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THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

EVIDENCE

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OTTAWA, Thursday, November 6, 2025

The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met with videoconference this day at 10:30 a.m. [ET], in camera, to study Bill S-212, An Act respecting a national strategy for children and youth in Canada; and Consideration of a draft agenda (future business).

Senator Flordeliz (Gigi) Osler (Deputy Chair) in the chair.

[English]

The Deputy Chair: Good morning. My name is Senator Flordeliz (Gigi) Osler. I’m a senator for Manitoba and deputy chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.

All speakers, I will kindly remind you to please speak clearly and not too fast when it is your turn to speak.

Before we begin, I would like to do a roundtable and have senators introduce themselves.

[Translation]

Senator Cuzner: Rodger Cuzner from Nova Scotia.

[English]

Senator Senior: Senator Senior from Ontario.

Senator Hay: Katherine Hay from Ontario.

[Translation]

Senator Arnold: Dawn Arnold from New Brunswick.

[English]

Senator Moodie: Rosemary Moodie from Ontario.

[Translation]

Senator Boudreau: Good morning. Victor Boudreau from New Brunswick.

[English]

Senator Muggli: Tracy Muggli, Treaty 6 territory, Saskatchewan.

The Deputy Chair: Today we are continuing our study of Bill S-212, An Act respecting a national strategy for children and youth in Canada.

Joining us today, for the first panel, we welcome, in person, Emily Gruenwoldt, President and Chief Executive Officer, Children’s Healthcare Canada, and Raissa Amany, Executive Director, Young Canadians Roundtable on Health. By video conference, we welcome Sara L. Austin, Founder and Chief Executive Office, Children First Canada.

Thank you all for joining us today. You will each have five minutes for your opening statement, to be followed by questions from committee members.

Emily Gruenwoldt, President and Chief Executive Officer, Children’s Healthcare Canada: Good morning. It is an honour to be here with you today speaking in support of Bill S-212, An Act to establish a national strategy for children and youth.

I know some of you in the room, but for those of you I haven’t met, my name is Emily Gruenwoldt, and I serve as President and CEO of Children’s Healthcare Canada, Executive Director of the Pediatric Chairs of Canada and Co-Founder of Inspiring Healthy Futures.

Children’s Healthcare Canada is a national, not-for-profit association that represents children’s healthcare delivery organizations that include all 16 of Canada’s children’s hospitals, community hospitals, children’s rehabilitation and home care and palliative care agencies serving children. The Pediatric Chairs of Canada (PCC) are the department heads of pediatrics across Canada’s 17 medical schools. Finally, Inspiring Healthy Futures is a national collaboration committed to measurably improving the health and well-being of children and youth across this country.

The current state of children’s health in Canada often surprises Canadians. In the province you call home, Senator Osler, one in four children lives in poverty, well above the national average. In Quebec, Senators Petitclerc and Brazeau, who aren’t here, child-protection investigations have risen nearly 50 percent since 1998, now affecting 23 children per 1,000. In New Brunswick, Senators Boudreau, Arnold, Cuzner and McNair, four in ten children live in food-insecure households. In Ontario, Senators Senior, Moodie and Hay, over 30,000 children are waiting for mental-health services, while transgender youth face a 16-fold higher risk of suicide than their peers. Nationwide, one in five children lives with chronic pain, nearly one third have a chronic illness and about 100,000 live with medical complexity requiring frequent hospital care and coordination across multiple sectors and systems.

These are not isolated figures. They tell the story of a country where a child’s opportunities and outcomes too often depend on where they live, who they are or what their family can afford. Canadians expect better.

A national strategy is foundational for that better future. The call for a national strategy for children and youth is not new. It has been echoed by researchers, civil society organizations and families for decades as Canada persistently lags behind peer nations in international rankings of child and youth health and well-being. UNICEF’s global report cards consistently place Canada in the bottom third of wealthy countries for child well-being, below nations with fewer resources but stronger coordination. Top-performing countries have one thing in common: legislated, outcome-driven national strategies that align investments, policies and accountability around measurable results for kids. Canada has the resources to do the same. What’s missing is the political will and a coherent, enduring plan.

Through Inspiring Healthy Futures, a partnership of Children’s Healthcare Canada, the Pediatric Chairs of Canada, CIHR and UNICEF Canada, more than 2,000 voices have contributed to a shared Acceleration Agenda, a road map to improve child and youth well-being. At the very top of that agenda: a national strategy.

A legislated national strategy would define clear national outcomes and indicators across domains such as health, learning, safety and inclusion. It would ensure whole-of-government coordination, recognizing that children’s well-being depends as much on housing, income and education as it does access to healthcare. It would set measurable targets and transparent reporting so Canadians can track progress; prioritize prevention and early intervention, shifting resources upstream to reduce crisis care and long wait-lists; embed equity and participation, collecting disaggregated data and ensuring children and youth have a voice in policies that affect them; secure stable, multi-year investments tied to outcomes and shared accountability; create a unified data backbone and public dashboard, enabling provinces and territories to learn from one another; and legislate continuity, ensuring that progress endures beyond election cycles.

Without a framework, we lack the coordination and accountability needed to deliver measurable improvements. Bill S-212 would change that. With adoption and implementation of a national strategy, Canada could realize measurable success. Within five years, Canada could see infant, injury, and preventable hospitalization rates falling faster than the OECD median; food insecurity reduced by one third, with sharper declines for Indigenous and low-income children; and 90% of children receiving care within clinically recommended wait times. These are achievable, measurable goals with an economic and social return if we commit to a shared plan.

Canada’s children are growing up in a nation that possesses the means to help them thrive, but not yet the systems to ensure it. Many are healthy and resilient, but far too many are constrained by preventable inequities and fragmented supports. A legislated, coordinated strategy would help Canada move from intention to impact, transforming isolated initiatives into measurable, sustained progress.

On behalf of Children’s Healthcare Canada, the Pediatric Chairs and the broader Inspiring Healthy Futures coalition, I urge this committee to pass Bill S-212 without delay and to champion its implementation with provinces, territories and Indigenous partners.

Thank you.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Gruenwoldt.

Raissa Amany, Executive Director, Young Canadians Roundtable on Health: Good morning, honourable senators.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that the land on which we are currently meeting today is the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin Peoples.

My name is Raissa Amany. I am the Executive Director of the Young Canadians Roundtable on Health. We are a national, youth-led organization created in 2013 based on a recommendation in The Sandbox Project’s founding report which called for the creation of a national advisory of youth leaders to participate in decision-making around child and youth health. Since then, we have grown into a collective of nearly fifty-five young leaders from across the country, and we share a common commitment to improving the lives of children and youth through national collaboration, research and policy engagement.

I am here today because young people are experiencing real and growing challenges. Canada has the ability to support strong outcomes for children and youth, but not every young person is able to access that potential equally. As Emily mentioned, in UNICEF Report Card 19, Canada ranked 24 out of 36 high-income countries for children’s physical health and 33 for adolescent suicide. Young people across Canada continue to face issues relating to food insecurity, poverty, access to health services and many more. These are not isolated issues. They are symptoms of a broader structural problem. We do not consistently prioritize young people when we design our systems, invest our resources or set our national goals. Solutions become fragmented, and outcomes vary drastically across communities.

This week’s federal budget introduced several broad investments across multiple sectors that will influence young people’s lives. However, it stops short of ensuring those resources directly support improvements in children’s physical and mental health. As a result, children’s health and well-being continue to be underfunded and under-prioritized, and the consequence is simple: Young people are falling through the cracks. Without a unifying framework that centres young people, progress will be inconsistent and inequities deepened across communities.

