Hon. Denise Batters: Honourable Senators, I rise today to speak to Senator Kutcher’s proposal for the Senate Social Affairs Committee to study the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention according to the specific criteria he lists in his motion. These include an evaluation of the framework’s effectiveness; an examination of rates of suicide in Canada as a whole and in unique populations; a report on funding and the evidence-based criteria for the selection of each initiative under the framework; the evidence of a “demonstrated significant, substantive and sustained decrease in suicide rates in the population(s) targeted;” proposed recommendations to ensure the framework and federal funding for suicide prevention activities are based on suicide rate reduction; and a requirement that the committee report be sent back to us in the Senate no later than December 16, 2022.

One of Senator Kutcher’s primary concerns with the current Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention seems to be that he is seeking to know the quantifiable, scientific effectiveness of the activities that have been implemented as part of the framework. However, I can’t help but notice that the content of this motion is somewhat similar to two studies Senator Kutcher published before his arrival in the Senate. The first, from 2016, was entitled “School- and Community-Based Youth Suicide Prevention Interventions: Hot Idea, Hot Air, or Sham?” and the other, from 2017, is called “Suicide Prevention: Doing the Right Thing Is Not the Same as Doing Something.” Both studied popular suicide prevention programs, and both concluded that those particular programs could be ineffectual and, in some cases, even harmful. I assume it is these types of programs Senator Kutcher had in mind when he requested that the Social Affairs Committee evaluate programs used by the government as part of the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention.

I’m not sure, though, because throughout his 15-minute speech, Senator Kutcher didn’t refer to any specific examples. He spoke vaguely about, as he put it:

. . . those who use the anguish of suicide and the pain and suffering of others to sell, promote or initiate activities, programs or products that they claim will prevent suicide but do not.

He also said:

We would like to be assured that the interventions that are being put into place have robust and solid evidence that they worked prior to them being applied.

There are no examples in his motion, either. Even when I gave Senator Kutcher the opportunity to explain what suicide prevention interventions the Trudeau government has implemented under the federal framework since taking power, he was unsure, saying that he couldn’t speak on behalf of the current government and any actions that they have taken.

I found that a curious response for a senator who is a psychiatrist and who even serves as a mental health advisor to the Trudeau government from time to time. I also remember seeing Senator Kutcher on TV as one of the few guests at Rideau Hall for the swearing-in of the Trudeau government’s new Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. Surely, if anyone were aware of what this government has delivered on mental health, it would be Senator Kutcher. If he’s drawing a blank, it doesn’t say much for the Trudeau government’s record of results in mental health and suicide prevention over the last six and a half years.

Since we don’t know what the Trudeau government has implemented, it’s unclear what the Social Affairs Committee would be studying. Senator Kutcher says, “We need to know.” But that’s the thing: we don’t. The motion is too vague to give the committee sufficient direction to know where to begin.

As Senator Kutcher stated in his speech:

We would not condone spending large amounts of taxpayers’ money for interventions that had little or no evidence of effectiveness.

Still, the question remains: Has any significant money been spent on suicide prevention interventions by this Trudeau government?

Unsurprisingly, the framework’s biannual progress reports from the Trudeau government are scant on detail — in fact, embarrassingly so. The two cursory reports that have been posted online so far use the same template and throw a few phrases into each section. This is far beneath what an issue as serious as suicide prevention deserves.

Of course, taxpayers’ money should be spent wisely, and of course, data and follow-up are important factors to evaluate the effectiveness of suicide prevention interventions. But we must not lose sight of common sense either. The purpose of creating the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention was to give provinces and regions the ability to share best practices with one another — to not have to reinvent the wheel every time. Some of those ideas might be established programs or activities, but others could be relatively straightforward and low cost. For example, when the bill creating the framework was originally studied, one idea that was proposed at the time was limiting the number of Tylenol pills sold in one container. It’s a simple idea but one that could actually save lives. I don’t think any of us would require a lot of empirical data or prolonged committee study to understand that. I would hate to see Senator Kutcher’s motion squelch simple ideas like that one by bogging them down in bureaucracy and red tape, resulting in unnecessary delay when instead these ideas could already be in place, saving lives.

