citizens to those who are the living memory of our history, as well as connecting them to their own family’s part in that history.
Thank you.
View John Brassard Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses today for their extremely compelling and powerful testimony.
Sean, it's okay to cry, man, because I cry all the time. This is an emotional thing for all of us sitting on this committee.
I want to pick up on Ms. Blaney's theme about youth. I was critic for Veterans Affairs during Vimy 100. I went there. I also went to Beaumont-Hamel. It's unbelievable the sacrifices that the Royal Newfoundlanders made. Of course, with regard to Vimy, we all know the story there.
It really was a life-altering experience; there's no other way to describe it. Many people who were on that trip as part of the delegation felt the same way. I said in the House at the time that, just as many pilgrimage sites exist for religious or other circumstances, whether it's the Taj Mahal or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, I think Vimy should be Canada's pilgrimage site for young students.
I know there's a lot of engagement within high schools across the country. There were thousands and thousands of students were there. I ask, “How can we do that better?” because I think it's that important.
Sean Smith
View Sean Smith Profile
Sean Smith
2021-05-10 16:41
The thing that really hits home with Vimy is the memorial itself and parts of that memorial. You cannot look upon that single female statue looking towards Givenchy, and not be touched by it.
If only we had some means of bringing a part of that memorial to the people—those 11,258 names that are engraved on that wall—where people could touch and feel and understand, they could see names that say so-and-so served as such-and-such because they joined at 14 and celebrated birthdays fighting at Vimy Ridge. Those are touchpoints that you cannot talk about that would get that emotion across.
View Andy Fillmore Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Andy Fillmore Profile
2021-05-10 17:15
You're going to wear that rank out. I know you're so busy just doing everything you can all the time.
To my colleagues, please google “Last Steps Memorial Arch” and take a look at the work—the Halifax arch, the Passchendaele arch. They're remarkable. I liked how you described them as portals connecting the two sides of the ocean.
You've also raised a number of times the army museum at the Halifax Citadel here in Halifax. I would encourage members also, if you have a spare minute, to google it, or better yet visit the army museum there. It covers the entire military history of Canada, with incredible relics and artifacts, coming right up to contemporary wars. Another friend, an Afghanistan war veteran, Jessica Wiebe, is an artist. She has an exhibit in the army museum called The Art of War. Her drawings are absolutely heartbreaking and moving. I went to her because this idea of commemoration has to carry through different generations, different conflicts, and also through peacetime.
Canada and the world lost a number of people last year with the tragic helicopter accident that was assigned to HMCS Fredericton. We had the Snowbird accident with Captain Jenn Casey. We do need to find ways to commemorate all of these men and women.
I want to now tie that need to a recurring theme that comes up in our committee, which is youth. How do we activate youth, get them involved? As Master Corporal Smith said, we don't just carry the memory in us, we instill it in our kids. We put it in our youth and they carry it, and then they pass it along.
We heard ideas about curriculum, about travel. The Vimy 100, maybe there's something that could continue to go on for schoolkids.
Maybe I'll start with you, Lieutenant-Colonel MacLellan. Have you had any thoughts about this idea of youth, of travel, of commemorating people who have lost their lives in modern times?
Corinne MacLellan
View Corinne MacLellan Profile
Corinne MacLellan
2021-05-10 17:18
That's okay. My CO would have corrected you, for sure, but that's not my role.
Andy, thank you for recognizing Captain Casey. Jenn was a very close friend of mine. I feel her with me right now. One of the greatest honours of my life was to read the family's statement when she passed.
This would be so meaningful to her, that we're talking about educating youth. It was her daily job. She was a public affairs officer, but she also was very instrumental in the interactive programs on the ground for the Snowbirds in public education and media relations.
I'm trying to answer your question. It's hard for me to get it out because it's an emotional time. We're just one week away from the anniversary of her death, right now.
When she died she was doing Operation Inspiration and looking forward to the ways that we commemorate and at those unique things that we can do to engage youth. This is a legacy of hers.
What it inspired me to do was a program called Operation Bluenose. We asked everybody to light up blue the first weekend of the sailing of the Bluenose. It was to give everybody an opportunity just to shingle something for us all to hang on to. We had a rough go here in Nova Scotia in the last year. It was surprising to me, to see how many people.... Obviously we had the Cyclone thing. We engaged all of the families. We engaged communities. People were pulling out their blue Christmas lights and whatnot and putting them on their front deck in the middle of July.
I'm off topic a little bit. I know a lot of the witnesses here have mentioned ways to engage, whether that's through digital media or telling stories.
This will be my last comment. One thing we did during the Flanders work that I was doing was a poem exchange for In Flanders Fields between a school in Poperinge, which is very near where John McCrae's military hospital was, along with a school here in Halifax. Each class read a stanza and then they had a Q and A afterwards. Some of those kids are still in touch today.
That's a very long-winded answer to say I think there are so many ways that we can do this. But it is absolutely something that's not going to happen naturally. We have to put effort into it.
I'm so pleased to hear all of the people speaking here of the work that they're doing. I want to thank you all for your service.
Lee Windsor
View Lee Windsor Profile
Lee Windsor
2021-05-10 17:23
It's a complicated issue, to say the least. I think the differentiation between them might speak to what Lieutenant-Colonel MacLellan was just addressing about how to engage youth. In any given classroom, you have 30 kids with a variety of interests, some interested in humanitarian aid, when it comes to, say, a world issues class. Imagine a classroom could pick from a roster of missions and students pick the one that interests them the most. One is interested in peacekeeping and in the establishment of UN peacekeeping with UNEF I in Suez, one has a parent who was in Afghanistan and they want to learn about the Afghan mission and another is a second-generation immigrant from Central Africa and they want to know about the Congo mission.
So let the students make a decision about what they're going to study in the classroom, based on that personal connection, and let them talk to each other about what makes them similar and different. I think what's similar about them is that every soldier who's dispatched, every soldier, sailor or aircrew member, are all doing the same job. A veteran is a veteran whether you serve on active operations or not. But there is a difference in the way they serve, and I think it's time to be honest with Canadians about how complex and diverse that is. So let's embrace the diversity, but we're going to have to talk to people about it in a complex way, and not assume they're too ignorant to get it. I think Canadians are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you for that.
Mr. Gregory, you talked about some of the work that's being done. I'm very interested in the Walk for Remembrance and Peace. I'm writing notes very quickly, so if I've missed anything, I apologize.
Could you outline how that works? Is that walk something we're engaging Canadians to do in remembrance as well? I know it's important to have it there.
You talked a lot about youth. This is something that, of course, I'm very passionate about. How do we make sure youth remember? We only do things when we remember what the past is. This is so important.
Steve Gregory
View Steve Gregory Profile
Steve Gregory
2021-05-05 16:46
I couldn't agree with you more.
I have a deep concern that for our children, our youth, their world is getting smaller and smaller. To the extent that we can help them understand what makes peace possible and the role of our profession of arms, our soldiers, men and women, in making that peace possible, I think they'd have a different appreciation of the need for commemoration.
We're framing our communication to youth not about our military and not about remembrance for the sake of remembering soldiers; that's a difficult sell to high schools. It's the truth. As a matter of fact, in Bloomberg, Max Hastings wrote about the decline of education on military history in U.S. universities. It's catastrophic. In fact, in Canada, there are very few provincial curricula that include military history. The way to get to youth from our perspective is to pursue a conversation about what makes peace and productive, prosperous democratic societies possible, and what role the military does have in them.
It's hoped the Walk for Remembrance and Peace will be an economic engine that engages civilians in Canada as well as in Italy. It has had a lot of success. The governor of Sicily signed an MOU with the Italian military to dedicate all landing sites as heritage sites. That means funding is going to go to those sites for the purpose of establishing more communication with, obviously, the allies. For them, it's tourism.
View John Brassard Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, all, for being here.
It's good to see a couple of you again. I think you were here, if I recall, on the benefits. No, it wasn't benefits. It was another subject that we were dealing with, but Sayward and Mr. Soulière, good to see you again.
Mr. Gregory, I want to pick up on what Ms. Blaney was talking about in terms of youth outreach. You talked a lot about the why. In previous panels that we've had we've heard about youth outreach and how important it's going to be for commemoration going forward. I'm wondering if you could speak to the how. Maybe a couple of others could weigh in on this too. How do we best reach youth in order to ensure that the type of commemoration issues that you're talking about are sustained for future generations?
