Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to the Senate Social Affairs Committee’s report on rethinking the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention. To be honest, I rise with a bit of a heavy heart to speak today because the issue of suicide prevention is so important to me, but I do not believe the approach the committee has taken on it in this report is the right one. There are several reasons for that and I will get to those.

Although I see many problems with this committee report, I wanted to take a moment to recognize and highlight the important contributions of our colleague Senator Patrick Brazeau in the area of suicide prevention. Senator Brazeau has worked tirelessly to advocate for mental health and suicide prevention, particularly for men and Indigenous peoples. He shared his own compelling story as a survivor of suicide with the Social Affairs Committee as a witness during this study and brought an immeasurably valuable perspective to the committee’s work in this regard.

Honourable senators, the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention is just that — a framework. It was developed under the former Conservative government of prime minister Stephen Harper. Starting before I even came to the Senate, I fought personally to see the framework come to fruition. It was implemented in 2016, the first year of the Trudeau government. The framework presents an opportunity to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across the country, in addition to educating Canadians on issues related to suicide and suicide prevention. The effectiveness of the framework is commensurate with the effort a federal government puts into it.

Unfortunately, as we all know, this Trudeau government is big on promises but deficient on delivery. Their efforts on suicide prevention have been practically non-existent in the last eight years. Rather than holding the Trudeau government accountable for its inaction on mental illness and suicide prevention, the Social Affairs Committee has instead produced this report labelling the framework itself a failure. Canada’s suicide prevention framework isn’t a failure; it’s the Trudeau government’s utter lack of action on suicide prevention and mental health that’s a failure.

In fact, this entire committee report on suicide prevention does not mention even once the Trudeau government’s major broken promise on the $4.5 billion Canada Mental Health Transfer. When Trudeau’s first Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Carolyn Bennett, appeared before the Senate Social Affairs Committee, not even one senator asked the minister questions about that spending commitment.

As of now, the Liberal government is already $1.5 billion behind on that 2021 election promise, and since there is no mention of the Canada mental health transfer in the 2023 budget or their very recent Fall Economic Statement, I’m not holding my breath that the Trudeau government will deliver on that mental health funding anytime soon, if even at all.

After eight years, the Trudeau government has failed Canadians on suicide prevention. Any major actions this government has taken impacting mental health have been detrimental: like legalizing marijuana, which is bad for mental health, especially for young people, or expanding assisted suicide to include those with mental illness, which has been a devastating development for mental health and suicide prevention.

The federal government doesn’t even have an updated mandate letter for the new Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, who has already been in her position for the last six months. If we look to the 2021 mandate letter of the previous minister for guidance, the first item listed is delivering on the Canada mental health transfer. Well, we know how that turned out. I seriously question the Trudeau government’s commitment to mental health and suicide prevention. It is definitely not high on Prime Minister Trudeau’s priority list.

The Trudeau government itself can’t even identify any significant actions it has taken on mental health. It is supposed to publish progress reports on its fulfillment of the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention every two years. The most recent publication was dated 2022. Its “key suicide prevention policy advancements” table is just a reprint of the 2020 version with its last advancement listed in 2019. Two of the four advancements listed since the Liberals assumed office were actually opposition-led initiatives. The last of these was the parliamentary call for a mental health action plan, initiated by the NDP, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn’t even be bothered to show up for a vote.

The one recent accomplishment the Trudeau government tries to take credit for is the implementation of the national 9‑8‑8 suicide prevention hotline, which finally happened only two weeks ago; but this was a Conservative initiative from 2020, and the Liberal government had to basically be dragged kicking and screaming to at last support it and make it happen.

Although we were all ecstatic to see this day finally arrive, the implementation of the new 9-8-8 number took far too long under this ineffective Trudeau government.

