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Results: 106 - 120 of 342
Garrison Settee
View Garrison Settee Profile
Garrison Settee
2021-02-18 12:07
Our education funding is low. It's not meeting the requirement. We can't have programs, such as land-based training and education with a land-based approach. It's not there, so we're robbing Peter to pay Paul many times to get a program going.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Is the mental health issue really impacted by on the land education?
Garrison Settee
View Garrison Settee Profile
Garrison Settee
2021-02-18 12:08
Absolutely. It brings healing, when there is an opportunity to go out on the land. The mind and emotions are settled. Self-esteem is critical.
View Louise Chabot Profile
BQ (QC)
Today, we received additional data that bolsters the facts mentioned, particularly with respect to youth—who represent 24% of those in need of housing—single-parent families, and unattached individuals.
These are pretty significant statistics. It would be interesting to break them down them according to the environment, that is to say urban, rural or northern, since this is the subject of our study. There is also the whole issue of homelessness that comes into play, especially when it comes to youth. In urban areas, we know that homelessness is a significant phenomenon.
How can we improve this data to better monitor and show the changes that may be affecting youth who are experiencing homeless, in particular?
Caroline Nicol
View Caroline Nicol Profile
Caroline Nicol
2021-02-16 17:23
I can say a few words about this.
In terms of data, our main source of information was the 2016 census. We would need more recent data, such as that provided in the next census or from any other more recent source. We need to take into account that the real estate market is changing rapidly. Also, as Mr. Giroux mentioned, demographics are a big factor.
With regard to the detail of the data, an even more precise regional breakdown would allow us to have a much broader picture, particularly in terms of territories and rural areas. These are data that would also be useful in the census.
Census or other available data sources are quite limited in scope due to confidentiality requirements. In my opinion, the picture we have in terms of age is relatively good compared to other aspects, as there are quite a lot of these data. So the picture for young people and older people is good.
David Tassillo
View David Tassillo Profile
David Tassillo
2021-02-05 13:20
We did try to contact them multiple times, asking for additional information, pre- and post-interview. We didn't receive anything. With the limited information we did have, a first and a last name, we were unable to locate, in any of our forms or any of our emails, that we had received contact.
Once again, we are not insinuating that what they're saying is untrue. We are willing to look into it. We've also reached out to counsel now to get more information: what email it was sent to, whether there was a video—
View Kate Young Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Kate Young Profile
2021-02-04 16:20
As you know, we also have a real problem with youth homelessness in London. We have some really innovative ideas. You have been down to London to see what Youth Opportunities Unlimited, or YOU, has done in building youth housing.
Is that one of the key features of this?
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
Youth aging out of care and custody in the child welfare system are referred to as being on the superhighway to homelessness.
If you're homeless at 16, the chances you will be homeless at 28 is close to 80%. As kids age out of care, if we don't have supportive housing to move them from the provisional housing they have had in the child welfare system to independence—if we don't have that hop, skip and a jump to a higher quality of life—those kids will end up as the chronically homeless we have to deal with in a generation.
Focusing on youth, and in particular gay, lesbian, two-spirit and queer youth, is fundamental to this. During COVID, one of the highest jumps and spikes in population has been kids in that community as they get kicked out of their homes because their sexuality or their gender presentation presents a challenge to their families.
The homeless encampments in Toronto in particular are seeing a much higher count of racialized youth and queer youth, so building intentional housing in that space is fundamentally important to ending homelessness.
Janine Benedet
View Janine Benedet Profile
Janine Benedet
2021-02-04 11:07
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the members of the committee for inviting me to participate in this hearing.
As you heard, I'm a professor of law at the University of British Columbia and my research focuses on legal responses to violence against women, with a particular focus in recent years on sexual violence. I'm pleased to see that this committee is seriously considering how to address the problem of coercive control in intimate relationships, which is inflicted in most cases by men against women and girls.
I think it is important to note that while addressing this problem may serve to prevent further serious violence, and certainly the private member's bill in question speaks to the terrible mass killings in Nova Scotia, it's also important to understand that this coercive and controlling behaviour causes great harm to victims, affecting their sense of self-worth and throwing up real barriers to accessing the resources they need to get away from an abuser.