Mr. Gregory.
Steve Gregory
View Steve Gregory Profile
Steve Gregory
2021-05-05 16:49
Thank you, sir.
We've had limited experience. We're at the beginning of a process. We ran the first International Forum on Peace, Security and Prosperity in 2019, and our last one was this past February. We had 831 participants, 23 countries, 22 military colleges. Ambassador Rae from the UN spoke to the kids as did Senator Loffreda. It was by all accounts a success.
We believe we can create the biggest peace conference in the world. That's our goal. We can do so by just grassroots knocking on doors. Just imagine some of the largest organizations with outreach to high schools. Their database of teachers is less than a thousand. There are 200,000 high school teachers in this country. In fact, that number is a little shy.
We have a lot of work to do with respect to creating a database of teachers in social science, in history, in ethics and in being a better citizen. Just to reach out to these individuals, we funded an ad that's going into Canadian Teacher Magazine. We're building a database through a number of collaborations. It's our expectation that it's going to be a ton of hard work calling on individual schools.
View John Brassard Profile
CPC (ON)
There are a lot of individual schools that take that on, on their own. Where I am in Barrie just north of Toronto, Simcoe County District School Board, for example, really engages with youth. There were a couple of thousand who went to Vimy 100, for example. If I hear you correctly then, it's just a matter of funnelling all of those resources into a one-stop shop where we can get that information out to those schools to help them participate. Is that correct?
Jean-Guy Soulière
View Jean-Guy Soulière Profile
Jean-Guy Soulière
2021-05-05 16:53
It depends on who you want to reach.
I haven't heard of social media being used to educate the youth. That is critical. If we could use social media to educate, that would be a start. For other generations, there are other methods.
We've found that we are reaching our membership through social media more and more, and we're talking about the older population. The younger population can't live without it, so maybe that's the way to start.
View William Amos Profile
Lib. (QC)
View William Amos Profile
2021-05-05 16:58
Thank you, Mr. Harris. That's tremendous testimony.
I'm going to pivot, given the limited time here, and ask an open question, a short one.
Mention has been made of the power of social media and the importance of connecting with youth. What do you think of the idea of connecting to younger Canadians through video game producers?
William Woodburn
View William Woodburn Profile
William Woodburn
2021-05-05 16:59
Mr. Amos, we've already been investigating, not necessarily video games, but actually getting active video into our ships. Someone could put their phone up to the ship, and the next thing they'd know, they'd be looking through their phone back into a battle of the Second World War. Things like that, which may be more specific to different items, I think would be tremendous in attracting youth to come and see what's out there. That's one idea.
View Gary Vidal Profile
CPC (SK)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to start by saying how much I've appreciated the testimony of all of you today. The information provided has been fascinating and valuable.
Solutions that come from the local community level, where it's your lived experience and you're seeing what goes on, are always more valuable than solutions being imposed on somebody from a distance somewhere. I appreciate the testimony you've brought and the comments in response to the questions you've already been asked.
For the Arctic Fresh folks, Mr. Recinos and Mr. Cendou, I so much appreciate your entrepreneurial approach to solving problems that talk about local economy and that talk about opportunity for people in your communities. That's a conversation I've been having for years in northern Saskatchewan, a long way away from where you are.
I could listen to you talk about what you've done for hours. I'm fascinated with what you're doing, and I appreciate it. However, I want to change the focus to hear a different perspective for a second, just for something new.
I looked at the information on your website, your story and your history. You talk about your three pillars, the pillars of health, community and youth. I want to drill a little bit into or ask your opinion maybe on the value of educating your youth relative to the context of healthy eating, the entrepreneurship, the.... It's so important that we educate our youth to make that long-term change in the context of all this. I'd be curious as to your perspective on that.
I'll start with Mr. Recinos first.
Chief Joseph, I want to prepare you that I'm going to come back to you and ask the same question in the context of your lived experience, as well.
Merlyn Recinos
View Merlyn Recinos Profile
Merlyn Recinos
2021-05-04 12:55
Thank you.
Definitely one of our pillars is youth, and it's really about how we build that capacity.
Not everybody grew up eating vegetables in our communities. Not everybody grew up eating this sort of food, so how do we build capacity locally so we're able to utilize those? Most of the stuff that is highly subsidized right now are things that we're used to eating in our southern communities, but not so much what has been historically eaten in our communities and now.
One of the things that we do is every time.... We do cooking classes at the community hall. We teach how to utilize different things, how to make different recipes. We incorporate traditional hunting food, like char, caribou and things like that, with other things, like vegetables and different things like that. I'll give you a quick example.
One time we had a bunch of broccoli in our community, so we started to teach how to make different types of broccoli salads. Before, in the sell swaps, everybody would sell poutine in the evenings. When people were trying to get a little bit, they were selling poutine. Now they sell broccoli salad with clubhouses. It's something the community really likes. They enjoy the different flavours, the different types of broccoli salads that can be made. You have to have that. You have to focus on that, building that capacity locally.
The youth are our future. We really need to focus on that, as well, but we also do it in a business capacity sense. We're teaching different youth from different communities how to start and run their own business. We partnered up with Makigiaqta. We cover their costs. We help them with logistics. We help them make partnerships with suppliers, and things like that, so that they can start operating their small business in their community.
Once people start to see that somebody else is doing it, they want to do it too, and it creates this ripple effect. Now you're learning how to eat, you're learning how to cook different things, but at the same time, you're also learning different activities that are going to be self-sufficient for you and your community.
Roberta Joseph
View Roberta Joseph Profile
Roberta Joseph
2021-05-04 12:58
As mentioned, youth are really key and an important part of our community. We invest a lot in our youth. Various youth have different interests, so we try to meet their level of interest. We had many youth who were interested in working on the farm and learning about agriculture through the training program. It's key and important to our community that one day they'll be taking over management of the farm.
We look forward to when that time comes, because we continue to invest in the farm heavily. It's important that we have some level of food security, and it's providing a much stronger and growing economy in our community.
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
Thank you for that.
Something one of the local Italian guides said when we were at Cassino struck me. He works with the Americans when they're there, and with the New Zealanders, the Australians and the Brits. He said that what really struck him about Canadian commemoration events is that we very much include our young people, and he thought that was really a unique and important thing for Canada.
How do we maintain these trips so that young people can see that and can be there as our goodwill ambassadors and come back with a greater understanding of the sacrifice?
Rick Christopher
View Rick Christopher Profile
Rick Christopher
2021-05-03 16:11
Absolutely, one of the things we're focusing on is youth engagement. One of the ways we used to do that was to have youth guides at the Vimy memorial. They were really our youth ambassadors. We have them doing other commemorative activities right now, but we want to make sure we continue to engage the youth and include them in all our commemoration activities, whether they be visits on a smaller scale or even some of the virtual things that we're doing. They've done some fantastic work for us instead of going to Vimy as guides this past year.
View John Brassard Profile
CPC (ON)
On passing commemoration on to the next generation—obviously many of the older veterans are passing, unfortunately—tell me a bit about what the Legion is doing to engage young people in this country to commemorate and remember going forward?
Steven Clark
View Steven Clark Profile
Steven Clark
2021-05-03 16:44
One of the greatest ways is through the poster and literary contests. As I noted, 100,000 young people from kindergarten through to grade 12 participate in that contest every year. It's absolutely incredible.
Another thing is that the Legion National Foundation has a biennial pilgrimage of remembrance to Europe. It's very limited in terms of the number of people who can attend, but the intent with that pilgrimage is that those who participate and experience the triumphs and tragedy of Canada's military heritage in Europe will then come back to engage youth in their communities, whether it's talking to a cadet group or to Scouts or Guides, and pass on the information they saw first-hand. We have to continue to engage individuals, especially youth, in remembrance.
View Andy Fillmore Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Andy Fillmore Profile
2021-05-03 17:12
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Clark, thank you so much. As the sole witness for an hour, with 12 MPs firing rapid questions at you, you're doing remarkably well. Thank you for your lucidity, and moreover, for your incredible work.
At one point in your testimony you raised the alarm that if we don't have Legions and branches, where are we?