Bill S-212 provides a valuable opportunity to shift this. A coordinated approach would reduce the various structural and social inequities that currently shape young people’s well-being.

There is a phrase, “nothing about us without us,” which is the principle that recognizes the value of including those directly affected in shaping policy. At Young Canadians Roundtable on Health, we know that youth engagement is most effective when it is meaningful, especially when young people are not brought into the process after decisions are made but are included from the very beginning. Too often, youth engagement exists only in name, like a checkbox, a single seat at a table or a token voice expected to speak on behalf of 8 million children here in Canada. Policies are strongest when informed by those they affect most directly. Engagement within this strategy should therefore be structured, ongoing and accessible — not occasional or symbolic. Young people are eager and ready to partner in shaping solutions that reflect their lived experience.

What matters most here is that the strategy helps ensure young people are considered at the outset of policy development and are considered a priority for the federal government. Bill S-212 provides an important opportunity to strengthen Canada’s approach to supporting children and youth. We no longer wish to live as an afterthought; the future depends on the health of our generation. Without healthy children and youth, any gains we make today will be lost. We are the leaders of today and tomorrow, and we want to ensure a strong and healthy future not only for us but for future generations as well.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Amany.

Sara L. Austin, Founder and Chief Executive Office, Children First Canada: Good morning, honourable senators. It is a privilege to be joining you today, speaking for the rights of 8 million children in Canada. I am joining you today from Calgary, Alberta, in Treaty 7 territory.

My name is Sara Austin, and I am the founder and CEO of Children First Canada. We are a national charity with a bold and ambitious vision that together we can make Canada the best place in the world for kids to grow up.

This year marks our tenth anniversary, and while we have seen great achievements over the past decade, the reality is that childhood in Canada is in crisis. Just last month, we released the latest Raising Canada report, the eighth edition of our annual report on the state of the nation’s children, highlighting the top 10 threats to children in our country. The findings are deeply concerning. Canada has fallen to sixty-seventh place on the global KidsRights Index due to growing failures in key areas such as poor mental and physical health, escalating rates of violence and abuse, the lack of child and youth participation in decision making that affects their lives and many more threats to their daily survival and development.

Despite decades of wealth and progress, children’s rights continue to be violated every day through preventable injuries, untreated mental health crises, violence and abuse, poverty, discrimination and the mounting impacts of climate change. These threats affect all children in Canada, but they disproportionately harm children and youth who are Indigenous, Black, rural, disabled and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth.

For the past decade, we at Children First Canada have consistently called upon the federal government to adopt a national strategy for children and youth with clear targets, timelines and investment plans. It is not a new request. We have been beating this drum for 10 solid years and building a growing chorus of voices calling for action.

I had the great privilege of contributing to Canada’s last national strategy for children more than 20 years ago, as part of the legacy of the UN’s World Fit for Children global agenda. More than two decades later, we still have no nationally coordinated plan to uphold the rights of our children, and the consequences are catching up with us.

One of the key recommendations of the Raising Canada 2025 report is the urgent adoption of a national strategy co-developed with children and youth. This recommendation has been endorsed by our Council of Champions, which includes the CEOs of SickKids, CHEO, Holland Bloorview, the IWK Health Centre, our Youth Advisory Council, the Young Canadians’ Parliament and many more. They understand that Canada’s prosperity and future stability are directly tied to the well-being of our youngest citizens. We ignore that at our peril.

When Children First Canada was launched in 2015, we began by inviting children and youth from across the country to draft their own road map for change. The result was the creation of the Canadian Children’s Charter, a historic document shaped by thousands of young people from coast to coast to coast. It called on Canada to first listen to children and then act with them, not for them. Bill S-212 offers an opportunity to finally fulfill that vision.

Today’s children are inheriting a world of escalating crises, yet they remain largely absent from the decisions that shape their lives and futures. Let this be a moment that changes that. Let Bill S-212 be the bridge between generations, a framework that recognizes children not as passive recipients of services but as partners in shaping the childhood that they deserve today and the future that they will inherit.

This week’s federal budget proudly announced billions of dollars in infrastructure investments to secure our nation’s future, yet there is no infrastructure more vital than the lives of our children. Let us treat children as Canada’s most treasured natural resource and this national strategy as our most essential nation-building project.

A national strategy for children and youth is not just good policy; it is both a moral and economic imperative. It is time for the federal government to demonstrate that children are a national priority and to put them first.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you all for those opening remarks.

We will now proceed to questions from committee members. For this panel, senators will have four minutes for your question, and that includes the answer. Please indicate if your question is directed to a particular witness or all witnesses.

Senator Hay: I feel like it’s old home day for me. Sara, it’s great to see you up there, and congratulations on 10 years and all the work you have done. Emily, I love the work that you are doing, and, Raissa, unbelievably important work. Thank you for being here.

Maybe, Sara, I could ask you a question first, and then I have a question for all of you. Knowing that you have had such a vision for youth and a strategy and a place in Ottawa to almost stick handle and an ambassador for children and youth, you must be happy to see this bill, as I heard you say. How do you see some of the work that you have done woven in this bill? Where do you think we can add more to make it realize the total dream that you had for 10 years?

Ms. Austin: Thank you, honourable senator, for the question and for the opportunity to be here today. I’m really pleased to see such a strong champion for children within the Senate.

When I look at this bill, one of the things that makes me most excited about the promise it holds is that it centres the voices of children and youth. I commend Senator Moodie for the extensive consultations that were held with children and youth. Children First Canada was proud to support that process, helping to bring together children and youth from across the country to engage them in consultations, virtually and in person, over an extensive period of time, typically during the peak of the pandemic when kids were suffering very gravely. I really commend the extensive consultations that did take place to involve children and youth in this process and that their priorities and their perspectives and their rights are upheld here.

I’ve said this many times before. We don’t need legislation for a national strategy; we need political will. But I believe that this legislation is valuable and important because we haven’t actually had somebody step up and lead this without it. I think the value of this bill is that it’s prompting conversations like we’re having today. It’s bringing these issues to the forefront on Parliament Hill, and I believe it is a necessary step to be able to move this over the finish line.

As you heard from all of us here, we have been calling for this for two decades now. It has been 20 years without a strategy for children. When we think about where we sit right now, sixty‑seventh on the global KidsRights Index, think about the UNICEF scorecard, I look back to when that last strategy was cancelled in 2004. That was the beginning of the fall, in my perspective. When you lack a plan, targets and accountability, it’s not surprising that we have ended up in this place. It’s not to suggest in any way, shape or form that our prime ministers or members of Parliament and the Senate don’t care about our children and don’t prioritize them, but when we lack a strategy, a plan, targets and accountability, things fall off the rails. We have seen the consequence of that over two decades, and t’s time to turn that around.

Senator Hay: Thank you, Sara. I agree with everything. Just as one clarification, we do need political will, and we need to make this legislation in law so we protect it for the future.

Raissa, it is so important to make sure youth are not at the table in a performative or token way, and youth that represent Canada in its entirety — not Canadian youth but all youth in Canada coast to coast to coast. You have done an amazing job. How would you translate youth voices truly into front-line governance of this bill?

The Deputy Chair: Senator Hay is actually out of time. I’m going to ask you to think about that answer, and we will come directly to you on second round when you’ll have four minutes for that answer. Thank you very much.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

Sara, I was so pleased to be able to be with you to actually celebrate the 10th anniversary of Children First Canada in Calgary.