It's also important, and I would say this based on my own work, to recognize that coercive control may be a precursor to sexual violence in addition to or instead of physical violence. I agree with the aims of the bill, and in general I think such an offence could be useful for police and Crown counsel. I can see that this offence forms a useful middle step between an assault charge and a peace bond in some cases.
Having said that, I think it does bear saying as well that there is a history of some police and Crowns failing to use the tools they already have at their disposal, and creating one more offence will not solve the troubling tendency to disbelieve women when they report violence or the lack of other supports in the community to address the violence that they experience.
In the time remaining to me in my opening remarks, I would like to address some of the relationships and behaviour that may be overlooked when we speak of coercive control and mention a couple of features of the text of the offence that could raise concerns about whether it will achieve its important aims.
For the past several years my colleague, Isabel Grant, and I have been researching sexual violence across women's lifespans, focusing on the particular challenges that arise when prosecuting sexual assault against older women and against teenage girls, for example.
In our research we saw numerous examples of coercive control against these victims that were age-specific. For example, in our study of cases involving teenage girls we saw that the single-largest group of perpetrators were male family members, most often fathers but sometimes brothers, uncles and grandfathers. Most of these men lived with the girl in question but some did not. Controlling behaviours included controlling what a girl could wear, taking away any privacy she might have, isolating her from other family members and friends, and refusing to let her go to school or ride the bus. In one case we reviewed, a father refused to let his daughter speak to her brother, going so far as to separate them at meals so that they couldn't have contact with each other.
In the cases of older women, our primary conclusion was that the barriers to detection and prosecution when the abuser is a family member are significant. In the cases we could find we saw coercive behaviour by husbands but also sons, nephews, and grandsons. These sometimes took age-specific forms such as controlling access to necessary medication or doctor's visits or cutting the woman off from transportation so that she wasn't able to get around on her own. It also included cases of making the woman believe that she was forgetful and incompetent, that she was in the early stages of dementia and, therefore, couldn't manage her own affairs.
I want to say that while it is spousal or dating relationships that may come to mind first when we think about coercive control, I would urge the committee not to overlook these other kinds of relationships in which this behaviour also occurs and is often a precursor to other violence.
I'll conclude by saying there's a lot to discuss here in terms of the offence itself, in particular, the mental element. Fundamentally, what I would say is that it's important not to create an offence that replicates some of the problems we've had with the criminal harassment or stalking offence, and I see some of those challenges here.
I'm looking forward to discussing that more with the members of the committee.
Samuel Veissière
View Samuel Veissière Profile
Samuel Veissière
2021-01-29 13:11
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's an honour to be here.
I'm Samuel Veissière. I speak as a behavioural scientist and professor of psychiatry who specializes in the study of the impact of screen time on mental health and in youth mental health generally. I also speak to you as a parent and a professor who is very concerned for the mental health of our youth, as Professor Latif mentioned.
Because there is little time, I want to specify that the take-home message is that there are really two pandemics going on at the same time, with almost diametrically opposed risk and protective profiles. As we know, old age is by far the biggest risk factor for mortality and complications linked to the COVID-19 disease, while young age is the primary risk factor for poor mental health, but not for mortality and complications due to the COVID-19 disease.
In the acute early phase of the pandemic, I participated in a study led by Professor Rébecca Robillard at the University of Ottawa, where we surveyed 6,000 Canadians on pandemic-related stress, anxiety and worsened mental health. I'll mention some of the risk factors that we found, and then I'll go on to talk about some missing data that would really help us identify at-risk populations and also identify prevention strategies.
What we found is that the biggest risk factors for worsened mental health during the pandemic were, of course, pre-existing mental conditions and female sex, as Professor Latif mentioned, although it's important to point out that women are more likely to report mental health problems. Men, unfortunately, are less likely to report mental health problems until it is too late. We know that they suffer from significantly higher suicide rates, particularly in the context of an economic recession and job loss, but also divorce. We know that family relations have often been very negatively impacted by the pandemic. We also found that alcohol consumption and drug consumption were associated with worsened mental health. Certain personality traits like extroverts and people who suffer from neuroticism....
