Education minister pressed on youth mental health in Nunavut
MLA Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster says previous programs haven’t had enough of an impact
Iqaluit-Sinaa MLA Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster asked Education Minister Pamela Gross this week what her department is doing to improve programming geared towards youth mental health in Nunavut. (Photo by David Venn)
With a new mandate for Nunavut legislators that focuses on health and healing in place, MLA Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster wants to know what the new government will do differently to tackle mental health challenges among the territory’s youth.
“We know that the programs that have been implemented for a number of years in Nunavut are not having the desired impact,” Brewster, the MLA for Iqaluit–Sinaa, said in the legislative assembly on Tuesday.
Her statement came before she asked the Education Minister Pamela Gross what new trauma-informed practices the government will be implementing.
Brewster also mentioned that one of the priorities of the mandate is health and healing.
Gross replied the Department of Education is looking to incorporate suicide prevention programming into schools but did not name any measures other than new programming.
Instead, Gross talked about the Inuusivut Anninaqtuq Action Plan, carried out in partnership with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the RCMP and the Embrace Life Council. Inuusivut Anninaqtuq runs from 2017 through this year.
Mental health has been a growing concern among the territory’s young people. More than 100 Iqaluit youth and their supporters marched into the busiest intersection in the city in November, calling for better mental health supports in the territory. The march happened as the sixth legislative assembly was selecting its new premier. On that day, the soon-to-be-elected Premier P.J. Akeeagok said he heard the youth’s calls.
The suicide rate among Inuit was nine times higher than among non-Indigenous Canadians between 2011 to 2016, according to Statistics Canada.
As well, the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry published a study in 2016 that found Inuit have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, especially among youth.
Here’s the real problem that most adults are not seeing: Tiktok, Facebook, and Instagram. With high-speed internet now readily available in all of Nunavut, more and more vulnerable people are falling victim to cyber-bullying and harassment. Often teens are glued to their screens for far too long, and often they live a different life online, forgetting about the real world. It is an escape, but not a healthy one. Much of this happens in private, so teens are afraid to seek help and their parents are often unaware.
Just go on your local ‘Hamlet News’ facebook page and see the amount of hate and harassment being public projected, and rarely denounced. This is the public stuff. The stuff that goes on in private could be much much worse. It is sad, but the advent of technology will take a while to adapt to, as this is new to most Nunavummiut. The internet, in a weird way, has exacerbated Nunavut’s real epidemic, which is mental health problems.
what you have brought up is not just a child’s issue but many adults are perpetrating the same problems all accross the world, we need to see these things as a privilege not a right, spend less time playing silly games on a phone and look after your children, attend to there needs and instruct them correctly, Parents need to step up and lead by example, and that is not happening regularly enough on a consistent basis for kids to succeed.
so what has the whole unit over at health dedicated to suicide prevention along with suicide epidemiologist done over the past couple years? and at what cost?
Every community needs healing from multi generational trauma, not just the youth
Why is MLA Brewster asking the Education minister about mental health and youth? Why is this line of questioning not directed at the Health minister whose department is mandated and funded to address mental health and provide mental health services to children and youth? Why not ask how many Child and Youth mental health professionals provide service across Nunavut? or whatever happened to the Suicide Prevention Secretariat established under Karen Kabloona as Associate Deputy Minister after the 2015 Suicide Inquest? or about the outcomes that secretariat achieved that are propelling this government’s new set of outcomes? Can MLA Brewster provide the evidence to support her claim that previous programs were ineffective? Or is that another wild rumour for impact? My son reached out for help, and was helped. Was that program ineffective? He is alive. Instead of alienating those striving for positive change in an overwhelming field, start by acknowledging the good work that good people in Nunavut strive to carry out in the most under-resourced and under-supported situations and advocating for MORE services, for MORE evidence-based programs and for MORE support and funding for staff especially those working to provide support to children and youth. Honour the work done, honour those who have done it, who are doing it and be collaborative not antagonistic in your words. This is the Inuit way. The Katujjiluta way.
You make a good point. It seems like the Minister of Education is being picked on by a lot of these other more established MLA’s, sometimes for things that have nothing to do with her Department.
So much money comes into Nunavut tagged for mental health and specifically suicide prevention especially when you get down to the population numbers. It would be very helpful for the GN to audit all of the services and outcomes and for the members to discuss the facts. It would also be nice if the GN saw itself as a whole thing on the same team and had a coordinated approach not silos keeping secrets. Like whoa we have a whole Epidemiologist just for suicide in Nunavut they should some assessment on this. The suicide team has a Director and Policy etc they too should have a firm understanding of the whole story. You have to think that there is a benefit for these little empires within GN not talking and working together. This issue will not be solved with money.
Audits in Nunavut often reveal taboos that everybody already knows, but it would not look good if the results were actually published or made public. Another report swept under the rug.
This is an important observation that needs to be chewed on by anyone interested or involved in this issue. In fact this is a useful observation about the workings of organizations in general.
Perhaps a review of how funding is distributed by GN? Every department is having processes and funds and GN lacks a coordinated plan. The Hamlets or agencies with staff who have time and know how apply to all the funds which end of being very similar small pots providing hunting fishing etc which can be missing some desperate peoples and likely not dealing with structural issues. Streamlining the funds and applications will make it easier to target the money and see if it is working but why do that when you can have this chaotic back biting theater!