This is a question but also an invitation to really look more closely at the point that has been made about the need for political will. It is to invite your reflections on maybe even particular moments that you remember where there was not follow through. There is a whole series of moments where implementation falls apart. Senators and advocates know very well that it’s one thing to pass a law, and it’s a completely different thing to implement the law and bring about positive changes intended by the law. My question is: Do you have a recollection of turning points or moments when there was an opportunity for action to be taken and it was dropped? That’s just really to help us, in looking at the bill, to ask ourselves if there are ways in which the bill is going to protect against that dropping of the balls, if you may.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: I have a really recent example that we talk a lot about that would demonstrate how children’s issues are deprioritized amongst many other competing priorities.

Back in the fall of 2022 — for those of you who are moms or grandparents or fathers in the crowd — you will remember two crises happening at the same time. One was Shoppers Drug Mart, Loblaws et cetera ran out of Children’s Tylenol and Advil. When you have a sick child at home, it’s really difficult to support them without some very straightforward, over-the-counter medications. Many of those families who had very sick children also didn’t have primary caregivers or access to front-line healthcare services, so they naturally turned to emergency departments across the country, whether those were community hospitals or whether those were children’s hospitals.

Concurrent to that, there was a fairly significant confluence of RSV, COVID-19 and influenza circulating, so in addition to sick children who didn’t have Tylenol or Advil, we also saw our emergency departments across the country overrun with families coping with any one of those viruses.

For our children’s hospitals, for our community hospitals, this was a five-alarm fire. They had kids in their waiting rooms for 18, 19, 20 hours. If you have a child who is sick, sitting in an emergency department for that long is excruciating. It’s painful. You see them suffering, and at the same time you’re sitting there feeling helpless.

At the time, the federal Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos took great interest in what was happening. He was making weekly phone calls to our children’s hospital CEOs, one-on-one checking in to see what he could do. What could the federal government do to support children and families in the midst of this triple-demic? Very shortly thereafter, February of 2023, he stood on a podium with then prime minister Trudeau and announced $2 billion of funds to address the pediatric crisis and overrun emergency departments. Those funds were not designated, I think is the right language, so when they were transferred to the provinces, there were two jurisdictions out of thirteen who leveraged those funds for a purpose to support building capacity for children’s health.

I share that as an example where children were identified as a priority, declared a priority, identified for some investments, and then at the provincial level we didn’t see the implementation of those resources to actually address the designated need. It’s an example where I think we could prioritize things differently.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you very much. Are we out of time?

The Deputy Chair: Second round?

Senator McPhedran: I would invite responses in the second round, please.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you, senator. The next question goes to the sponsor of the bill, Senator Moodie.

Senator Moodie: I will allow my time for the responses from other witnesses to Senator McPhedran’s question.

Senator McPhedran: Is there a moment of great potential, and then something specific has happened and there wasn’t the follow-through? You can go back a long way, too, if you want.

Ms. Austin: Senator McPhedran, thank you for your kind remarks. I’m pleased you were able to join us in Calgary for the 10th anniversary celebration. Thank you for that honour.

When I think back to key moments when there was an opportunity to act, I think about the Children’s Charter, as I referred to earlier. That was a process which engaged children and youth from coast to coast to coast, laying out their concerns, describing what it means to be a child today, or at that time, the real challenges that they were facing, and not just the problems but the solutions that they envisioned. They talked about online harms, and they talked about reconciliation, poor mental health, violence and on and on. They laid out the road map. They created a clearly articulated vision that was very powerful. They were on Parliament Hill. They launched this document after more than a year of consultation, and it created a huge fanfare, drew all kinds of attention on Parliament Hill and national media, conversations from coast to coast to coast.

And yet, what became of it? It still lives on. Children talk about it, and civil society stakeholders talk about it, but it was never — the baton was essentially passed to government to say, this is the vision that children have. We need government to work as a partner with these children to bring this forward. Nothing happened. Children had clearly articulated the problems and the solutions, and yet we never saw that picked up by government. There were lots of lovely remarks, warm greetings from the Prime Minister on Children’s Day receiving this document, all kinds of statements and fanfare, but no concrete action. Here we are nearly a decade later.

Senator McPhedran: If I may, tell me if I can correctly sum up your answer. Parliamentarians dropped the ball.

Ms. Austin: That is a fair statement.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you.

Ms. Austin: It was an invitation by children and a failure on the part of the government to act on that.

Senator McPhedran: Raissa?

Ms. Amany: I have nothing to comment.

Senator McPhedran: All right. Did you have anything more you wanted to add, Sara? I think there might be a tiny bit of time left.

Ms. Austin: All of us who are in the room today, and other witnesses who will be testifying to this committee, have been called to testify before at consultations. We have had meetings with ministers. One of the important points to raise about this legislation is that political will. We have ministers who have taken up the baton from time to time and who have called us to the table to talk about the national strategy. You have called us to the table to talk about a children’s commissioner. Yet, these things get shuffled. Cabinet gets shuffled, we lose momentum, and we get back into the cycle again. Here we go.

This is one of the real values of having the legislation, assuming that it gets the support of senators and members of Parliament to actually pass. It then enshrines it in legislation, and it’s not a victim of shifting tides or shifting portfolios or all the things we have seen happen over the past decade.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.

Senator Arnold: Thank you all for being here with us.

I agree with the political will that is necessary. I’m a huge fan of former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. She got it done in New Zealand, but not without challenges. I think we have heard from the witnesses that it’s very complex. It’s very siloed, all of that.

I want to take it to a more tangible example here. In his report, How It all Broke, New Brunswick’s Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock highlights staffing shortages, lack of human resource planning and unfilled front-line positions. For example, nearly three quarters of child psychologist positions are unfilled in New Brunswick. These are undermining the delivery of basic services to children and youth. I know we’re not to be prescriptive, but I’m curious if you think that is important and something that we should also be including in some way.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: Health human resource challenges in child health and pediatrics are a really significant challenge we face in this country. There is very low awareness of the degree of complexity and high specialization of those who deliver care for children and youth.

Wearing my Pediatric Chairs of Canada hat, we just finished a data collection effort to better understand who is in the pipeline training for pediatric subspecialty opportunities as well as those who are in the workforce, where they are located across the country and where we feel there are significant gaps that exist currently or on the near horizon. It is not an exaggeration to say there are jurisdictions that have a single subspecialist serving a particular children’s population where if that subspecialty, pediatric nephrologist, for example, chooses to relocate, retire, have a child, that entire jurisdiction will be without that subspecialty.

It is a complex challenge. Pediatric subspecialties are paid significantly less than their adult counterparts, and there are many other barriers to participation in that workforce. It’s a longer training course, for example. It is a challenge that we are deeply invested in and looking to think about across the entire children’s health professions because, you’re right, it goes beyond the profession of medicine and includes nurses, social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and so on who are delivering care specifically designed for children and youth. They’re not little adults, and their care requires a degree of sophistication.

Ms. Austin: If I may, Emily has spoken very clearly to the fragmentation around healthcare. Child welfare would be another very clear example of the fragmentation around the protection and care of children across Canada.

Any given province or territory has a totally different approach, and yet we see from all across the country children falling through the gaps of really broke welfare systems where children are paying with their lives, Ontario being a very painful example of that where there have been over 200 deaths of children in the child welfare system because children simply fall off the radar. It’s such a broken system, so completely fragmented. There is need for more consistent standards and clear vision and accountability. The child and youth advocates from across Canada have been united around their perspective around the need for a federal commissioner for children and youth and for the need for a national strategy to bring policy coherence and national standards and accountability around the fulfillment of the rights of children in our country.

Senator Arnold: Thank you.

Senator Senior: Thank you all. I really enjoyed the statements that you presented.