Senator Kutcher made the argument that suicide is an emotional topic, but said that, “Robust scientific study, using appropriate design methods and analytics, is needed to measure rates of suicide reduction.” I submit we must also be careful not to distance ourselves, through the detachment of academia, from the human element at the heart of suicide. At its core, we are dealing with people’s lives and deaths.

Senator Kutcher said in his speech that he’s met with family survivors and they have looked to him for answers about why a loved one’s suicide has happened and rarely could that question be answered. I disagree. Here’s the answer in 90% of suicides: mental illness. Survivors of family suicide need desperately to hear that answer so that they do not forever wonder whether there’s something else they could or should have done.

As many of you know, I am myself a family survivor of suicide. My late husband, former member of Parliament Dave Batters, struggled with issues of depression, anxiety and addiction. In 2008, while still a sitting parliamentarian, Dave chose to go public with his struggle with mental illness. It was revolutionary at the time. The stigma around mental health issues was huge. For public figures — particularly for politicians — mental illness was potentially a career-ender. There was no Bell Let’s Talk Day yet. The Senate’s groundbreaking Social Affairs Committee report on mental health had been published only two years earlier.

Throughout his illness, Dave and I experienced firsthand the shortcomings in the mental health care system. The gaps were many, and they were exceedingly painful. Tragically, Dave died by suicide in June 2009 — two weeks short of his fortieth birthday.

In the spirit of Dave’s openness about his struggle with mental illness, I issued a press release about his suicide. While significant stigma still existed around the discussion of mental illness, suicide was even worse: a taboo. Dave’s death moved that public discussion forward, out of the darkness.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave an important address at Dave’s funeral, speaking not only about Dave personally but also about the indiscriminate nature of depression and anxiety. He said:

Depression can strike the sturdiest of souls. It cares not how much you have achieved, nor how much you have to live for.

Prime Minister Harper’s speech was unprecedented in addressing the issue of mental illness and suicide publicly and openly. In fact, I know of psychology professors who actually had their students read that speech in relation to discussions of mental health awareness and suicide prevention.

In the years that followed, I became involved in mental health advocacy and fundraising, particularly in the area of suicide prevention. Still politically involved and still close with many of Dave’s MP colleagues, I supported member of Parliament Harold Albrecht’s private member’s bill to create the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention. I knew that such a framework was one way to help address some of those gaps we had experienced in the mental health care system and where regions could effectively share their ideas and best practices in suicide prevention with other regions across Canada.

I testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health in favour of Mr. Albrecht’s Bill C-300 in March 2012. His bill was ultimately passed by Parliament in December of that same year, and the Harper government went to work to implement the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention.

I was part of the Conservative government caucus in the first few years that Mr. Albrecht’s bill was being implemented. I had frequent conversations with my caucus colleagues, including the Minister of Health, about the Federal Suicide Prevention Framework. As such, I knew the work they were putting in on this file.

By the time the Trudeau government took office in 2015, the Federal Suicide Prevention Framework had been established to the point where that government should have been able to just take the ball across the goal line. Yet seemingly they have not. When I look at what the Trudeau government has done on suicide prevention in the last six and a half years, it appears not much has been happening. Even their mental health adviser can’t tell us for sure.

I can tell you what the government has been up to during that time, though. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s crowning legacy “achievement” has been to legalize marijuana in Canada. While its legalization might be popular in some circles, the frequent use of marijuana is bad for mental health, increasing the risk of addiction and other mental health problems over time and potentially developing or worsening depression and anxiety. Research shows that these detrimental effects are especially of concern for young people under the age of 25, whose brains are still developing.

The other significant change this Trudeau government has made in the realm of mental health is to expand assisted suicide to include people who have mental illness as a sole underlying condition. In fact, it was the very sponsor of the motion before us today, Senator Kutcher, who recommended the legislative change to do that.