Interestingly, and very controversially, we found that a very strong predictor of more COVID-related anxiety was left-wing political beliefs. The point here is not a partisan political point. It is an empirical observation. The understanding of the crisis has unfortunately been very polarized and very politicized, with COVID-denying positions associated with the right, leading to a certain bias in the liberal media for more “alarmist” perspectives, thereby perhaps conferring higher anxiety for people who are on the left of the political spectrum. We know, however, that this is a predictor.
What else did we find? We found that poor family relations predicted worse mental health, as did less time spent exercising or engaging in artistic activities. We found, however—although we're still looking at the data—that socio-economic status did not necessarily predict mental health in the way that we thought it would. We found that people from the upper-middle class and higher, particularly younger people, often seemed to suffer from more anxiety, so it may be that people who are working remotely have a different sort of stress profile and perhaps worsened family relations.
That was an interesting finding, because we found that by far the strongest predictor was age. People under 40 and people in their twenties reported much worsened mental health. We also found that increased screen time and social media consumption—even reading political news—was associated with worsened mental health.
I will point out that many of us in the mental health research community were already very concerned with the mental health of our youth prior to the pandemic, in that a confluence of risk factors, many of which are associated with increased screen time and isolation, were a cause of major concern prior to the pandemic and have been gravely accentuated.
It would be very helpful for us in planning prevention strategies to have better public statistics on the incidence of suicide, of psychiatric emergencies, of drugs and alcohol consumption and so on.
To conclude, because I really want to leave time for discussion—I could go on at length to shed more light on these risk factors—given the diametrically opposed risk profile, it is important from a mental health perspective to find focused protection strategies and to restore opportunities for youth that we know are conducive to better mental health: human touch, participating in collective activities, participating in the community and in religious and athletic activities, finding safe ways for those who are not at risk to return to class, particularly for university-age populations. It has become a public health emergency.
I think that's about the gist of what I want to present. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you again, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Katherine Hay
View Katherine Hay Profile
Katherine Hay
2021-01-29 13:23
Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Health, for inviting us to speak here today.
I am going to start with a stark and sobering statistic for us all. Last year, Kids Help Phone conducted over 4,000 active suicide rescues. Research tells us that for every suicide, 125 people are directly impacted, so not only did we save over 4,000 youth in Canada, but we spared half a million people in Canada from traumatization from grief and loss of a loved one dying by suicide.
The reality of the first wave of the pandemic hit youth very hard. The second wave is just as difficult. The third wave is real—it's the mental health pandemic.
I am here because mental health is one of the most significant crises facing young people today. If we do not find solutions, if we do not ensure that young people can access support, we will lose multiple generations. The future of a strong Canada relies on the well-being of the youth of Canada today.
For over 31 years, Kids Help Phone has been Canada's only national 24-7 e-mental health service for young people in French and English, in every province and territory. In 2020, we interacted and connected with more than 4.5 million people in Canada, typically from age five to age 27, but also adults. That's an increase of 137% from 2019.
I do want you to remember that the clinical teams at Kids Help Phone are on the front lines 24-7 doing a tremendous job, and that is taking its toll.
In addition to being an essential service provider, we use real-time data to inform our decisions and the mental health landscape. We're the only mental health service in Canada combining clinical expertise with AI and machine learning for triaging to deliver better outcomes when young people reach out for support.
We see the impacts of COVID-19 every single day. Throughout the pandemic, conversations about grief have increased, as have conversations about eating and body image, by more than 80%; about gender and sexual identity, by more than 65%; about isolation, by more than 50%; about abuse, by more than 45%, and the list goes on.
I also want to take a moment to recognize that not all youth in Canada are equally served by this system. The underserved, remote, rural and racialized youth in Canada do not have equitable access, which is why Kids Help Phone is so important in addressing this reality.
We are especially worried about the far-reaching effects on some of our most vulnerable young people, including indigenous youth, Black youth, youth of colour, youth in rural and remote environments and youth identifying as LGBTQ2S+. We hear from them every single day. The percentage of young people reaching out to us about racism and discrimination doubled after the murder of George Floyd and the heightened social injustice.
These young people who text us every day are some of the most distressed young people, second only to those young people who fear harm from someone in their own home. When they speak about racism, they are also more likely to speak about suicide. We need to do more—Canada needs to do more—so that these young people do not get left behind.