I want to just ask a question about the importance of disaggregated data in terms of not just the framework but the strategy in and of itself and work that you have done in this area in terms of various places where you sit. I’m asking this question within the context of gender, race, Indigeneity, gender identity, LGBTQ+, et cetera. I’m also thinking of testimony that we heard yesterday in terms of a successful approach within the First Nations, Métis and Inuit context. The concern was about a bit of a top-down approach and how successful a bottom-up approach is in terms of what is being done through ISC, Indigenous Services Canada. I wonder if you could speak to that, because I hear that concern and am wondering how that concern could be addressed from the perspective of the populations that I mentioned and how you have been able to do that in your work and how that could apply to the development of a strategy. I would love to hear from all of you, please.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: Thank you for that big question.

I think one of the strengths of the bill that’s presented is an identification of better, more accessible, more consistently collected and accessible data related to the full child.

Speaking to the health portfolio, which is the portfolio I’m most closely engaged with, it is a challenge across jurisdictions and care settings what data is collected with what consistency, how it’s shared across different care settings and the engagement or the ability of families to access data related to their children’s care. And even the indicators we collect, are they determined by healthcare professionals or are they motivated by families who care most about, is my child able to play recreational sports? Can I get them out into a school environment? Those are the metrics that actually matter to some families, which are different from what a health professional might be looking to collect.

Better data is also critical when we think about the opportunity that exists with learning health systems and the entire notion of being more responsive with an eye to quality improvement and consistency. How do we learn? How do we spread in scale? Upon which data are we measuring results?

It is a consistent and significant challenge in the healthcare space. I’ll leave it to my peers to talk about other ministries or sectors.

Ms. Amany: It is a very difficult question. I come from the lens of young people, and I am not representing all 8 million children or young people here in Canada, but when I think about my peers and data, it’s quite difficult because we need data in order to understand what’s happening within the landscape, but when we think about sexual and gender-based data and thinking about different equity-deserving communities, it is really important to think about, are we exploiting said data? Are we exploiting because we want to find that data, or would it be helpful to actually learn and sit with them as to what is actually happening on the ground? That’s my point.

Ms. Austin: I agree wholeheartedly that we need better data, and, of course, it does need to be disaggregated. When we first began producing the Raising Canada report back in 2008 with the idea of creating a state of the nation children’s report, the toughest job is that there is no comparable data on the health and well-being of children from one year to the next. We don’t have national standards around this. We have worked extensively with Statistics Canada on this front and with children’s hospitals and children’s charities around the importance of data collection and disaggregation. We’ve seen a small victory and the Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth, known as CHSCY, beginning to collect some data and having a point in time pre‑pandemic and a later point in the pandemic to measure some indicators around children’s health and well-being, but it really is far from adequate. It’s a really critical, important piece of building a national strategy and being able to be able to see if we are making progress.

With that said, we have enough data now to show very clearly that our kids are in crisis and that we’ve fallen far behind. Better data will help improve the path forward, but it certainly isn’t necessary to take the steps that are needed right now around the creation of a strategy to move us forward.

Senator Muggli: Thanks, everyone, for being with us today. I really appreciate your presence here.

I just had a CBC News story pop up: Breaking news, Supreme Court to weigh in on Saskatchewan school pronoun case. I’m interested in hearing from you if you think a national strategy can set a tone or expectations for provinces who have some jurisdiction here to try to make some statements or expectations around issues like these. Of course, this one is not just only Saskatchewan. I’d like to hear from Ms. Amany.

Ms. Amany: Thank you. That’s a really great question.

There are obviously challenges across jurisdictions, and these issues are very complex, depending on if we’re talking about pronouns or if we’re talking about gender-based care, for example, in healthcare.

Where we’re going with this, from a young person’s perspective, it’s quite difficult to discern and I can’t fully comment in terms of how the province will take said framework and apply that within their jurisdiction. However, what is important here is listening to the young people and what they need and whether that is to not necessarily move forward with the pronouns currently but just really centring young people’s voices and having that diversity at the table.

Senator Muggli: If the others want to add just on the jurisdictional issues as it relates to a national framework, feel free.

Ms. Austin: If I may add, one of the key pieces that the national strategy will bring us is clear focus on what the urgent priorities are facing children and youth. I live in the province of Alberta where we’ve been making headlines on things like book bans.

The Deputy Chair: Ms. Austin, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’re getting a lot of static in the sound. Perhaps check that you’re plugged in correctly.

Ms. Austin: I’ll try again. Is this better?

The Deputy Chair: That’s better, thank you.

Ms. Austin: One of the real benefits of a national strategy is it will bring back into clear focus for every province and territory the most urgent priorities, needs and the rights of children.

I live in the province of Alberta where we’ve been distracted with headlines around book bans, the books that our children are reading. When we think about the topics that have come up today around the rising rates of child poverty, one in three kids experiencing abuse before their age of 15, food insecurity and on and on, I think the national strategy will hopefully bring us all together with a united view around what are the most burning priorities in the lives of our children today and the plan that we need to move us forward.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: One of the strengths of Bill S-212 is recognizing and focusing on children’s rights. When I think about pronouns, that really speaks directly to their identity as a human being and respecting the right of that child or youth to identify as they choose. I would leave it at that.

Senator Muggli: Thank you.

Senator Cuzner: I want to go back to something Senator McPhedran had spoken about, but I appreciate your comments on the data collection. You deserve congratulations for moving it along.

Jean-Yves Duclos is just a gentlemen’s gentleman. For he and the Prime Minister to make that commitment was significant for a bunch of reasons. The fact that it didn’t unfold as it should speaks to the fact that, a lot of times in these instances, the feds get the pay and the province gets the say.

I support the principles of Bill S-212, but it speaks to the fact that there must be the checks and balances. It’s been said here elected officials come and go, ministers change, what have you, but there has got to be something that we’re able to follow through.

My question is to Ms. Austin. You talked about the initial strategy back in 2004, and if there ever was a time to move forward on something — back in 2004, the books were balanced. There were surpluses. A third of the surplus would go to tax deductions, a third would go to paying down debt, and a third would go to new program support. If there was ever a time to get support for an initiative like this, why would it have fallen off the table? I know you’ll be honest with this. Was there a problem with the strategy, or where did it get lost?

Ms. Austin: Thank you, senator, for the question.

I can’t presume to know what was in the minds of our political leaders at the time, but we did experience a change of government at the time. It was under the previous Liberal government that the strategy was developed. I want to pay tribute to the late Honourable Landon Pearson for her leadership in leading that effort. It was driven by the global goals that were set at the United Nations at the time. Senator Pearson led the national consultations with the provinces and territories and children and youth — all the civil society stakeholders — to create that strategy. But then we experienced a change of government, a new Prime Minister, new ministerial mandates, and that strategy was just set aside. It ceased to be a priority.

There have been multiple governments that have come since that time, and no one has picked up the baton. I think that again comes back to the importance of legislation and enshrining this in legislation so that the protection of the rights of our children and keeping them as a national priority does not become a victim of political will or successive changes of government.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: To your earlier comments on that question regarding the $2 billion, first of all, acknowledging Nova Scotia, they were one of the two jurisdictions that actually used the funds to build some capacity within children’s health.

Senator Cuzner: It must have been my influence.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: Exactly, must be your influence. While maybe adjacent to the strategy, what is interesting is we have seen through the Canada Health Transfer the agreements that have been struck with some strings between the federal government and the provinces. One of those strings in a handful of jurisdictions is funds earmarked for seniors’ health. If we can earmark funds in the CHT for seniors’ health, surely we can do the same for children’s health. That might be one way we would have seen that $2 billion used for its intended purposes. That announcement was concurrent to the CHT renegotiated agreements in 2023, so doubling down on missed opportunity.

Senator Boudreau: Senator Cuzner only wishes he was from New Brunswick.

In all seriousness, I actually had a couple of questions that I wanted to focus my attention on, but Ms. Austin said something early on, and she just repeated it but in a slightly different way. Early on, you had said we don’t need legislation, we need political will.

