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Context: House Hansard - 114 - Oct/20/22

Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Oct/20/22 6:54:51 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I thank the member for all his work and everything he has shared this evening. It is so inspiring to me, as someone who was newly elected a year ago, to see another member of Parliament speak from the heart. It really instills a lot of hope for me in the future of our work. I also want to thank the member for his work around PTSD and the three-digit hotline. I worked in mental health and addictions prior to coming into work as a member of Parliament, and I saw how underfunded it was. I wonder if the member could share if he feels that stigma may play a part in the lack of follow-through that we are currently seeing on the mental health transfers to provinces and territories.

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Context: House Hansard - 114 - Oct/20/22

Mr. Gord Johns

Oct/20/22 7:33:51 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I want to thank my colleague for his really important work on the three-digit hotline and on PTSD. I worked with him on the PTSD bill right after we got elected. We are both from the class of 2015, and I really appreciate his leadership when it comes to mental health and working collaboratively. It is not something that I have not been a witness to. I do not have a lived experience of living as an indigenous person or in an indigenous community, but I do live in a region that has been heavily hit with suicide. I have not been to Attawapiskat, but certainly, watching that, it brought me back home. Part of the reason I ran for Parliament back in 2015 was that I had been to, I think, 15 funerals in my region for people who had passed from either substance use or suicide. When we go to a funeral for someone and we know it is a preventable loss of life, there is just an empty feeling. We know that we need to do better. Certainly, there are not enough supports. As a parliamentarian back in 2016, one of the Nuu-chah-nulth nations was going through a suicide crisis. I had to go home and be with the people there. They do not have adequate supports. They need resources. They have solutions. They have healing journey solutions that they want to implement. They just need resources. We are failing when it comes to mental health, and we are failing on reconciliation. We really need to listen to the communities themselves. Each community has ideas on how its members can heal from the trauma endured in residential schools and the colonial laws that were implemented and forced upon them.

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Context: House Hansard - 114 - Oct/20/22

Mrs. Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton—Melville, CPC)

Oct/20/22 8:12:10 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am so pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this take-note debate on mental health this evening. I will focus my comments on the challenges that our Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP veterans, and indirectly their families, face with mental health injuries. Our veterans have unique challenges to their mental health that very few civilians face. They embody the emotional and mental toil of having been deployed to many theatres where they or their comrades face peril, injuries and death. They participate in and witness violence that they cannot and do not want to begin to share with anyone outside of those who have also lived that experience. Many have experienced mental, physical and sexual abuse from those they thought were their mentors or had their backs no matter what. Many come home with physical and/or mental and emotional injuries after serving and struggling to cope. They struggle on a whole other level, as they know they are failing in their relationships with their spouses and children. Many struggle with trying to fit into a civilian world, where, from their life experience and perspective, they struggle to find their place. Then there is a challenge that is so counterintuitive and disturbing to me. Having served for seven years on the veterans affairs standing committee in this place, this is something that grieves my heart and keeps me awake, as I think of the added injury sanctuary trauma inflicts on so many of our veterans. Sanctuary trauma is what happens to the spirit and mind of a veteran when they experience the failure of the government to fulfill its promise to take care of them and their families. The number of veterans who take their own lives is a significantly higher percentage than that of the civilian population. These are the ones who have been failed the most. The recent revelation of a VAC employee pushing a veteran to choose MAID to end his struggles with a brain injury and PTSD shows just how broken our duty to care is. I will share only one of so many instances where the needs of the veteran are undervalued because those who are making the decisions about their care failed—

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Context: House Hansard - 114 - Oct/20/22

Mrs. Sherry Romanado (Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, Lib.)

Oct/20/22 8:22:59 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Richmond Hill. This is a hard conversation for many us in this chamber, many of us. It is tough to follow my colleague, who just gave an incredible speech about veterans. As many people in this chamber know, I am the mother of two serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the mother-in-law of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces now, the daughter of a firefighter and the spouse of a firefighter. As I said in 2016 when the incredible member for Cariboo—Prince George brought forward Bill C-211, I was one of the first members of the government to say I am in, because, unfortunately, PTSD has a chair at my kitchen table. When we come together tonight to talk about mental health, we are talking with one voice. Whether it be occupational stress from serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, emergency responders or people who face trauma, we all have someone in our lives who has suffered from mental illness, maybe even someone in this room, and we need to share those stories. We need to be together when it comes to mental health. The last two years of the pandemic were really difficult for some people. Our young people had a lot of difficulties. When I talk with parents, I see that they fear for their children. We need to make sure the supports are there when they are needed, and not three weeks later and not here as a referral paper. I am delighted that we are going to be moving forward with a three-digit suicide hotline number, thanks to my friend from Cariboo—Prince George, because when time is of the essence those supports need to be there. This debate is so important because people are feeling anxious, whether it is because of the pandemic or because of inflation and the rising cost of living, which is a huge stressor. Financial insecurity and breakdowns of relationships all play a factor in suicide ideation. We have heard of this. Therefore, we need to come together. We will put the partisanship aside, and together we are going to come up with a solution to get the supports to the people who need them and the families who are watching, because the families are the first who are seeing it. We have heard this time and time again. For the veteran who is suffering in their basement, self-medicating because they are hurting, it is the families who are dealing with it and looking for help, and we need to be there for them. I am committing tonight, in front of my colleagues around this chamber, that I will always stand to support those who need us. We did it in the past. Let us continue to do this. Let us get it right. Let us make sure those who are suffering have the support they need when they need it and that those who care about them are getting the supports. We have all received those calls in our offices to talk to that person. I am not trained in this field, but when I get the call that there is a veteran in crisis, I am taking the call. We have all been there. I want to thank the opposition for bringing this debate forward. Again, as my colleague said, it is not a debate; I think we all agree. Therefore, let us put it aside. Let us figure out how we can get this done, because coming out the pandemic my fear is that the need for mental health supports is going to be much larger than we are even anticipating. We need to be ready. We cannot be reactive. We need to be proactive in this regard. I know we can do this. We have done this before, and we can do this. When it comes to mental health, we all agree. With that, I welcome questions.

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