Senator Kutcher said in his speech on the motion before us today that the government should only fund suicide prevention programs that achieve “significant, substantive and sustained decrease in suicide rates. . . .” Well, do you know what doesn’t help achieve “significant, substantive and sustained decrease in suicide rate?s” Legislating suicide into a state-offered option for those enduring psychological suffering and offering suicide as a rational choice for the treatment of mental illness. That is what this Trudeau government has done for suicide prevention. That is a travesty, honourable senators.

The number of people who have accessed assisted suicide since its legalization continues to climb. Nearly 8,000 Canadians received medically assisted deaths in 2020, which was up 17% from 2019. That number was up 26% from the year before that. And none of those numbers yet incorporates the most recent and significant change: that of removing the near-death requirement and expanding access to those with mental illness as a sole, underlying condition. I expect, between the widening of the criteria to access MAID and the detrimental impact of the pandemic on Canadians’ mental health, we will continue to see the number of people seeking assisted suicide climb significantly.

Earlier this month, I was dismayed to read a tweet from the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, which illustrated the very scenario I had feared at the time this chamber expanded the assisted suicide criteria to include individuals not near death. It read:

Closed our GoFundMe Page today. We were to use the funds to try and assist a lady with disabilities who was not at end of life, but who chose MAiD rather than suffer due to lack of supports. We raised $270 dollars, $270 freakin dollars, she died by MAiD on Feb 23, she was 51.

Leaving Canadians with inadequate supports to meet their needs and then giving them the “option” of assisted suicide leaves them no options at all. That is the legacy of this Trudeau government.

I’ve spoken at length on the issue of assisted suicide during our debates on the issue before, so I don’t want to pursue it further now, except to say that the experience has made me leery of trusting the Trudeau government’s definition of whose “evidence” is considered adequate and whose hand-picked “experts” are selected to do the peer review.

Suffice it to say, while I appreciate Senator Kutcher’s quest for transparency from this Trudeau government — good luck; we’ve been trying for years — I do think the government should be providing much of this information already via its mandated Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention biennial report. The Senate’s Social Affairs Committee shouldn’t have to go begging for it. That the government is not proactively forthcoming with this information raises questions about the sincerity of their commitment to mental health and suicide prevention.

As I mentioned earlier, suicide prevention isn’t just an abstract academic exercise. It’s not just something you tweet about twice a year on Bell Let’s Talk Day or Mental Health Week. Suicide prevention is vitally important. It is about the saving of lives. That’s why I am concerned that the scope of this study, by focusing on this — what I believe to be a flawed motion — may itself be flawed and may do more harm than good.

Senator Kutcher’s motion asks us to study the effectiveness of the Federal Framework on Suicide Prevention, which hasn’t even yet been fully implemented by the Trudeau government. He’s putting the cart before the horse.

I would be all for the Social Affairs Committee studying the subject of suicide prevention in general. And by all means, yes, let’s encourage the Trudeau government to fully implement this framework. But the motion before us could actually undermine the Federal Framework on Suicide Prevention — and I would hope that none of us would want to do that. To what end, honourable senators? So we have to tear it down and start from scratch yet again?

After six and a half years of inaction from this Trudeau government, we can’t afford further delay, especially when, potentially, the cost is paid with the lives of vulnerable Canadians. That is why I will not support this motion. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Patterson, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion, as amended, of the Honourable Senator Dalphond, seconded by the Honourable Senator Cordy:

That the Senate:

1.recall that, despite the commitment found in section 55 of the Constitution Act, 1982 to have a fully bilingual Constitution, as of today, of the 31 enactments that make up the Canadian Constitution, 22 are official only in their English version, including almost all of the Constitution Act, 1867; and

2.call upon the government to consider, in the context of the review of the Official Languages Act, the addition of a requirement to submit, every 12 months, a report detailing the efforts made to comply with section 55 of the Constitution Act, 1982.