I was a provincial politician for 14 years before coming to this place. Politicians deal with thousands of competing priorities in the run of a day, trying to get access to that limited attention and limited money in the budget. There are many youths and child advocates doing amazing work. The question is for all three, but it’s just what Ms. Austin said that resonated for me. Can we do a better job advocating on behalf of our children and youth to create more of a sense of urgency? Or are there too many advocates out there and the message gets watered down? Wanting to do better for our children and youth seems like pretty easy stuff to convince people of, but yet here we are, and we’re seeing the global rankings that Canada is getting, and we should be in the top 10 at least. Can we do a better job at advocating the needs of our children and youth in a more concerted effort to create more of a sense of urgency?

Ms. Austin: Thank you, senator. I appreciate the question.

Those of us present as witnesses today, senators who have previously held mandates — think of Senator Hay and the remarkable work she did at Kids Help Phone and many others who have been beating this drum — it is not for the lack of loud voices and united voices. Our sector serving children and youth has been united on this front for many years, as you’ve all heard. We’ve had very loud and at times what may be perceived as aggressive campaigns. We think back to the pandemic. We led a campaign called CODEPINK because kids’ lives were literally on the line. They were dying due to lack of access to medical care, whether physical or mental healthcare.

I don’t know what more we can do on behalf of children or what children themselves could be expected to do. They are the only members of our society who are not enfranchised. The Honourable Senator McPhedran is trying to change that with her proposed bill to lower the voting age to age 16 and expand voting rights to give young people a stronger say. When we have a quarter of our population and a 100% of our future who have no direct political voice to hold our leaders accountable, it is sadly very easy to dismiss them as a priority. It’s not to suggest that political leaders don’t care about our children, but at the end of the day, they don’t vote. They don’t have a direct say in holding leaders accountable.

It just behooves government to live up to the commitments that were made in 1991 when Canada ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Rights don’t matter if there is no accountability, and this national strategy would bring the accountability that is needed and the political will to move it forward.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: When we created Inspiring Healthy Futures, we brought together organizations from across sectors because, while we were aligned in principle, we were not aligned in practice. The idea was to think about how to bring children’s organizations — whether it’s education, social services, justice, health, otherwise — together to create a common advocacy agenda. All of our tiny little organizations individually trying to move the needle on very specific measures was getting us nowhere. The UNICEF report card showed we were falling year over year. This more consolidated, consistent approach has helped us come together as a community, and I’m hoping it’s going to make a difference. It helped us realize the child health study in the House of Commons, and here we are today. I’m hoping that our collective action through that shared collective advocacy will make a difference.

The Deputy Chair: Senators, we have nine minutes or so for a second round, so I’m going to ask for a lightning round where everyone can be concise with their questions and answers. Senator Hay is at the top of the list, giving our witness time to answer the previous question.

Ms. Amany: The question was around how we can bring young people forward in governance. Having been in this space for a very long time doing youth engagement, it comes back to intentional engagement. That’s the bottom line. There needs to be intentional accountability and a framework to actually engage young people in this. We see a lot of tokenism when it comes to equity deserving young people. They are often the same people being brought into these spaces, like myself. I would put myself there too, given that many of us rely on the same people to talk about what is actually happening on the ground. I can’t speak on certain equity-deserving groups. It needs to be meaningful and intentional, but in a way where the relationships are made, because we can’t just be coming down, knocking on doors and saying, “Would you like to come and present your perspectives?” We can’t be doing that. There needs to be a strategy. Young people are eager to be involved in this, and they have bright ideas. I can only speak to certain parts of it, obviously, but there are many groups out there, young people, who are speaking to me within my organization as well, and we try to amplify each other’s work.

Senator Moodie: Frankly, colleagues, this is not a new idea. The strategy idea has been around for a while. Canada is behind the curve. Over half of the 38 OECD countries have policy documents that outline their government’s approach to supporting positive outcomes for children across several domains of well-being. To put it on the record, can you identify for us who some of the key leaders internationally in this area are? Who should we be looking at to align with?

Ms. Austin: I would point to the countries that sit in the top 10 countries on the UNICEF global rankings as being clear exemplars of countries that have national strategies, have commissioners for children and youth and have made the rights and well-being —

The Deputy Chair: Ms. Austin, your connection is again full of static. We will move to one of the in-person witnesses, and we will try to help you through your technical problems.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: Sara was starting down the path of the top performers on the UNICEF Report Card, which are Netherlands, Denmark and France, one, two and three. They have consistently prioritized children and youth in policy, made sustained investments upstream, not toward Band-Aid solutions, and established leadership structures that are accountable for outcomes.

One of the key metrics that we talk a lot about from the UNICEF Report Card — I know you’re going to be seeing Lisa Wolff shortly — is that high-performing countries spent almost double what we do relative to GDP. Netherlands, for example, invests 3.68% of their GDP on programs, policies and services focused on children and youth. Canada commits 1.68% of our GDP.

The Deputy Chair: Ms. Austin, can we try you again briefly? If we get some interference, we’ll have to ask you to send your comments in writing.

Ms. Austin: Thank you. I appreciate that.

I won’t repeat what Emily has already shared with you. The only other example I would point to is Australia — less regarding their national strategy and more about their framework for a commissioner for children and youth, given comparable challenges around diverse population and unique rights of Indigenous children in their country. It’s another important exemplar of a country that has prioritized the rights of children and enshrined that through the creation of a commissioner for children and youth.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you, Sara, for the reference to the importance of voters.

In prefacing my quick question, I just want to acknowledge that advocates, as amazing as you are, do not constitute a large number of voters. I’ve been hearing words like “fall off the radar” and “parliamentarians dropped the balls.” This is what it comes down to, and that’s part of what my colleague Senator Cuzner was getting at. The question is this: Do you think that 16- and 17-year-old citizens voting would actually make a difference? I’m seriously interested in this as part of the strategy.

Ms. Amany: That’s a really good question.

I can’t speak on behalf of all young people here in Canada, but we see every day that young people are creating change in their communities. These people are as young as 10 or 12. I think about 16- and 17-year-olds actually being able to create a difference, and I would believe so from my lens, given that most of them are able to create change in the communities and create charities and non-profits. They clearly have the capacity to understand what is happening in the landscape and what is truly the problem and being able to make their own decisions when it comes their political leanings. To your question, yes.

Ms. Gruenwoldt: That was a really brilliant answer, and when I reflect on Inspiring Healthy Futures’ engagement with youth, they had some of the most insightful and impactful ideas that showed up in our final framework, so I would support your suggestion.

Senator Senior: I’m reflecting on efforts in creating other national strategies, like the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence and national childcare, for example, which took a long time. The issue of political will is actually what created it in the end, because after many failed attempts, somehow the right people were in the right place at the right time in order to make it happen. That’s something to keep in mind, and just keep building on top of what has already been created and what has already been done. Dust it off if you need to, but I think this is unstoppable and it will happen. I just wanted to end with some hope about that, because it took 50 years for childcare to happen, which is wrong, but it happened and is still happening because there is much more. The National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence also took a very long time. You’re right that sometimes the provinces siphon off the money for different things, but that’s when you need a national effort and advocacy. You need provincial, territorial and local efforts in order to hold them accountable. I don’t have a question. I just needed to say that.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you.

This brings us to the end of the first panel. I’d like to thank Ms. Gruenwoldt, Ms. Amany and Ms. Austin for their testimony today.

For our next panel, we welcome Olivia Lecoufle, Board Director, Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children. She is not by video conference. Joining us by video conference, we welcome Michael Braithwaite, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jack.org and Lisa Wolff, Former Director, Policy and Research, UNICEF Canada.