I see the work of the Legions in Halifax: the Spryfield Legion, the Vimy Legion and the White Ensign Legion. The Vimy Legion provides the colour guard for our main Remembrance Day events. The Spryfield Legion has become a living room for the community there. The programs that support veterans are so important, with the extended family and all the benefits that brings. However, the Legions also facilitate remembrance, don't they? They carry the stories forward, whether it's in an oral tradition or with the stories of what's on the wall of the Legions, or whether it is turning up to be the colour guard at important events.
We're seeing the membership numbers fall. I'm thinking particularly of the White Ensign Legion. They were trying everything, having barbeque nights and bringing in different kinds of music, trying to recruit younger members to keep the good work going. They were having a very difficult time with that. That's not my real question.
If you have any secrets for us on how we can increase youth membership in our local Legions, I would love to hear that from you, or how we can help, if there was a program that VAC could undertake that could help in some way.
If you have an answer to that, that's great, but I really want to talk to you about physical memorials. For example, at the Spryfield Legion, there is a granite memorial. I don't know the story of who paid for it or how it's maintained, but there are a number of memorials around Halifax, as there are in towns and cities across the country, that have cropped up organically.
Famously, in Halifax, as I mentioned at our last meeting of the committee, there is the HMCS Bonaventure anchor. A very plucky crew of survivors of the HMCS Kootenay disaster had it renovated for the 75th anniversary of Kootenay, but it was very unclear about whose responsibility it was and who had to pay for it. In the end, it all worked out, but it wasn't clear.
I wonder whether there is any insight you might give us on how we can better care for those smaller memorials. The glamorous ones are in the news on Remembrance Day, but I'm asking about those smaller community monuments.
Thank you.
Steven Clark
View Steven Clark Profile
Steven Clark
2021-05-03 17:15
I know that a number of years ago there was a national repository of memorials across the country that was gathering pictures and information so that people would know where they were and who was maintaining them or had the responsibility for it. I do not know the state of play for that repository, or whether it is still valid or updated.
With regard to community memorials, they could be Legion owned or non-Legion owned, but regardless of whether they are or not, if there is a local Legion branch, they are able to financially support the maintenance of those memorials should they fall into a state of disrepair or need things done. It's very important that we do that, so whether or not there's ownership, the Legion stands ready to assist if required.
Perhaps I could just quickly go back to your original comment about how you draw younger people in. It's a challenge. I look at the innovative ways in which some branches have done this.
For example, the Legion branch from Fredericton turned one of their meeting rooms into a gaming centre. They filled it with Xboxes and large-screen TVs, and being a community close to CFB Gagetown, it drew in those individuals, so they were able to learn what the Legion can do for them. Whether they are Legion members or not doesn't really matter, as long as they know that the Legion is there when they do need the Legion.
View Sonia Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair; and thank you, minister, to you and your team for appearing today.
My question is to Dr. Tam.
Dr. Tam, there's a false belief out there that young adults and children do not need to worry about COVID. Tragically, a 13-year-old girl from Brampton passed away from the virus last week, and many of the individuals filling our hospitals are under the age of 40.
What message would you like to send to Canadians about the threat posed by COVID-19 to young people?
Theresa Tam
View Theresa Tam Profile
Theresa Tam
2021-04-30 14:52
Thank you for the question.
Chair, I want to reiterate that although COVID-19 can affect individuals of any age, serious outcomes are much more common in older age groups.
However, when there are a lot of cases and the third wave is accelerating through the population, we are seeing younger populations being affected. In fact, one of the higher increases we're seeing is actually the 40- to 49-year age group, and then the 60- to 69-year age group, as well as some even younger individuals. That's what's actually impacting the ICU capacity at the moment in a number of the provinces.
The bottom line is that everyone needs to protect themselves by using individual protective measures and also getting the vaccine as soon as they're eligible for it.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you.
I will come back to you, Mr. Loveridge.
Thank you for talking about all the work you're doing in terms of maintaining those gravesites. I think that's incredibly important. I'm wondering, with this backlog how long it is going to take to catch up, and what your ongoing concerns are moving forward. The other part of this—and I've heard this from other folks—is how are we including young people in seeing and participating? What is more meaningful than educating people by actually having them be there and understanding what it means when we talk about our history?
David Loveridge
View David Loveridge Profile
David Loveridge
2021-04-28 17:16
Those are both really good questions.
We're in year three of addressing the entire backlog across Canada for the Veterans Affairs grave markers. We're making great progress, particularly in Ontario. We're getting them done and bringing them up to a standard that I think anyone who looks at them would think was acceptable. I think at the end of this period we'll be good. I would hate to see us go back to having a backlog again, so those are issues that we'll address going forward.
On the young people thing, I think Caroline has also talked a lot about the engagement program. We call the engagement program Eyes On, Hands On, and our plan is to start that program sometime in 2022-23. Through it we want to engage the youth, the Legion and the cadet corps. We want to do that kind of stuff first of all to help us maintain, care for and be “eyes on” to all of our markers across Canada but also to use it as an educational opportunity for those groups to understand veterans. That engagement and outreach are critical as we go forward, because our veterans, especially from the First World War and Second World War, are disappearing and disappearing quickly.
Don Cooper
View Don Cooper Profile
Don Cooper
2021-04-28 17:39
I can comment quickly on France, since I know it a little.
Generally, as in Canada, they often fall under the municipalities' purview, and the municipalities will look after them and have a sense of history that gets them to do that.
The youth aspect is really important. That's a great idea that Steve brought out.
In France and in Holland in particular, both countries, they get the youth out there to put wreaths and little Canadian flags on the graves, so they're involved, essentially in commemoration. That's an important aspect whether you're removing graffiti or something else. So stick with the idea.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you, Chair.
I will come back to you again, Mr. Cooper.
I'm extremely relieved to hear that and I have no doubt that people would stand up for this very important monument.
I have a couple of questions. You spoke in your presentation about your ideas and thoughts around the expansion and what you want to do with the facility you have. I'm wondering what that looks like.
The other thing I thought you did a really good job on was talking about the opportunity and commitment to bear witness to this history and to have this as the monument that does that work. I'm wondering if you could talk about activities that you're doing to encourage youth to participate and learn. Are there any steps you're taking to do things with technology or anything to engage that younger population?
Don Cooper
View Don Cooper Profile
Don Cooper
2021-04-28 17:44
Yes, I think that's basically been the theme of our museum from day one. I don't know if somebody else has done it now, but we certainly were the only museum that had a youth circuit going through it, for example. It was specifically designed for people four feet tall.
We've maintained that throughout. We've done it today with the Peter and Madeleine theme, and so forth. Yes, we've addressed that. We address it in terms of the interactions of the local population of French kids, who basically do the commemorations, plant the flags and do those kinds of things. From the beginning we've had very much a youth-focused orientation.
To the point about financing, essentially we have a vibrant museum that we're trying to make better all the time. When we look at a project, for example, like our expansion project, it's to accommodate the extra visitors we're getting and can anticipate. It's also a project that gets us closer to that goal of sustainability in financing. Basically, we're talking about expanding our boutiques so we can sell more goods and make more money. We are also going to expand into a coffee shop that will bring in additional revenues. The net result of all of this—and there's a business case to say this—is that we're going to spend this money, but we're going to get it back over time and make for a better visitor experience.
We're a little different from Vimy, which doesn't charge and can't charge. It's a different animal. We basically can and do operate our facility as much like a business as we can.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Chair.
I only have six minutes, so for my questions, witnesses, could you please keep your answers brief?
First, I'll start with Ms. Choo. Thank you so much for the work your organization is doing to combat Asian hate. If you do have recommendations on how the government could implement some of the recommendations you talked about, please table them with committee.
Briefly, Mr. Braithwaite, I know that your organization runs a program called “INNclusion” for 2SLGBTQ+ youth. I'm just wondering if you have any quick observations or would be willing to table to committee any specific recommendations on addressing safety for LGBTQ youth during this time, given that many of them can't shelter at home.
Michael Braithwaite
View Michael Braithwaite Profile
Michael Braithwaite
2021-04-26 11:25
Thank you very much for the question.
I think it's just about providing appropriate and affordable supportive housing. That's what we've done with INNclusion.
INNclusion is a very inexpensive way to do it. The organization is actually renting a home in the community, and we're working with partners who have expertise to wrap the right supports around LGBTQ2S+ youth moving forward.