I think we all agree that it is clear that COVID-19 has been profoundly hard on people's mental health—on youth in particular. At Kids Help Phone, it led to immediate record surges in demand back in March, and it has continued to do so to this day. There were 4.5 million connections in 2020.
Kids Help Phone faced enormous pressure to increase service, as well as grapple with uncertainty around our financial stability, similar to other charities. We are grateful to the Government of Canada, which, over two years, made a significant investment of $7.5 million in our essential services. That critical contribution has ensured that we remain open and that service has been uninterrupted even with record-breaking demands. We did not go dark, not for one minute.
Our work is nowhere near done. It will not be done when COVID-19 is a thing of the past, which we all hope is soon.
Everyone would agree that Canada's mental health sector is somewhat fragmented and struggles to meet the growing needs of Canadians. This is where Kids Help Phone can add value. We are pioneers in virtual care. We continue to expand our e-mental health platform to provide more youth with more seamless access to a continuum of virtual supports. We will work with our partners in the sector and governments to continue filling the gaps. We are leveraging our data, Canada's only real-time data showing what young people are facing, in their words. We speak to them every day. The reality is that we all know that the state of youth mental health was in crisis before the pandemic. It is exponentially amplified.
In closing, as I've said before and we all know, this pandemic will not come to an end when vaccines roll out, or even when the country returns to a new normal. There is no vaccine for the significant implications to our mental health. Canada must be ready to handle the long-term mental health effects of the pandemic.
Kids Help Phone is a trusted partner. Continued partnership between Kids Help Phone and the Government of Canada will play a critical role in providing e-mental health solutions for all the young people in Canada and in leveraging data to better inform policies and health system solutions. This is imperative. The future of Canada is anchored on the well-being and mental health of our young people today. It is on us to right tomorrow for them.
You need to know that Kids Help Phone will always be there for the kids who need us. We will be there 24-7, in every province and territory, in both official languages, for all who need us.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of Parliament and members of the standing committee.
View Darren Fisher Profile
Lib. (NS)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Six minutes are probably not going to be anywhere near enough with this group of witnesses.
First of all, I want to take a moment to thank all of you for being here. Ms. Nederpel, Ms. Hackett and Ms. Dreyfus, please take back to your membership the thanks of all the people on this committee for the incredible work that you and your members all do. We're so very thankful.
Ms. Dreyfus, I'm so glad you made a recovery from COVID. It is so nice to see you here, and thank you very much.
I'm going to go to you, Ms. Hay, if I could. Your statistics were alarming. The work you do is overwhelmingly impressive. Thank you.
I'm a father of two teenagers. When we think about how the schools and the programs for youth were all shut down during the first wave, I was so glad to see that we did invest over $7 million with the Kids Help Phone.
I also want to take a quick second to thank Tony Van Bynen, because we wouldn't be having these conversations if it weren't for Tony pushing so hard for this study, and it's so important. It's the pandemic within a pandemic.
I'm sorry that I'm taking so long before I get to a question, but this is pretty important stuff to me.
We see a light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines, but we're so far from being out of the woods yet. I think about social isolation, and I think about virtual-only learning for students across the country and the lack of in-person activity. It's a major issue. It was a major issue before COVID, and it's going to be a lingering issue long after COVID.
What can we do better to support this generation of youth right now and into the future?
Katherine Hay
View Katherine Hay Profile
Katherine Hay
2021-01-29 13:39
Thank you for that question, Mr. Fisher. I could not agree with you more. You know as a father of two teenagers—I'm a survivor of the teenage years, thankfully—that what we are seeing right now with young people is an enormous amount of loss and grief.
My colleague from McGill University talked about touch and the lack of in-person interaction. It is important to create an environment where virtual care and virtual supports—multiple different ones, because one-size-fits-all doesn't fit anybody well—are integrated and seamless. I cannot say that enough, about the seamlessness. It is critically important that we build a system for young people where they are not left behind. For the work of this and other governments across Canada focusing on mental health and young people, the time is now, and we cannot let them get far behind.
I could give you a list of things that Kids Help Phone could partner with that would directly impact young people, but for today I just want to implore this committee to make sure that you push all of us in the sector, and yourselves, to make sure it's seamless, that we are not fragmented and that we're not assuming the gaps are small, because the gaps are large.
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