The committee report before us today is a far cry from this same Senate committee’s groundbreaking 2006 study on mental health chaired by Senator Michael Kirby. This Social Affairs Committee report is particularly slanted. It presents certain facts as surprising, even though they have been standard in the mental health and suicide prevention field for a decade, and it omits or gives only passing mention to other relevant factors without which it is impossible to get a full understanding of suicide prevention. Discussion of the strengths of the current Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention consists of only two paragraphs out of the almost 60-page report. It makes me wonder how fair an evaluation of the framework this really is.

Further, the committee seems to rely on testimony from primarily a handful of witnesses throughout the report. The committee heard from witnesses at only five meetings, and even at that they didn’t even hear from major players in the field of suicide prevention, such as the Canadian Mental Health Association or the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. These are glaring oversights, and frankly, I think it diminishes that work of the committee.

As I mentioned, throughout this report, the committee highlights certain conclusions that are actually now rather obvious in the mental health field. The report states as one of its findings that suicide is highest among boys and men. This isn’t a new revelation. It is something I have been saying for 14 years as a mental health advocate, and even though the committee has designated boys and men as a “priority population,” the section of the report discussing boys and men is scant. The committee itself admits as much when it says:

The committee received less testimony regarding boys and men, and recognizes that this population should be considered in further depth in future studies on suicide prevention in Canada.

The committee held only five meetings of witness testimony. If testimony on this aspect of the issue was so lacking, why didn’t the committee invite more witnesses to further explore the issue? The portion of the report on the topic of boys and men is only two pages long, but between the copious footnotes and several large quote boxes, the actual content really only fills one single page — one page for 75% of all suicides. What kind of study is this? It sounds a lot like it’s a study with a predetermined outcome rather than a comprehensive study of the issue.

Certain committee recommendations were called for in the original framework. Perhaps instead of scrapping the framework and starting from scratch, the committee could have asked the Trudeau government simply to fulfill its obligations. I’m speaking here particularly of the committee’s recommendation to collaborate with the provinces and territories and grassroots organizations to improve suicide prevention.

Some of the committee’s recommendations are things for which I have advocated for years, including the need to improve the content and transparency of the biannual progress reports, similarly with the recommendation recognizing the impact of substance use and addiction on suicide prevention and another recommending an update to the framework to acknowledge the high stigma around suicide.

While some obvious conclusions are recorded in the report, certain others are largely ignored. Take, for example, the link between mental illness and suicide — 90% of people who die by suicide have mental illness, yet they are listed in the committee report as a “priority population,” along with boys and men, First Nations, Inuit, Métis and racialized Canadians. But if 90% of people who die by suicide have mental illness, it’s almost the entire number of suicide deaths in Canada. It is not a targeted demographic or subset, and frankly, I was shocked that the committee thought that it was.

The report further states:

The committee heard that only one public health intervention thus far has been identified as having an evidence-based impact on suicide: means restriction.

It is curious that the committee finds only one solution to the issue and that it proposes gun control as the answer, especially at a time when a Liberal gun control bill is before Parliament. In Canada, the most common means of suicide is hanging or suffocation, but the committee report does not present any discussion of means restriction for this. Furthermore, it’s kind of ironic the committee recognizes the need to restrict the access to means for suicide while most members supported this government simultaneously expanding access to assisted suicide — first to those who aren’t anywhere near natural death and soon, even more disastrously, to Canadians with mental illness. In broadening access to assisted suicide, the government is delivering the 100% guaranteed lethal means to suicide to people struggling with mental illness.

Although important, limiting the means to suicide is not the only answer. What about improving access to and investment in mental health care so that Canadians are not stuck on months‑long and, in some cases, years-long waiting lists when they need to see a mental health professional? This, too, would save lives.

This committee report lists an entire page about jurisdictional responsibilities, but nowhere within it is the federal government’s failure to deliver on its much-vaunted and long-promised Canada mental health transfer. Delivering the mental health care funding that the Trudeau government promised for years should be a significant jurisdictional responsibility for the federal government.

I have serious reservations about some of the testimony given by witnesses before this committee.