I think you're absolutely right. Many youth, including 2SLGBTQ youth, are staying at home in unsafe situations. We just need to provide more options moving forward. We have about 25% to 40% of youth who experience homelessness identifying as being from this community. We just need to open up more, and it has to not be part of another housing program because the supports are a little different and specialized.
Clovis Grant
View Clovis Grant Profile
Clovis Grant
2021-04-26 12:03
Thank you.
Through you, Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee this afternoon on behalf of 360°kids.
As one of the leading youth agencies in York region, 360°kids has a 32-year history of providing services to homeless youth, including victims and survivors of human trafficking. We serve approximately 4,000 youth each year, ages 16 to 26, providing them with education, housing and employment and health and well-being supports. Our mission is to transition youth from crisis to stability.
On the impact of COVID-19 on 360°kids, let me first share some comments from the young people themselves. The first comment is, “Being told to stay inside and not leave reminds me of when I was being trafficked and...this causes me a lot of anxiety.” Second comment is “For those of us who have no place to go home to, it’s hard to do the things we are told to do such as staying home, wash your hands. How can you do that when you don’t have access to water. You can’t even take a shower.”
What are the lessons we've learned through the pandemic? There are five things. First of all, great things can happen when we work together. Second, prevention is indeed the best medicine. Third, the marginalized become even more marginalized during a pandemic. Four, youth need very specific solutions. Last, the needs of staff must also be prioritized.
One of the successes of the pandemic that we've seen is organizations coming together. Providers from various sectors in York region, including government funders and private corporations, came together to share resources and their own responses to the pandemic and to collaborate on initiatives. We were able to identify gaps very quickly and respond in real time to address needs for food, technology, housing access, etc. I can really see these built relationships continuing into the future.
Our work at 360°kids on prevention, leading the youth housing stabilization strategy, developed even more significance during the pandemic. This is a group of about 30 cross-sectoral partners and young people working together to better align services and resources to prevent youth homelessness in York region. Why? We know that homeless youth become homeless adults, and the longer you are homeless, the worse your outcome.
We definitely saw how the marginalized became even more marginalized during the pandemic. In our programs, we saw a fivefold increase in the number of youth accessing mental health supports, with past trauma, loss of income and confinement due to lockdowns all contributing to high levels of anxiety.
We need more accessible mental health supports, especially for this population and for those who are Black and racialized. The youth told us that racism was a significant factor in their homelessness. To address these impacts we had to provide various spaces for the young people to share their voices, we expanded partnerships with specific cultural agencies, and at the same time, we reviewed and are updating our own agency equity strategy.
The need for more youth-specific solutions was seen when we closed our drop-ins early in the pandemic. One of my earlier quotes spoke of the challenge some youth who are precariously housed face. We saw that youth living in the rough, these are youth who are living in abandoned buildings, abandoned cars, abandoned spaces in general, many of them went more into hiding due to the closure of many of the spaces they once went to.
To better support the youth, rather than waiting for them to come to us, we went to them. We redeployed staff to do more outreach. We even hired two young people to be outreach workers who were former youth, and we also pushed for a youth-specific isolation facility to make it more accessible for youth to get access to housing.
While we were able to house about 25 youth throughout the pandemic, we know that the need for more affordable housing is so critical. We certainly applaud the government for funding the emergency and short-term needs, but without longer-term housing and wraparound supports to keep people housed, those marginalized young people become even more marginalized.
I close with a reminder about the impact of the pandemic on our staff. Confusing public health messages, concerns about the vaccine, low wages and even the stress of their own family situations, this all took a toll on staff mental health, which worsened with each lockdown. We responded as an agency with additional mental health days off with pay for staff, and with flexibility around their sick time and their child care needs.
The government-funded additional hourly pay, given to frontline workers for a brief period last year, certainly went a long way in recognizing the importance of this sector that is chronically underpaid. We hope to see this kind of support continue.
Unfortunately, for many agencies like ours that are not adequately funded for our programs, it puts pressure on our fundraising. We have seen a significant hit to our fundraising due to event cancellations over the past year.
In summary, it really has been a very difficult year for the young people we serve at 360°kids and the staff who are supporting them on a daily basis. While emergency responses are great, and we saw some great opportunities throughout the pandemic, what is more important are preventative measures and wraparound supports to get people housed and to keep them housed.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.
View Mike Kelloway Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Hello to my colleagues, and a warm welcome to our witnesses, a Cape Breton—Canso welcome.
My questions are going to be directed to Mr. Grant.
First and foremost, Mr. Grant, I consider you and your organization an expert on youth and youth programming.
For many years in the first part of my career, I worked with a gentleman by the name of Gordie Gosse, and Gordie was a great man. He passed in 2019. He worked in Whitney Pier as the youth programmer in Whitney Pier and later went on to become an NDP cabinet minister in the provincial government. I learned so much from him in terms of the importance of programming and the importance of community engagement.
This year, Mr. Grant, Canadians have made great sacrifices and, in particular, youth and children have given up, as you say, going to school with its going online, spending time with friends and really getting the most out of their adolescence and childhood. Public health measures in every province are implemented by public health officers, and they're important, but we do need more and varied supports, as you mentioned.
In particular, you hit upon something I think is really important, and that's the mental health amongst youth. They are already, I think you would agree, at a higher risk even without a global pandemic being thrown into the mix.
I'm wondering if you could tell me and tell the committee how important it is for children and youth in these times to have access to platforms like Wellness Together Canada, launched by our government, or the Kids Help Phone.
Clovis Grant
View Clovis Grant Profile
Clovis Grant
2021-04-26 12:34
As we know, in being homeless, there's a high level of anxiety and a high degree of stress and addictions that come with that, and this is pre-pandemic, so adding the notion of a pandemic exacerbates an already challenging situation.
The need for the services you mentioned, the Kids Help Phone, etc., is critical during both times, and we've seen just with 310-COPE here in York region and the Canadian Mental Health Association, all of those organizations—
Clovis Grant
View Clovis Grant Profile
Clovis Grant
2021-04-26 12:36
Okay.
As we know, pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, the need for mental health services for a homeless population was high to begin with. We know from research it is one of the challenges, whether it's a cause or an effect of being homeless. The Kids Help Phone services, the Canadian Mental Health Association services, 310-COPE and all those things were important pre-COVID, and then you add a pandemic, with a whole bunch of uncertainty for these young people. They've already experienced uncertainties in their lives and this just further exacerbates that.
One of the things it's important to note is that a lot of money does go into mental health and we've seen governments increase that funding, but we find many of those services are not accessible for a homeless population, for different reasons.
Sometimes with a youth population the definition of “youth” is different. For provincial services, it can be ages 16 to 24. For federal services, it's 14 to 29, and for some health services, it's to 18. Even from just an age demographic, it's hard to access some of those services. Then you have the unavailability of psychiatric care and psychiatrists who are able to diagnose, and follow-up support.
What we find is that homeless young people are even more marginalized in accessing the services and funding that goes into mental health, which is why the need for very specific services for this population is so important.
View Mike Kelloway Profile
Lib. (NS)
It's interesting you highlighted how the challenges are integrated, and so must be the solutions.
I was doing some research on your organization and I see you offer a large suite of programming. I'm just curious. Which of your programs has been the most popular as we navigate through this pandemic, and why do you think it is the case?
Clovis Grant
View Clovis Grant Profile
Clovis Grant
2021-04-26 12:39
I'm not sure “popular” is the right word, but certainly—
View Mike Kelloway Profile
Lib. (NS)
“More utilized” would probably be better.
Clovis Grant
View Clovis Grant Profile
Clovis Grant
2021-04-26 12:39
Yes. For sure, it's our mental health supports. As I mentioned, we saw a fivefold increase in the number of youth accessing mental health services. Pre-COVID, we were serving over 1,200 youth in our drop-in programs, but that number decreased. Therefore, you could maybe show a correlation between the lack of access to services adding to an increase in the need for a number of mental health services.
However, to answer your question, it is the need for mental health services that increased.
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
It's no problem. I don't want to push you on that, so thank you.
My next question is for Mr. Kershaw.
Thank you so much for your presentation. I agree with whoever suggested that we should have you back, just because I think we might have many questions for you.
