Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the member for Calgary Signal Hill for his courage to speak about his own life experience. When we take the opportunity to discuss suicide in a public place, we make a difference in the world to families and individuals. We take the stigma and darkness away from them. It is very important for people to talk about their pain. I want to acknowledge my colleague's bravery.

It is an honour to stand here today to speak to the important motion brought forward by my colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, and to acknowledge all the work he has done on this issue and his leadership.

The motion calls for the federal government and indeed all of us in the House to provide leadership to create and implement a national suicide prevention action plan.

Like my colleagues, I want to acknowledge the family members, friends and our colleagues here today who have been touched by the death of someone they have loved by suicide. I want to also acknowledge the many indigenous communities, including communities in my province, that have been dealing with immense grief and sadness with the suicides of so many young people, and those communities that are struggling to get governments to take notice and invest in much needed services, support and mental health services in their communities.

I would also like to acknowledge Marilyn Irwin from Saskatoon for her fierce advocacy around the importance of investing in mental health services with respect to preventing suicides in our communities.

The motion calls upon us to move to action. Frameworks have been put in place as well as a scattering of programs within different jurisdictions and different departments, but we really need to act beyond those frameworks. Too many people have died and many of those deaths could have been prevented if action had been taken.

I want to make three general comments on the role of the federal government on this issue. To me, there are some similarities to the issue of homelessness.

Where governments fear to tread, or stay back in Ottawa, or create frameworks or talk about policies, communities have had to step in and take the lead. If there were ever a time for governments at all levels to really learn how to work alongside communities, this would be the time. It is time for the federal government to really understand the issue and to do that well.

Prior to becoming a member of Parliament, I spent over 30 years working in the community. It had always been a struggle for communities to work alongside the federal government as true partners. If we were ever going to find a way to do that, and do that well, and build on that capacity within the federal government, this is the action plan that could allow us do that.

I have one final comment with respect to the federal government and this issue, and that is jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is a government issue, not a community issue. People's lives are not divided into jurisdictions. People's bodies are not divided into jurisdictions. Governments need to figure out those issues themselves and find the resources to do that so they truly can sit down with communities and tackle issues in their entirety, as opposed to saying it is not their jurisdiction, which we have heard before. People have died because governments have been unable to figure out their roles.

I also want to commend my colleague for the thoroughness of his motion. It really includes everything we need to create a national action plan, to move the federal government beyond a framework, to move the federal government beyond a sort of patchwork of systems of care, all those kinds of things, to really bring everyone together, all hands on deck, so to speak, and to move forward and have an impact on the lives of people.

My colleague had an opportunity to talk about some of the things that needed to be included in an action plan. We also heard a member from the opposite side, from the government, talk about some of the programs in place.

However, we know from the motion and the work my colleague has done that there are certain things we need to have in an action plan to actually have some impact. The most crucial one is culturally appropriate and, as I mentioned, community-based suicide prevention programs, particularly in indigenous communities. There is nothing wrong with starting an action plan focused on those communities that are most impacted or most vulnerable. We can all benefit from that work.

My colleague and other members have spoken about the need for evidence, such as national evidence-based guidelines on how to intervene in suicide and what the best practices are, which is an excellent role for the federal government; monitoring, such as a national public health monitoring program for prevention and identification for at-risk groups; creation of programs to identify and fill the knowledge and data gaps. This is always important when look at an issue that has had a lot of stigma attached to it. A lot of people have not talked about it, but we really need to know what is going on and the gaps in the data.

We need to develop the tools to promote safe, responsible media reporting of suicide and national suicide prevention training standards. All of this is included in the action plan provided in the motion today.

We need an online hub for suicide prevention resources in multiple languages. My colleague also mentioned the need to have that in indigenous languages.

We need to pool all the resources together and all of our expertise to analyze the risk factors and potential solutions. We have talked about some of those: the impact of childhood experiences; the role of social media; and the best way to reduce stigma around accessing mental health services, which we know will play a key role in addressing the epidemic.

As we have also heard, suicide impacts every community in Canada. We heard a very personal story about what happens, as well what is left behind and the trauma people face from the sudden death of a loved one. It is a sensitive subject, but we have done an important job today in talking about it in the House of Commons so we can move forward on a very important topic. We have an example in Quebec, which created a province-wide action plan that has impacted the suicide rates in the province.

In my province, just last May, the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations released a report on the suicides in first nations and brought together some of the things that we needed to do to address that issue. Therefore, groups are leading the way, bringing their work to the national level in order to have a real impact.

I want to acknowledge that leadership from the FSIN. In particular, it looked at the impact of racism and colonialism and how we needed to not just look at suicide individually but look at how communities, governments and systems had played a role in the very large numbers of suicides we had seen in indigenous communities.

I am very proud to stand today. As others have mentioned, if we are to do anything between now and June, before the next election, I sure hope it is through this motion. I want to thank my hon. colleague for bringing it forward and giving me the opportunity to speak on it.

Sheri Benson

Transcript

Private Members' Business

Discussions (0)