Thank you all for joining us today. You will each have five minutes for your opening statement, to be followed by questions from committee members.

[Translation]

Olivia Lecoufle, Board Director, Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children: Honourable senators, esteemed members of the Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, I am honoured to attend this meeting to offer my support and expertise in the review of Bill S-212, An Act respecting a national strategy for children and youth in Canada.

[English]

It is with a lot of humility, considering all the knowledge that has been shared in the room this morning, that I come today as a board director for the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children, or the CCRC.

For over 30 years, the CCRC has been the lead national umbrella group for organizations and individuals committed to respecting the rights of children and the full implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, or the CRC, in Canada. Our work is guided by and rooted in the CRC, and we pursue our mission through diverse actions, including monitoring and reporting on Canada’s implementation progress of the CRC.

My professional experience includes 14 years as a child rights and protection advisor for Save the Children Canada, a world-leading child rights non-governmental organization, where I have designed and implemented Canadian-funded international programming spanning protection, education, health, economic empowerment and child rights governance.

[Translation]

I will begin by acknowledging that Canada is a country governed by the rule of law that recognizes that human rights are inalienable, universal, indivisible and interdependent.

Canada has ratified several international instruments that recognize that children have specific rights, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

[English]

Therefore, Canada has a responsibility to uphold those rights, from coast to coast to coast. Yet. as mentioned by my colleagues earlier and as evidenced in the concluding observations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, many gaps persist.

The CCRC fully supports for the bill that you are currently studying for many reasons.

[Translation]

First, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is composed of child rights experts from various backgrounds and empowered to monitor the implementation of the convention by its state parties, has repeatedly recommended that Canada adopt, and I quote:

. . . a national strategy that provides a comprehensive implementation framework for the federal, provincial and territorial levels of government spelling out as is appropriate the priorities, targets and respective responsibilities for the overall realization of the convention, and that will enable the provinces and territories to adopt accordingly their own specific plans and strategies.

We believe that this is precisely what the bill proposes to do.

[English]

Second, we strongly believe that a national strategy is good practice for good governance on children’s rights and that it leads to better outcomes for children. Canada is not unique in having multiple layers of government and multiple sectors in charge of children’s needs. That is actually the case for all OECD countries. Yet, unlike many of its peers, when it comes to children, Canada does not have an integrated plan to connect those layers, bridge sectors and provide clear direction for prioritizing issues, leveraging resources and measuring accountability.

Finally, we support the national strategy that you are studying because it is affirmatively rights-based. Anchoring the strategy in the specific human rights of Canadian children is essential for its success as it ensures the strategy is aligned with Canada’s commitments, particularly as it also recognizes the importance of directly consulting children and youth.

At this stage of the study, the CCRC recommends an amendment to the bill in order to add a reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, specifically Article 7, and to embed references to children with disabilities throughout the whole document.

Honourable senators, I will conclude on the urgency of having such a strategy at a time when public resources are under the increased pressure of compounding crises, both domestically and internationally, a time where needs are increasing and gaps are widening. A national strategy is much needed to protect gains made for children of all identities and all abilities and to effectively bridge those gaps so that no children are further left behind, be they born in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Nunavut or anywhere else in this country.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you.

Michael Braithwaite, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jack.org: Good morning, honourable senators. My name is Michael Braithwaite, and I’m here on behalf of Jack.org, Canada’s national organization that empowers young leaders to revolutionize the way we think about, talk about and act toward mental health. Every year, we support more than 175,000 young people through programs that build skills, leadership and community connection. Our mission is simple: to make sure every young person in Canada has the knowledge and support they need to thrive, mentally, physically and socially.

The budget sets the table. Bill S-212 gives us the framework. Jack.org can help deliver the action.

The bill envisions a coordinated, measurable national strategy for children and youth, a framework grounded in rights, equity and accountability. That aligns exactly with what we see every day. Young people tell us the system is fragmented. Access to mental health support varies by geography, income and identity. Too often, help only arrives after crisis.

At Jack.org, we work upstream, training youth to support one another before crises through our Jack Talks, Jack chapters and our digital education platforms, Be There and edHUB. These are proven, scalable programs already operating in every province and territory, reaching tens of thousands of youth each year and backed by real-time data on impact and behaviour change. Bill S-212 is an opportunity to work with Jack.org and our partners and continue to take those lessons national.

Real prevention starts with engagement, not just services but partnership. At Jack.org, every program is co-created with youth. Young people identify the issues, design the initiatives and deliver the solutions. That model turns prevention into participation. It gives youth ownership, builds leadership and ensures that mental health education reflects the realities of diverse communities. It’s a proven example of how co-creation drives both engagement and measurable impact.

The focus on prevention is not just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do. The annual estimated cost of mental illness in Canada is over $50 billion in healthcare costs, lost productivity and reduced quality of life. Prevention and early intervention aren’t just moral imperatives; they’re economic ones.

A healthier generation means a stronger, more productive country, and this week’s federal budget makes that opportunity real. We’re seeing sustained federal investments that directly affect youth well-being: making the National School Food Program permanent; expanding youth employment and leadership opportunities through the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy; and protecting critical supports like childcare, student aid and the Canada Disability Benefit. Bill S-212 gives those investments coherence, a national strategy to tie these efforts together to make sure resources reach every young person equitably and to measure the impact in their lives, not just in line items.

Through our programs, Jack.org already shows what implementation looks like in action. We see it in youth-led engagement: Indigenous, Black, francophone, rural, newcomer and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth leading change in their own communities. We see it in evidence-based training: 90% of Be There graduates apply what they learn, and 83% used the skills they learned to support a peer. We see it in national reach with local partnerships: Programs delivered coast to coast adapted to each community and culture.

At Jack.org, we’re ready to help make that happen. Our programs already connect over 175,000 young people each year across every province and territory. We have the data, the training models and the national network to help implement this strategy, working alongside federal partners, Indigenous organizations and community groups to make sure the funding in this budget turns into real outcomes. We stand ready to operationalize the youth engagement components of a national strategy, to train and support youth leaders in every region and to provide the evaluation and accountability tools that show what works.

The investments are there. The vision is before you. What’s needed now is coordinated, accountable implementation, and that’s what Bill S-212 delivers. Jack.org is ready to help government, communities and youth turn this from promise to practice, because young people are not waiting for change; they’re already leading it.

Thank you for your time and for your leadership on this essential work.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Braithwaite.

Lisa Wolff, Former Director, Policy and Research, UNICEF Canada, as an individual: Good day, honourable senators. I am Lisa Wolff, past Director of Policy and Research at UNICEF Canada. I’m joining you from the Greater Toronto Area in the jurisdiction of the Williams Treaty. It is an honour to join you today and offer insights for your consideration on Bill S-212. It is heartening to see so many children’s champions on your committee.

Children represent nearly one fifth of Canada’s population but are too often overlooked in government decision-making or their interests are subordinated to others.

For decades, Canada’s economy has grown steadily, generating unprecedented wealth. For decades, UNICEF Report Cards on the state of children in high-income countries have measured stagnation or decline in critical Canadian indicators of children’s health and broader well-being. Where are the dividends for children?

Canada is one of the 10 wealthiest OECD and EU countries, but the most recent UNICEF Report Card released earlier this year found that Canada ranks nineteenth out of 36 countries in a comparative index of indicators of children’s mental and physical health and skills development. In indicators like child mortality, Canada ranks even lower, at twenty-fifth. We rank twenty-fourth for the rate of overweight children and thirty-third for the rate of adolescent suicide. The proportion of children who achieve basic proficiency in reading and math has fallen dramatically over the past decade, leaving one third of children at age 15 without these skills. Similarly, the number of children who report a high level of happiness has fallen by 10 percentage points in recent years.