Our budget 2021 has put in a significant amount of money to support our youth. We want to make sure that, due to COVID, they don't become the lost generation. I wonder whether you can talk a bit about how the investments proposed in our budget 2021 can stop young Canadians from becoming a lost generation.
Paul Kershaw
View Paul Kershaw Profile
Paul Kershaw
2021-04-22 18:15
First, I think you deserve a great deal of credit for putting in place the child care funding that is actually, for the first time in my professional career, really meaningful at the federal level. Fifty years after the recommendation from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women to have a real national child care system, I think that is going to be game changing.
I do think, though, that previous budgets have been stronger on the housing issue. In the material I've shared already today, we really do need the government to say....
In the past, Canadians might have wanted two things from housing: an affordable place to call home and a good return on investment. However, we can't have both of these things any longer, because when something is a good return on investment, it leaves behind local earnings.
At this stage, if we want the national housing strategy to truly succeed, we need the government to come out and actually say it's going to hone its public policies going forward to try to ensure home prices don't continue to rise. That's a top goal.
View Bernard Généreux Profile
CPC (QC)
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'd like to give a warm welcome to Mr. Jules. We met in 2010 on your reserve when we visited. I think it was the finance committee. You surprise me. I'd like to know your secret. You seem to be younger and younger instead of older. Anyway, it's good to see you.
I was really stunned when I went to your reserve to see everything there that you have done, and everything you're still doing for your friends and people. It's quite amazing.
You said before that you think we should do more for first nations. I agree with you. Economically, we need you. Actually, we need your young people.
Talk to us about your young generation. Even if they might still be working with the telegraph—I think they're more ahead than that—we could still improve everything they need to be a part of the economy of today.
C.T. (Manny) Jules
View C.T. (Manny) Jules Profile
C.T. (Manny) Jules
2021-04-15 13:16
I believe that our youth are going to be an incredibly important part of the rebuilding after COVID-19 here in Canada. They're the future. Whenever I look into their eyes, that's what I see. I see their potential. I see their willingness to think outside the box. That's what needs to be nurtured from a very young age. That starts with the child in the womb, right through to kindergarten and through to grade 12. They have to have good role models.
Schooling is critically important, not just learning who we are, but also learning the maths and sciences so that we can prepare first nations for a trip to Mars one day. It's these kinds of innovations that our future will be able to offer to this country and to us. I believe wholeheartedly in our future generations through our youth.
We need the institutional support, the fiscal wherewithal to be able to make the changes within our communities, without dependence on the federal and provincial governments, because that has hampered our development.
W. Matthew Chater
View W. Matthew Chater Profile
W. Matthew Chater
2021-04-13 16:09
Thank you for the opportunity to be here. To echo my colleague, I would like to express significant thanks to all members for all you do daily on behalf of Canadians, during this pandemic as well as beyond.
Big Brothers Big Sisters has operated in Canada for over 100 years. We facilitate intentional mentoring relationships with over 41,000 youth in 1,100 communities with the support of over 21,000 volunteers.
Children and youth in our programs face toxic stress due to living with adversities caused by systemic challenges like poverty, mental illness, neglect, addiction and a range of other sources. According to our research, 63% of young people in Big Brothers Big Sisters programs experience three or more of these adversities while at the same time having only one, or often zero, developmental relationships. The pandemic has only amplified these stressors, making them more complex and deeply rooted.
Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring is needed now more than ever. For example, calls to Kids Help Phone were up by 55% and through text by 61%, and 76% of the youth reaching out to them said they had no one else they felt it was safe to turn to.
Many of these callers are referred to Big Brothers Big Sisters, as we are ideally suited to help. We just completed research with York University and the University of Victoria that found that mental health issues like depression and anxiety during the pandemic are significantly lower among youth enrolled in Big Brothers Big Sisters programs, and that rates of depression and anxiety drop the more youth are engaged with their mentor. The challenge is that we already had 15,000 youth on our wait list before the pandemic, and now that list is growing daily.
This increased demand comes at the same time that revenue has plummeted, dropping by $13 million in 2020, and we are projecting a further 30% drop in 2021, for a total shortfall of $25 million across the federation.
While the government has provided additional funding to the Kids Help Phone, which we fully support, funding a crisis line without also assisting community services organizations to which those youth are referred is like funding the 911 emergency call service without providing the medical systems in order to respond.
We are extremely grateful for the programs the federal government has introduced, like the wage subsidy and the emergency community support fund. Without those our losses would be even greater, but there is now nowhere else to turn and much more that needs to be done.
We are not alone in this dilemma of increased demand for our services coinciding with the most severe financial crisis in our history. That is why Big Brothers Big Sisters, alongside the YMCA of Canada, the YWCA of Canada, BGC Canada, United Way-Centraide Canada, the National Association of Friendship Centres and many others providing frontline support have come together to appeal for a community services COVID-19 relief fund.
You have heard from my colleagues at previous meetings, and Josh has spoken to it today, but I will also lend my voice to plead with this committee to ask the finance minister to establish that funding in the April 19 budget. This is about whether your communities continue to have organizations like ours that provide the services governments do not. Youth mentoring through Big Brothers Big Sisters will be critical to Canada's economic, social and public health recovery.
To provide a local context, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Margie Grant-Walsh, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
Margie Grant-Walsh
View Margie Grant-Walsh Profile
Margie Grant-Walsh
2021-04-13 16:13
Thank you, Matthew.
Think back to when you were nine. Who was important in your life? What would it be like without that person?
Our children and youth have been facing isolation, mental health challenges, food insecurity, affordable housing concerns and struggles with educational learning.
I can speak from my experience in northern Nova Scotia. Rural communities have been most affected. We have no public transportation, challenges switching to virtual mentoring, connectivity issues, and in the recent report card on child and family poverty in Nova Scotia, we have the third-highest child poverty rate in Canada. One in four children live in poverty.
Demand for service has increased. We have seen an increase in requests for essentials like food and heat. What social service organizations can say they are in contact weekly with their families? We can.
We're not only mentoring children facing adversities, but families as well, and they trust us. Staff have been overloaded, stressed, and working extremely hard to support our families, pivoting on a moment's notice on a tight budget. Top this off with the largest mass shooting in Canadian history.
Revenues have dropped substantially. Unlike many organizations, we fundraise a substantial part of our budget. At our agency, 69% is raised by special events alone. The drop in revenue in 2020 was 29%, over $270,000. In my 34 years with Big Brothers Big Sisters, I have never seen a year like it.
We are blessed to live in Nova Scotia for our low COVID numbers, but that brings the challenges of people isolating themselves to prevent spread. The biggest challenge is the lack of contact from caring adults who are invested in their well-being. Think again to when you were nine, and how you would deal with a pandemic without your mentor.
Thank you for this opportunity.
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much.
The youth in Davenport, and in fact the many youth we heard from over the weekend at the LPC conference, very much support a guaranteed basic income. My understanding is that they feel that the world of work is changing quickly. Automation and AI are eliminating both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. There's much more of an unpredictable future around jobs. They're losing confidence that they'll ever be able to get ahead the way their parents did. They see something like a guaranteed basic income model as a way that will provide them with some stability as they try to make their way through the world.
Would you agree that this is a sentiment from our youth and that a guaranteed basic income program would provide that stability?
Barbara Boraks
View Barbara Boraks Profile
Barbara Boraks
2021-04-13 16:38
Yes. We have a very large youth network across Canada, but that's a sentiment that applies not just to youth but to any sector of precarious work. Arts is another one, actually. There is very strong support for basic income from the arts community.
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-04-13 16:56
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I will direct my questions to Margie Grant-Walsh, from Big Brothers Big Sisters, who happens to be just down the road from me here, in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
The testimony from you and your colleague focused, in part, on the stressors that have been exacerbated by the pandemic for young people in our community. I would hazard to guess that we have talked to some of the same young people.
I remember, in the early days of the pandemic, there was a lot of fear about what this public health emergency might mean. Over the course of the year, people became robbed of their community activities or sports teams at school, their proms, seeing their friends, or experiences in the classroom. You're absolutely right to point out how much this has impacted the mental health and well-being of young people.
We put support towards the Kids Help Phone, I think in late March of last year, because we saw a serious surge in the need for mental health supports for young people.