All of the problems start at home. Overcrowded housing. Decaying housing. Homeless families. The federal government has completely and utterly failed Inuit. The clowns in Ottawa so proudly announce < $100M for housing in Nunavut (100 units across 6 communities…) while handing billions upon billions of dollars every single year to foreign governments in Asia & Africa, which are then able to build thousands of homes and businesses for their people with Canadian money while our own people suffer. Building 100 units accomplishes nothing, as Nunavut's need for housing is 4000-5000 new units and growing every single day. The housing demand is growing faster than new home construction, and that's without considering the vast number of housing units that are full of mould or have structural issues which would have them boarded up and condemned anywhere else in the country.
Children deserve healthy homes. Children cannot be healthy without healthy homes. A family cannot be healthy without a home.
The problem isn't school. The problem isn't social media. The problem is housing. The problem has always been housing, and until the circus act in Ottawa starts to even pretend that they care about Indigenous communities, the problem always will be housing.
So, how often do you talk to our premier and MLAs about the housing issue?
They are, after all, primarily responsible for housing in this territory.
Your choice to displace responsibility is worrying, but then it is always easier to blame others than ourselves.
It is hard to light a candle. Easier to just curse the darkness instead.
Your comment shows a gross misunderstanding of how Nunavut’s finances work.
Nunavut’s funding comes from the federal government. The territory decides how it’s used, but that doesn’t mean that they can just say “oh hey, let’s spend $3B on housing this year”, because that money would have to be stripped from things like Education, Healthcare and Infrastructure.
The federal government has a responsibility to Indigenous peoples to oversee and conduct the process of reconciliation, as it is ultimately Ottawa’s fault that these problems began in the first place. Without adequate housing in Indigenous communities, there will never be, and can never be reconciliation.
As I see it the issue of family planning is one that can not be separated from the problem of overcrowding.
There are too many people without their own housing and with unstable or uncertain employment who are growing their families at unsustainable rates.
From your perspective where does this problem fit into the issues you’ve raised?
The issue of family planning is brought up a lot here in the comments section of NN, but almost never mentioned at the Territorial level. It is a scary thought when we look 20 or 30 years to the future. Where will we be? It would be great to hear the Ministers discuss this at the Leg. Another taboo I guess.
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The carrots and sticks “perverse incentive” of rewarding larger families with housing is a crisis in and of itself. Let’s say an employed single mother and her one daughter need a home and so does an unemployed single mother who is taking care of her 7 kids with multiple fathers, the unit will go to the mother who is taking care of the 7 kids. Great, she is housed and so are her kids.
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Fast forward 15 years later those 7 kids are now adults and want their own place to live. Easiest option to get a unit? Procreate. The single mother with the one daughter may still be waiting for a unit, and the kids of the mother of 7 may be getting their own units.
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Fast forward another 15 years later, those 7 kids might have 5 kids each of their own, now that is 35 young adults wanting their own units, so they put their names on the wait list. How do they increase their chances of getting noticed by Housing allocation priority? I think we already know the answer. In case you didn’t do the math, those 35 units will likely cost the taxpayer $35 million to build, plus maintenance. $35 million because of poor housing allocation policies and poor family planning education. And that is only one family.
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The housing allocation system is a joke and will just continue costing taxpayers billions unless they change their policies. Nobody is disagreeing that the lack of public housing causes undue stress on families, but the vicious cycle of incentivising poor family planning needs to be addressed. Urgently.
Yup, nail on the head. The Nunavut demographic crisis drives everything, but no one addresses it.
Our mental health will be better when we start not allowing people to be rude, aggressive, violent or racist in any way in all GN workplaces. This can be modeled and people can be held accountable. Allowing this lateral violence is creating a terrible environment where only the sickest stay.
Anyone see how my main man handled questions when there used to be press conferences… condescendingly flippant and irate at reporters for asking the questions that the public and constituents want to know. Even the pronunciation of Ubblatsiaq was conceded.
Since when does the minister of education become a profession in kids mental health? Teachers should be paid to teach, not be mental health, or social workers for children. That’s the job of mental health, and social services.
Why is a measurable amount of paid time to teachers to be social workers?
Maybe there’s a reason why, although our graduation numbers are up due to the “peer passing imitative”, our kids have a hard time filling out simple application forms? if teachers focused on teaching, perhaps we would have more educated students graduate?
if you took the time that teachers spend being social workers and measured it, maybe it would be enough to hire a specialist in each school, therefore putting teachers time into teaching.
i thought it was “education”, can we even call it that if our kids are not being educated? Should be called the department of schools and not the department of education.
The plan is for survivors from residential schools, trauma they faced.. today the promises of nlca is for new younger generations. Work hard study hard, get educated, and follow our promises from nlca. Ignore their plan young people, don’t listen to your leaders, instead make your dream.
Yet another incompetent Education Minister who can’t have an independent thought or go off script to actually answer a question. The Education Minister is embarrassing to listen to and excruciating to watch. After the last Education Ministers gong show performance this one is even worse. What an embarrassment to Nunavut. SMH