These outcomes are not due to any distinction of our geography or geopolitics or because Canada’s children and families are inherently different than others. These outcomes are a failure of public policy. Canada has inadequate corrective, child-sensitive aids for governance, including a child policy lens, a children’s strategy and budget tracking tools. These decision-making aids would help government give more consideration — and, ideally, more priority — to children’s needs and rights and make growing up in Canada better.

In other high-income countries where children are growing up healthier and happier, there are typically ambitious public policy goals stated in children’s strategies and good policy tools to help achieve better child outcomes, and they do. More than half of these countries — that is, more than 20 — have integrated children’s strategies that provide ambition and direction for government budget allocation and policy coherence across government. Many of them are federal states as well, and they manage it.

The child and youth strategy proposed in Bill S-212 can raise Canada’s ambition for our children and achieve better outcomes for and with them. This bill, and our children, deserve your support.

Thank you for your consideration.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Wolff.

We will now proceed to questions from committee members. For this panel, senators will have four minutes for your question, and that includes the answer. Please indicate if your question is directed to a particular witness or to all witnesses.

Senator Hay: Thank you, all, for being here.

I have a question for all of you. It’s short. When you read this bill, mental health is not explicitly emphasized in the current text of Bill S-212, so we have an opportunity now. I would just like your opinion on this. Yes or no, should we include it, and maybe give some context to that? Then I have a follow-up question on youth.

Ms. Wolff: Thank you, Senator Hay. It is a really important question.

It’s my understanding that the bill sets a framework for what a strategy would need to look at and include. I see the need for both a strategy to have specific policy measures with intended outcomes and targets, but also a set of good governance mechanisms, like a child policy lens. I would expect that in creating the actual strategy, rather than this bill, that mental health is going to surface as one of the key areas where our children are struggling. I would expect it to actually come out in the development of an actual strategy rather than perhaps being named specifically in the bill.

Ms. Lecoufle: I’m very convinced that this will come up in the strategy, but I don’t think it necessarily needs an amendment to the bill. I think there is so much resistance that seems to come again and again when it comes to having a strategy that, to me, this document is good enough, except for maybe the amendment around including children with disabilities. That needs some revision.

I am concerned that if we start listing more issues, then it opens more debate and then more back-and-forth at a stage where what we want is the political will to actually move this. I’m pleased when I read how the bill is structured, that it actually provides for a very detailed way of consulting the people who are the most interested, including children and youth. Obviously, this will come as an issue then.

To me, as we heard earlier this morning, there is so much urgency in making sure that this bill can move forward as quickly as possible — so eventually we can get into the work of identifying issues, creating indicators and putting it in practice — that I would refrain from making too many edits.

Senator Hay: Michael, you’re in the world of youth and mental health, and respectfully, I don’t want to leave hope to strategy, hope that mental health rises up. Maybe you could comment simply because you work in the world of youth and mental health. Do you think it’s good enough to just assume it’s going to come forward?

Mr. Braithwaite: Absolutely not. I don’t think we can make assumptions here. I don’t think we can risk it becoming optional or just secondary. This is one of the most urgent pieces facing young people today. It needs to be front and centre in this bill, and an amendment would need to be made.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Senator Muggli made reference to the use of the “notwithstanding” clause in Saskatchewan to force high schoolers not to be able to change their name or their gender identity without the permission of their parents. Based on the bill that we have before us, do we need to address gender diversity perhaps more explicitly, given that sexual orientation and gender diversity are not the same thing?

Ms. Wolff: I don’t think Canada should be employing the “notwithstanding” clause when we have agreed to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s an international law that we are obliged to implement and that the Supreme Court itself has recognized that courts need to uphold. It should not compete with subordinate laws, and children have the right to have their best interests considered in all policies and legislation. When we look at this issue through the lens of what is in the best interests of the child, we have to think about, are we leaving a certain group of children open to further discrimination, to risk of violence, to abrogate their sense of identity, their right to an identity? With that lens as primary, we might achieve some different directions for policy in areas like this.

The bill, I’m very happy to see, recognizes that we need to uphold children’s rights and our obligations to put children’s best interests as the primary consideration in policy.

Mr. Braithwaite: I think Lisa said it well. The answers to some of these questions are best answered by the people it affects the most, addressing these pieces and having the voice of youth, as the bill does, right? As witnesses have before, we have seen it earlier this morning, they talk about what the needs really are, what they are seeing, what they are hearing and what they feel. But making sure that we give the voice of youth real teeth throughout the process, and again, after the process too, implementation as well. Not just through the process but afterwards as well.

Ms. Lecoufle: I fully agree with both my colleagues here.

The Deputy Chair: The next question is from the sponsor of the bill, Senator Moodie.

Senator Moodie: Thinking about the potential advantages of a strategy, by clearing defining our goals and rigorously evaluating the effectiveness of our interventions to achieve those goals, we could ensure that every dollar spent is well spent and that no child is left behind while we’re doing this. Thinking about making the argument to government, I think this would better align with a key priority of this government as laid out by our Prime Minister, Prime Minister’s mandate letter, that government spend less on government operations. What are your thoughts on this idea of how we could and should position a strategy for children to this present government?

Ms. Wolff: Again, what we are called to do through our obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child is to understand what we’re spending on children. Is it fair? Is it proportionate? Then we ask, are we getting the outcomes that we’re intending in that spending. Taking a blind approach to simply cutting budgets often falls disproportionately, frankly, on children.

We need a concerted public expenditure tracking approach to again measure what is spent on children, as a number of other countries are doing. Often those tools are part of their national children’s strategies. They know what they are spending on children and on what specifically and the kinds of outcomes it’s getting.

There is considerable evidence that children aren’t proportionately benefitting from Canada’s spending as it is, so we would like to see coming into a children’s strategy some clear tools for measuring that and a budget and clear resources that are articulated for the priorities that are in that strategy. That’s something that has been missing from previous attempts at children’s strategies, which have simply been lists of priorities without resources, targets and accountability mechanisms.

Yes, having goals and targets for your intended outcomes for children can be much more efficient, especially if the right policies are supported in a children’s strategy that we know will make life better for kids.

Ms. Lecoufle: I agree again with Lisa, so it’s easy to speak after her, in many ways.

Yes, the theory of change behind the fact that if you have good governance, it also includes more efficiency and it means that the investments that are done are providing more return, or at least you can learn from this, has been demonstrated. It’s certainly documented across a diversity of literature, including the OECD literature. This definitely is an argument that can be used, but to some extent it’s also just the responsibility of the government and of this institution to ensure that the rights of everyone are being upheld. Children are part of our nation. Children are human beings. We are seeing through all the discussion and the indicators that their rights are not being upheld or they are not being held universally in the country. That’s the rationale. There is no other rationale. The strategy is a tool to actually get to that. Yes, it brings money efficiency, but it also brings accountability and situates Canada where it should be, which is, again, a country that respects and is governed by the rule of law and equips itself to provide good governance. What the strategy provides, which is incredibly powerful, is that there is the consultation of children that is already written here, and it’s also all the accountability mechanisms that it proposes that help to have that better governance, because then you have the eyes of the affected people that can participate.

Senator Boudreau: My question would be for Ms. Wolff. We have heard a lot about the UNICEF 2025 Report Card, which unfortunately ranks Canada 19 on child well-being. This is very disappointing and sad. You mentioned the failure of public policy. Knowing that there is no quick fix and it will take multiple initiatives and policy changes to address this poor ranking and the outcome of or children, if you could pick the top three initiatives or policy changes that could improve our ranking the fastest, what would those three initiatives be?