One of the things I hear about, whenever we talk about telehealth or virtual health, is reservations from the public when they hear about 1-800 lines or seeing somebody through a screen when they may need access to a person. Certainly there are people who will need that in-person care for their mental health supports.
I'm curious, from your experience, whether you can highlight whether these investments in the Kids Help Phone or other similar services can help an organization like yours connect with people in real life?
Margie Grant-Walsh
View Margie Grant-Walsh Profile
Margie Grant-Walsh
2021-04-13 16:58
Thanks, Mr. Fraser.
Actually, they really can. The investments that go toward, for example, the Kids Help Phone have certainly impacted local organizations right across the country. What tends to happen when they get a call is that they then refer to a local agency.
You commented particularly on the increase of isolation and mental health issues. As a matter of fact, we're finding that these kids who have been isolated, particularly in rural areas, really require that intentional mentorship in their lives. Without it, they're really lost.
Here in Pictou County I can comment from my experience. We have no public transportation. There are also connectivity issues in some of the outlying areas. Many of our clients don't have access to mobile devices, whether it's a tablet or a telephone, so of course being able to connect with their mentors has been very difficult.
The other thing we've been seeing, too, is in our schools. Of course, when the pandemic first started, many of the schools were very uncomfortable—we all were, really—not knowing what to expect and how this was going to lay out. Schools were very hesitant at first to let us in. In Pictou County, we are in 19 schools. Multiply that by the 102 agencies in the country. Many of those kids have not had access to their mentors.
We know that 42% of youths said their mentor helped them feel less isolated during the pandemic. We know that 70% of youths who had regular contact with their mentor said it helped them feel less worried or anxious, and 44% of youths engaged with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada reported feelings of depression versus 51% among other youths. We know that having a caring adult in a child's or youth's life really makes a difference.
People sometimes tend to think of us as the “fluffy” organization, but we know that every dollar that is spent toward mentorship programs is reinvested back into the community at 23:1. It's very important.
View Ted Falk Profile
CPC (MB)
View Ted Falk Profile
2021-04-13 17:09
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To all the witnesses, thank you for your presentations here. It has been very interesting listening to the discussion—the questions as well as the comments.
I'd like to talk to Mr. Chater.
In my riding of Provencher, in Manitoba, a lot of parents are talking to me about how their kids feel. One evening I was returning phone calls and talked to one particular father. He said he was completely exasperated. He had a son. He said, “In his group of four of five people, do you know what they're talking about? They're talking about suicide. I am so concerned about where this is all heading.”
I'm sure you're hearing a lot from your frontline people. What is the major concern you're hearing from the boys and girls clubs frontline workers, the folks who actually work with the youth in Canada?
W. Matthew Chater
View W. Matthew Chater Profile
W. Matthew Chater
2021-04-13 17:10
I'd be able to speak from the perspective of Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I'd say they're seeing the same, listening to the voices of young people: that despair and not being able to see what the future looks like. Right now, there are so many young people, like many of us, who are just trying to figure out what life looks like beyond this pandemic. It's very challenging, particularly for youth, because the pathways that once existed might not exist in the future. Big Brothers Big Sisters and organizations such as BGC Canada and others really provide those opportunities for young people to see that future and how people are standing beside them and for them.
I'll go back to some of the data Margie shared around how young people are feeling in community, and making sure we continue to put those critical investments into frontline community services.
View Colin Carrie Profile
CPC (ON)
View Colin Carrie Profile
2021-03-15 17:26
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Given the statements made in WEconomy, it's clear that WE Charity conducted a survey that collected data on voting in the 2011 federal election.
My question is, how did you receive the contact information of these WE alumnae, when many of them would have been underaged kids at the time of the WE Day they attended? I'm curious as to how the data was collected, and by whom. Did you ever contract your data analysis with any third parties that also might do data analysis for political parties, such as Data Sciences, for example?
Marc Kielburger
View Marc Kielburger Profile
Marc Kielburger
2021-03-15 17:26
To the honourable member, the short answer is no on the Data Sciences, or any associated group that would do political data analysis. That was part of [Technical difficulty--Editor] university called Mission Measurement. They ask young people if, because of the program, they're more likely to do many things, including vote, volunteer or give to charity. We never discussed it at the time of asking. We never asked who they voted for. We had no interest in that information.
View Colin Carrie Profile
CPC (ON)
View Colin Carrie Profile
2021-03-15 17:27
All right.
Will you provide to the committee a copy of the report that Mission Measurement, LLC provided to WE Charity on the project, that Free the Children alumni study?
Craig Kielburger
View Craig Kielburger Profile
Craig Kielburger
2021-03-15 17:27
Absolutely. In fact, we're very proud of the outcomes. More than 80% of our youth alumni continue to volunteer, 79% voted in the last federal election and I believe 83% continue to give to charity. It's such a shame that's coming to an end, those programs in Canadian schools—
Craig Kielburger
View Craig Kielburger Profile
Craig Kielburger
2021-03-15 17:27
Yes, absolutely. It's actually on our website, so anyone can look at the report.
View Steven Blaney Profile
CPC (QC)
In connection with language transfers, it would seem that we now take into account the attraction of English for francophones, particularly for cultural matters.
In your next censuses, will the indicators enable you to measure the likelihood for a young francophone in Quebec to migrate towards the anglophone culture because of their consumption of cultural content? Are you going to do this kind of analysis?
It would seem that such factors are contributing to the decline, in addition to some of the other factors you summarized for us.
Jean-Pierre Corbeil
View Jean-Pierre Corbeil Profile
Jean-Pierre Corbeil
2021-03-09 19:24
Yes, definitely. If we focus again on the language transfers, an increase in language transfers among younger people has been observed.
We might ask whether these young people, more of whom are attending English-language CEGEPs and universities, tend to be living with English-speaking roommates whose language is that of the institution they are attending.
However, I think that with increasingly diverse data sources at our disposal, including a well-known longitudinal platform in education that enables us to track these students over time and integrate the census data, we will be able to analyze this more thoroughly.
Charles Castonguay
View Charles Castonguay Profile
Charles Castonguay
2021-03-09 19:45
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Our language policies are failing to preserve both Canada's English-French linguistic duality and the French character of Quebec itself. My conclusion is based on close to a half-century of census data.
First, I'll say a word on why our language policies are failing us. The more a minority language group is concentrated within a given territory, the better it resists assimilation to the majority language. A language policy aimed at preserving the French-speaking component of Canada's population should therefore have aimed first and foremost at maintaining and promoting the French character of the province of Quebec.
Canada's Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism rejected such an approach. It opted instead for individual freedom of choice between two official languages and for the free circulation of individuals from coast to coast, unhindered by any linguistic measures that might possibly restrict such mobility. This kind of linguistic free trade principle has guided Canada's language policy ever since.
It is a striking fact that at the same time, Quebec's Gendron commission was grappling with how to ensure the free circulation of unilingual French-speaking Quebeckers within Quebec, which was gravely impeded by the domination of English in Montreal's work world. Quebec, therefore, opted for a policy with French as sole official language and with a Charter of the French Language geared to make French the default language of public communication between all Quebeckers, including at work.
Conflict was inevitable between Canada's free trade “official language of your choice” policy and Quebec's protectionist “one official and common language” approach. The outcome was equally inevitable. The courts have left precious little of Quebec's charter intact. This has had dire consequences for French in Quebec, and automatically for French in Canada as a whole.
Now I will turn to some statistics. The French mother-tongue component of Canada's population plummeted from 29% in 1951 to 21%, according to the last census, that of 2016. Since Canada's Official Languages Act, the percentage of Canadians speaking French as their main home language has declined just as rapidly. In contrast, Canada's English-speaking component has just about held its own.
The crushingly superior power of assimilation of English is the principal explanation for this. The assimilation of Canada's French mother-tongue population to English as their main home language increased steadily from less than 300,000 in 1971 to over 400,000 in 2016. At the same time, the assimilation of non-official mother-tongue Canadians to English rose from 1.2 million in 1971 to 2.7 million at the last census, whereas their assimilation to French has reached a mere quarter million, a large number of whom derive from Quebec's selection of immigrants who had adopted French as their main home language abroad before coming to Quebec.