One witness, Dr. Rob Whitley, agreed that an effective suicide prevention strategy must focus on men who make up 75% of suicides. We agree on this point. But he then listed the three major social determinants of men’s mental health and suicide: occupational, employment and educational issues; family and divorce issues; and adverse childhood issues. What about mental illness? Again, the link between mental illness and suicide is ignored.

Whitley also said, “Many men’s mental health and male suicide prevention campaigns . . . . often take an accusatory tone . . . .” I take exception to that. There have been several campaigns in recent years targeting the specific concerns of men’s mental health, and bringing the issue out into the open — and that should be encouraged, not criticized.

Another witness quoted multiple times in the committee report is E. David Klonsky. He said:

There is a history in suicidology of well-meaning people with credentials having ideas, creating group treatments, and doing things at a community level that turn out not to be helpful or even sometimes to be harmful in terms of increasing people’s suicide risk.

Is he seriously suggesting that group therapy is not helpful and potentially harmful to people at risk for suicide?

The biggest concern that I had about the comments made by Klonsky in the report was his assertion that “. . . the Government of Canada will likely need to prioritize specific research streams, and perhaps, even specific researchers.” Given my experience at the Senate Legal Committee during the assisted suicide debates, I have little trust about which specific researchers the government would prioritize — likely only those in line with government thinking.

The conclusion that the committee comes to is that the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention is “. . . centred around ideas of what feels good instead of seeking out what works.” Where does this judgment come from? There is little evidence presented to back up such a claim. The report doesn’t give much indication about which programs are effective and which are not. Who decides that?

It seems that the report is written to justify the pre-existing opinions of some committee members about these issues.

In the Senate Social Affairs Committee report, the suicide prevention framework provides a convenient scapegoat for a federal government always looking for excuses.

The framework was never meant to be a magic solution on its own. It was always dependent upon meaningful, concrete action from the federal government on suicide prevention and mental illness solution implementation. After eight years of this Trudeau government, this is what is lacking.

This Trudeau government has broken their major promise to Canadians to fund the Canada mental health transfer, and they are about to break another promise. They said that they would release an updated suicide prevention framework this fall. The minister promised this when she appeared at committee, and the committee highlighted that in their news release. Well, honourable senators, there is only one more week left of fall before the end of December, and we’re still waiting.

Unfortunately, with this Trudeau government, we’re constantly waiting for them to act on suicide prevention. We waited for them to announce the framework. We waited for two years for them to open the taps on funding for the $4.5-billion Canada mental health transfer. They haven’t yet. We waited three years for them to finally implement 9-8-8, and now the Senate Social Affairs Committee report is letting the Trudeau government off the hook, suggesting we ditch the suicide prevention framework altogether and start over — so that we can wait some more.

Colleagues, vulnerable Canadians pay with their lives while this Trudeau government plays politics with this serious issue.

The Senate Social Affairs Committee only needed to make one single recommendation: The Trudeau government should live up to its recommendations and act to implement the suicide prevention framework that already exists. Canadians cannot afford to wait.

Thank you.

This was actually a big part of why the framework was put into place to begin with. When we started dealing with it in 2012, there was a lot of talk about so many good things going on in different parts of the country — in different provinces, communities and organizations — and there needed to be recognition. Obviously, health care is primarily the jurisdiction of the provincial governments.

However, the federal government has taken a fairly big role in that they have recently considered that they want to be involved in this sphere.

As a result of that, yes, there are jurisdictional issues, but a big part of the framework was supposed to be about having all of those groups work together. When the framework was initially put together, that is what happened. Yet, there has been such little follow-up, as I described, for different things. The federal government has had, as I’ve stated in an earlier speech, minimal ideas about what they have actually accomplished over those last eight years. They need to be providing better reports. I said this a number of times in previous speeches — perhaps it was before you joined the Senate. But I am happy that you are here now, and I know that you will play an important role in helping us try to figure out some of these issues.