Ms. Wolff: There is some recent progress in establishing policies that will get us better outcomes, like stronger income benefits for children and the start of a true childcare program, so reduction in poverty. To that, I would add a concerted strategy for children’s mental health for older children who don’t get the benefit of those early years policies because they have grown past them. When I name those policies, income benefits to reduce poverty, childcare to get kids off to a really good start and good health and mental healthcare, those are policies that other countries have shown do get better outcomes. They affect a wide range of children’s outcomes in health, in skills development and in happiness. From the start, they front-load our investment in children rather than paying for remedial costs later. Those are the ones I would name and hope to see in a strategy.

Senator Boudreau: I’ll put the balance of my time on the table for my colleagues.

Senator Burey: Good morning, and thank you all for being here.

I’m going to go back to the issue of children’s mental health. I may be going at it again and again, but we do have the experience in our health systems — and throughout our society — where mental health, substance use and addiction are just not thought of as part of health in general and well-being. We have had to do end rounds on how to get mental health, mental well-being. I will start with Mr. Braithwaite. Just to get you on the record, why do you think it’s important that mental health needs to be specifically indicated in a bill such as this in terms of a children’s strategy bill?

Mr. Braithwaite: Thank you for that question.

I think, simply stated, mental health is health. It’s all part of our healthcare system. It’s seen as secondary, and we don’t invest in it or put it front and centre, as we do health. The risk of it becoming secondary in this bill or just becoming an afterthought if we don’t actually amend it and name it specifically is a risk we can’t afford to take going forward.

We’re hearing from youth across Canada that mental health is as important as ever. We’re seeing young Canadians entering the workforce really struggling with their first jobs and with not getting jobs. With the state of the world right now, the productivity of younger people in the workforce is dropping. If we don’t make those early investments, if we don’t prioritize this in the bill, if we don’t name this in the bill, the risk that we run of not attending to young Canadians’ mental health and not putting that attention to it runs really high and needs to be attended to.

We do also need to focus on the prevention of mental health as well. I think too often we love a good crisis too much, and we have to work — as the bill names, which is wonderful — with early intervention and prevention with youth mental health in those pieces so we prevent people from falling into crisis, from hospitalization and in-crisis care. As one of the senators pointed out, not only is prevention in the best interests of young people, but it’s also really cost-effective.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you, senators. That brings us to the end of the first round of questions. We will now enter second round. For the second round, you have four minutes for your question and answer.

Senator Hay: I’m a fan of jack.org. It emphasizes youth leadership in its mental health advocacy and, of course, its strategy. Mr. Braithwaite, what mechanism should Bill S-212 include to ensure youth voices are actively shaping policy rather than just being consulted on policy?

Mr. Braithwaite: I love that question, Senator Hay. Thank you very much for that.

I think you said it right there. Youth voices need to be embedded, not just invited.

I would suggest that we have a national network put together, and that network and that council are given not just — we don’t just want to seek out their thoughts, but we also want them to have real decision-making authority around this. Too often we will engage youth, but we actually need to bring them aboard to codesign the process and co-design how it is brought forward. That’s what has been our success at jack.org. When we say “peer led,” everything we do is co-designed with youth leading the way, dictating the way. They’re involved in every step of the process, as they must be in this as well. Nothing for youth without youth.

Senator Moodie: This question is wanting us to consider a little bit about how Canada should measure the health and well-being of our children. What key indicators have the countries leading in this area used to help them understand progress in the space of health and well-being? Obviously, the Government of Canada will decide on which indicators they use following their consultations, but how would we advise them?

Ms. Wolff: Thank you, Senator Moodie.

I would hope that a children’s strategy would name certain outcomes it wants to achieve, and then — theory of change — have the kind of policy actions that we think will drive towards those outcomes.

When I look at the UNICEF report cards — there have been three decades of UNICEF report cards — the research teams behind these have looked at high-income countries and the kinds of indicators that tell you how well you’re doing for children.

We can look at things like, frankly, a measure of happiness. Because what’s one of most important things in childhood? What period of time in your life should be a time when you are happy? It’s childhood. So life satisfaction is a good overall measure. It’s kind of a proxy measure for well-being because it encompasses so many things that contribute to it. Simply asking our young people, “How is your life? How do you rate your life? How happy are you?” is a good place to start. There’s big science behind that. So life satisfaction. In our country, a quarter of young people do not report high life satisfaction at the time of life when they should be happy, and that stands in for a lot of things. Are they properly fed and housed? Are they discriminated against? Are they experiencing violence? Are they experiencing good mental health?

The other things we look at in UNICEF report cards, the really fundamental indicators that again tell you a lot about what is going on, are things like overweight, academic skills at the basic proficiency level and child mortality. In a rich country, we still have children dying needlessly in their early years. We have children who are not making it to adulthood, and, in fact, we have one of the worst rates. It’s amenable to policy change and to resources. Those are the kinds of critical indicators we can be looking at.

Ms. Lecoufle: I think the indicator question is extremely important, and I’m very excited and hopeful if this goes through that there is serious work on this. It needs to strike a balance between indicators you can compare with other countries, but it also gives you an opportunity to really look at changing the way things are being monitored. I think that’s where the co-creation with young people could be so efficient, to create indicators that really meet the goals. You want to have goals that can stay over time and then goals that are more specific to the period the strategy is looking at, and that might change.

I just wanted to raise attention as well to a significant project that has taken many years and which is, to me, so interesting, called Global Child. It is hosted in Canada but actually is useful for every country. This program has gone through the effort of developing indicators so countries could better report on the CRC. Those indicators exist. They bring a wealth of experience. They also bring a wealth of consultation with children as well to know if those indicators were relevant.

So indicators, there are many of them, but as Lisa was mentioning, first you have to have your outcomes, your goals, and then you decide, how do I measure those goals? But you don’t work reverse where you first think of indicators and then goals.

[Translation]

Senator Boudreau: My question is for Ms. Lecoufle. Canada signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, but it still hasn’t achieved all of its objectives.

Can you tell us about the objectives that Canada has yet to achieve, so that we can better understand the challenges?

Ms. Lecoufle: This issue has already been addressed very well by our colleagues in the previous group, thanks in particular to the work of Ms. Sara Austin’s organization, which has developed several priorities to show the extent to which certain children’s rights are not being respected.

We also heard from Ms. Emily Gruenwoldt, who explained the health crisis, as well as our colleague from Jack.org, who spoke about mental health.

So, I think that if we look at the Convention on the Rights of the Child and take it article by article, we can see that in education, academic standards are falling, and regarding health, children continue to die. In addition, adolescents continue to suffer, both physically and psychologically. In terms of protection, we have discussed the crisis in child protection systems in each province, and in particular the over-representation of certain populations in child protection systems, notably Indigenous children.

When we use the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a framework for analyzing established rights, we can see that these rights are being violated for some children and that we have not yet achieved the desired level of progress.

Another right that I find interesting is the right to participation. In Canada, we do not yet have structures in place to allow children to be effectively represented in decision-making. There have been attempts, and it is starting to emerge, but it is not yet firmly established.

So, the parallel requests we were talking about, particularly the bills currently under discussion, such as the one aimed at lowering the voting age, or the discussions around the idea of having a national children’s ombud, are other tools that would give children more rights to participation — a right that is enshrined in the convention.

There are many examples that show how we do not necessarily respect children’s rights in Canada, and we are fortunate that, thanks to all our partners, all of this is well documented.

Senator Boudreau: Thank you.

[English]

The Deputy Chair: Senators, I do believe that brings us to the end of this panel. I would like to thank all of the witnesses for their testimony today.

Senators, is it agreed that we go in camera to discuss upcoming meetings of the committee?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

The Deputy Chair: It is agreed.

(The committee continued in camera.)