On the whole, the overall gain that English draws from assimilation of all kinds in Canada increased from less than 1.5 million persons in 1971 to over three million in 2016. French, by contrast, still remains mired in an overall loss, due to assimilation, in the order of 180,000 at the last census.
At the level of Canada as a whole, therefore, Canada's language policy and Quebec's sorely weakened charter have, taken together, in no way stopped the erosion of Canada's French-speaking component.
Lately, things are not any rosier for French in Quebec. Indeed, between 2001 and 2016, the last 15 years, Quebec's French-speaking majority has plunged at record speed to a record low. In contrast, in Quebec, for the first time in census history, English has roughly maintained its weight in Quebec as a mother tongue, and increased its weight somewhat in terms of the main home language.
The most stunning development is on Montreal Island, where French mother tongue youth have become more bilingual than their English counterparts and are now adopting English as the main home language at the rate of 6%.
As for the rest of Canada, the anglicization rate of the French mother tongue population outside Quebec has steadily increased, from 27% in 1971 to 40% in 2016.
The most eloquent evidence of the failure of Canada's language policy is, however, the anglicization rate of Francophones in Canada's very capital. It has exactly doubled since Canada's initial Official Languages Act, rising from 17% to 34%. It even topped 40% in 2016 among the capital's younger French mother tongue adults, a proven forerunner of greater anglicization yet to come.
It is high time, therefore, to aim Canada's language policy more squarely at preventing further erosion of Canada's fading linguistic duality.
View Leah Gazan Profile
NDP (MB)
I know you mentioned women, but what other groups are more likely to be excluded from claiming EI benefits and what kinds of barriers do they face? Are there any other specific groups that are falling through the cracks?
Hassan Yussuff
View Hassan Yussuff Profile
Hassan Yussuff
2021-03-09 16:29
Well, workers of colour and young people are the two other groups we should be very concerned about.
Prior to the pandemic, we finally got youth unemployment into the single digits. Now it's back up in the double digits, and we don't want this to be another lost generation that doesn't come back. Equally, I think in many urban centres, workers of colour who have been on the front line providing services to Canadians during this pandemic—and I think we have seen this in the statistics that StatsCan has been providing every month—are not doing so well in the recovery and are not doing so well in the unemployment levels of this country. We're going to have to take that into consideration if we want to lift those communities out of poverty and equally ensure that people aren't falling further behind because they end up being on employment insurance because they've lost their job.
View Raquel Dancho Profile
CPC (MB)
I know that youth employment, particularly in the tourism sector in summer, is pretty big. How are the youth doing in P.E.I.?
Carl Pursey
View Carl Pursey Profile
Carl Pursey
2021-03-09 17:25
Not too bad, with all these programs; it's great that the federal government has been there with the money and has handed it out to people as quickly as they have. I know that some of the other people in Ottawa figure there's too much money being handed out and we've got to cut everybody back. That is not the way to go. I think we have to help people out through these hard times. I think that's why these other programs and changes to EI would help people out in hard times.
Josée Bégin
View Josée Bégin Profile
Josée Bégin
2021-02-23 15:37
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting Statistics Canada to speak today as part of the study on employment insurance.
Statistics Canada has many data sources, such as the Labour Force Survey, or LFS, and employment insurance, or EI, statistics, that are used to paint a more complete portrait of labour market-related events. Many of the indicators I will cite today are drawn from these sources. Each data source has its benefits and drawbacks, for example, in terms of coverage, sample size and how quickly data are published.
The pandemic has caused unprecedented job losses in Canada. Total employment fell by more than three million during the worst of the crisis in March and April. Within three months, the unemployment rate almost tripled, reaching 13.7% in May. Although the labour market has improved since then, most labour market indicators have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Their recovery has been slowed by the public health measures in place.
In January 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 9.4%, compared with 5.7% in February 2020. The number of long-term unemployed workers, in other words, people who have been looking for work or on temporary layoff for 27 weeks or more, remained at a record high of 512,000.
New experimental data show that COVID-19 has significantly impacted groups designated as visible minorities. In January, the unemployment rate of Black Canadians was 5.3 percentage points higher than a year earlier, versus an increase of 3.7 percentage points for Canadians who did not identify as indigenous or did not belong to a group designated as a visible minority. This more precarious labour market situation for population groups designated as visible minorities is partly due to the higher concentration of these workers in some of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19 economic crisis, such as accommodation and food services.
Looking at age groups, youth employment in January 2021 was the furthest, -14%, from the pre-pandemic levels of February 2020, when compared with other demographic groups, particularly employment among young women, -17%.
Last December, 1.3 million Canadians were receiving regular EI benefits, almost triple the number from February 2020, which was 446,000.
The results of the LFS show that 1.8 million people were unemployed in December, including 1.5 million who were looking for work and 300,000 who had a connection to a job, either because they had been laid off temporarily or because they had arrangements to start a new job in the near future.
There is always a proportion of unemployed who are not eligible for EI benefits. Some unemployed people have not contributed to the program because they have not worked in the past 12 months or because their job was not insured. Others contributed to the program, but they do not meet the eligibility criteria.
In December, 13% of all regular EI beneficiaries were eligible as a result of temporary changes made to the eligibility rules in September 2020. This proportion was higher in Quebec and in the Atlantic provinces than in the other provinces.
The December LFS results revealed that the industries where employment remained furthest from pre-pandemic levels included accommodation and food services, information, culture and recreation, and what is known as other services, including personal services and laundry services. The challenges facing these industries are reflected in the profile of regular EI beneficiaries. For example, in December, more than one in four regular EI beneficiaries had last worked in one of these three sectors.
The uneven impact of COVID-19 across industries, combined with relaxation of the rules for accessing the EI program, has also driven the proportion of women who receive regular benefits upward, which rose from 37% in February to 48% in December.
My colleague Vincent and I would be happy to answer any of your questions.
This concludes my presentation, Mr. Chair. I hope this overview of the Canadian labour market will be useful to the committee.
Marie Rochette
View Marie Rochette Profile
Marie Rochette
2021-02-23 11:11
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for inviting me to be part of this study on food security in northern communities.
Last December, Adamie Delisle Alaku, one of the vice presidents of the Makivik Corporation, had the opportunity to give you some information on the beautiful region of Nunavik and on the challenges resulting from its remoteness. I won't repeat the information that he provided during that presentation.
I want to talk about the Parnasimautik report, which was prepared following an extensive consultation with Nunavik Inuit in 2013. The report referred to growing concerns about food insecurity, which affects an alarming proportion of the population; the decline of certain animal species; and climate change. The report emphasized the key role played by the land's resources in the region's food, way of life and economy. It reiterated the need to protect the land and its resources to ensure food security.
These concerns and aspirations aren't new. Local and regional organizations have been focusing their efforts on these issues for several decades. Nevertheless, food insecurity remains very high in the region.
I'll provide some preliminary data from the 2017 Quanuilirpitaa survey. The data is preliminary because the final report should be released in summer 2021.
The survey repeated a question that had been asked in the previous survey in 2004. Participants were asked whether they had experienced, in the month prior to the survey, a period in which there wasn't enough to eat in their home. Almost 34% of Inuit reported that this situation had occurred in 2017. In comparison, the figure was 24% in 2004. The situation doesn't seem to have improved over time.
To explore the issue further, in 2017, a scale with different questions was used to try to better define the proportion of Nunavimiut considered food insecure. If we include individuals who experienced mild food insecurity, over three-quarters of Nunavimiut reported that they experienced food insecurity in the previous year. The concern is that this proportion is higher among youth. The rate is 87% among youth aged 16 to 19. It's even higher among pregnant women, at 89%.
The Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services has been providing support to organizations for several years to help create initiatives that contribute to food security, health and well-being. This support may include professional support, funding, training, networking opportunities, toolbox-type resources or recipes, for example. Some of the initiatives involve activities run by community kitchens that use both traditional and market foods. There are activities to encourage people to make healthier food choices, such as in-store activities and nutrition activities in family homes.
Food assistance, such as food hampers and meal distribution, is being provided to people who have difficulty obtaining food. Gardening activities and greenhouse projects are currently being carried out in four Nunavik communities. There's also a growing interest in these types of projects.
Regional resources or projects are being run not only by the regional board, but also by several partners, such as the food coupon program for pregnant women and school meal and snack programs. Emergency food assistance is being provided to people who are currently in quarantine or isolation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. There's also the hunter support program, along with the community freezers found in each community.
To take these initiatives even further, a food security policy is being developed. A regional task force was created in 2015 upon the initiative of the Makivik Corporation, the Kativik Regional Government and the regional board.
The task force has partnered with various regional organizations in Nunavik. The task force's goal is to find short-term, medium-term and long-term solutions to improve the accessibility and availability of nutritious food. Four engagement sessions were held in 2017 and 2018. Over 150 people from all the Nunavik communities took part in these sessions. The following topics were discussed: access to traditional foods; promotion of healthy eating; accessibility and availability of nutritious market foods; and local production and processing.
With these topics in mind, the following issues were identified as priorities for policy: improving access to traditional foods; improving the accessibility, quality and availability of nutritious market foods; supporting the development of knowledge and skills; and promoting community partnership, engagement and decision-making.
The next step is to develop the policy. I must admit that the COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately put a halt to this initiative. We hope to be able to start work again soon. We must then prepare a five-year action plan and secure the commitment of all stakeholders at the local, regional, provincial or federal level.
I'll conclude by saying that the vision, which is supported by the policy and the stakeholders contributing to it, consists of a food system that includes both traditional and non-traditional foods. The system will be rooted in the land, local resources, and Inuit culture and values.
Thank you for your attention.
View Sonia Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Dr. Bernstein, there are few groups that were not part of vaccine trials, such as teens or pregnant women. Can you provide insight on any research that has been done to make sure these vulnerable groups are protected?
Alan Bernstein
View Alan Bernstein Profile
Alan Bernstein
2021-02-22 12:38
Typically in vaccine trials, teens and pregnant women are not included in the first instance because they represent a high-risk group. There's a concern that they not be exposed to a vaccine until it's been tested to be safe and effective by the regulator. However, as we speak, there are now trials going on with younger-aged volunteers in those trials to see whether the vaccines are safe, as well as being effective in younger children.
I think the same will be true for pregnant women shortly. Both the WHO and that U.S. FDA have issued guidelines around that, which are somewhat contradictory. On balance, I think the view is that it's probably safe and effective for pregnant women to take the vaccine, especially because there is good evidence that being affected with the virus when you're pregnant makes you particularly susceptible to a serious disease outcome.
Again, the trial has not yet been done.
Francis Fortin
View Francis Fortin Profile
Francis Fortin
2021-02-19 15:37
Good afternoon.
Madam Clerk and members of the committee, I am very glad to be here this afternoon.
My name is Francis Fortin, and I am an assistant professor at the Université de Montréal's school of criminology, as well as a researcher at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology. The focus of my research is cybercrime and the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. Before getting into research, I spent 12 years working in cyber investigation and criminal intelligence at the Sûreté du Québec. I've authored a number of scholarly articles and three books, as well as a dozen or so chapters on cyberpedophiles.
Having a limited amount of time, I chose to divide my presentation into three parts. First, I will discuss options to encourage corporate compliance. Second, I will talk about ways to support and guide victims. Third and finally, I will address prevention and research.
Before I get into that, though, I want to say a few words about the current context. If you ask law enforcement agencies to break down the cases they deal with, two main categories emerge. The first category involves minors, and in those cases, a fast lane of sorts exists. Canada has a series of legal measures that make it easier to remove some child pornography content.
The second category involves adults, and the law is more vague in relation to those cases. For example, an adult who files a police complaint can be told that their case is a civil litigation matter. One of the witnesses gave such an example earlier. Basically, it's considered a civil matter, and the burden of taking the necessary steps falls on the complainant. As I see it, that's problematic.
Keep in mind that the revenge porn trend emerged a few years ago and shows no signs of slowing. As far as I know, Canada still has no active measures that allow authorities to take action in those cases.
Now I will turn to solutions, or ways to encourage corporate compliance. The key is to hold adult content providers accountable. One of this morning's witnesses mentioned the use of digital signatures. A number of worthwhile initiatives exist and are deployed mainly by law enforcement. Police keep child pornography databases and rely on digital signatures. Someone alluded to electronic fingerprinting earlier. These images have to be able to be shared on all platforms, including Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, the GAFA platforms. I know that Google and Facebook use lists they obtain in the United States. These platforms should be required to block content that has previously been deemed illegal.
The requirement to report content is another option, although it remains a thorny issue. A tremendous effort is needed to educate web giants on the importance of reporting. The current approach tends to involve removing the content and claiming that nothing can be done. Things are even worse on the platforms of the web giants. They refuse to even remove the content. That is a far cry from relying on the platforms for co-operation and encouraging them to report issues to the authorities. Reporting is essential to investigate suspects who repeatedly engage in this behaviour.
Another option is to prevent content from being shared anonymously. It's easy to see how knowing and validating the identity of individuals who spread this content would significantly decrease the risks associated with illegal content. That would result in platforms having trustworthy content providers, since new users would ultimately have to undergo verification to gain platforms' trust.
Litigation is another avenue, as one of the witnesses mentioned. One of the benefits of involving the police is that they assess the complaint to determine whether it is founded.
I think that's an important step. I don't think platforms, content providers or anyone else should be doing an assessment of the complaint, especially in cases where there is a consensus. I'll come back to that point later.
The prompt removal of the content in question is an important consideration.
In all the cases you've heard about, there's one thing to remember: it's a race against time. In order for the parties to satisfy their legal obligations, it may be appropriate for companies to immediately suspend access to the content once it has been confirmed that there are reasonable grounds for doing so. That would happen even before guilt had been established. In this scenario, reasonable grounds would lead to the prompt suspension of content access.
I think it's important to consider issuing an operating licence as a way to support all of these measures. Companies would have to satisfy those compliance requirements in order to operate. It could be done through the adoption of an ISO standard or the issuing of a licence to operate in Canada.
The second thing I'd like to talk about is support and guidance for victims.
It's clear from their stories that they found themselves fighting the situation on their own. They were up against something that they didn't understand, something that had never happened to them. Obviously, that's extremely difficult.
Basically, there has to be a shift towards victim support. That means creating a new position, a victim liaison of sorts, who would help and guide victims. As soon as problematic content on a platform was flagged, that liaison would get involved.
Whenever a new case came to the attention of police or other front-line workers, they would contact the person designated to guide and support the victim. That person's role would be to quickly assess the complaint, and respond accordingly and swiftly. Establishing such a role would help victims because the liaison worker would be familiar with the process, know what steps to take and know who to contact at the main providers. That would prevent the cat-and mouse-game the victim gets caught up in, figuring out on her own what to do and who is responsible under the law. There would be a single person dealing with the different platforms.
A list could be drawn up outlining the steps to take when an incident of this nature occurs, similar to the process in the case of an accident. On one hand, police handle the investigation and deal with the criminal aspect, and on the other, the liaison steps in to manage the accident, so to speak. Furthermore, that person could—should, in fact—have the necessary powers to be effective.
The liaison could work with police and organizations involved in preventing sexual exploitation. In fact, I could readily see victims groups, even the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, taking on that role in the future.
A novel approach would be to establish a special victims task force, which would bring together police and liaison workers, and have all of the necessary legal tools to track down content. The task force would, of course, uncover information about suspects, but would not be responsible for the follow-up. The information would be turned over to the appropriate investigative authorities, and the task force would focus on tracking down content and ensuring platforms comply with the new measures. If Canada were to introduce an operating licence system, as I mentioned earlier, it would make the task force's job easier, as would having the contact information of those in charge.
That brings me to my third point. I want to underscore the importance of focusing on prevention in schools.
A continued focus on awareness is needed to make sure young people understand the significance of pictures and videos. Victims readily put their trust in people or technology. Many cases involve young people who trusted apps and sites like Snapchat because they felt secure knowing that the content would be removed. They ended up realizing, however, that their pictures and videos were shared without their consent.
Lastly, I want to stress how relevant research is.
In Canada and the U.S., we have no evidence focused on the phenomenon. The sexual exploitation of children on the Internet is hard to measure. I recommend that the government adopt measures to make it easier to access data, so that researchers like myself can build a body of evidence to effectively inform public policy.
I have been working on this problem for nearly 20 years now. I don't think we can rely on the industry to regulate itself. That's quite clear from the stories you've heard.
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