Hello and welcome everybody. My name is Philip Campbell and I have the privilege to be chairing this session on prioritising workplace mental health. I'm very grateful that the World Economic Forum is allowing us to have this discussion. It has over several years been championing mental health as a theme and it has recently held both public and internal events about mental health in the workplace. My own company, Springer Nature, of which I'm the editor-in-chief, is a research publishing company and it too has gone on its journey. Its current size is about 13,000 employees and over the years it has graduated, if you like, from looking after the individual interests of people with mental health issues into a more company-level approach, including quite recently a very intensive survey of people where people were able to express their free text views as well as respond to surveys and also a network of champions was set up in the company, mental health champions. So that sort of trajectory is something that many companies are following and if you google on workplace mental health you will find many big companies have their initiatives. But there is a question about what the bigger perspective of all of that looks like. What are the agendas that we should be thinking of at a high level in order to make progress on that? Covid, of course, also has given extra urgency to the challenge because I'm sure it doesn't need to be said how much stress and anxiety that has given rise to on top of whatever else may be going on in companies that give rise to mental health issues or that just need to deal with those of colleagues. So let me introduce the panel, it's a very distinguished panel with people with very strong track records of interest. Miranda Wolpert is head of mental health priority area at the Wellcome Trust. That's a £200 million program at the trust which is based in London. She's a clinical psychologist by background, very much focused on evidence-based approaches towards prevention and treatment for anxiety and depression in young people. Her program includes an initiative on mental health in the workplace. Puneet Renyan is global chief executive officer of Deloitte and a member of the International Business Council. A look at his tweets highlights his strong championship of workplace mental health backed up by a recent Deloitte global millennial survey where nearly 20,000 people, young people in 43 countries, were surveyed about aspects of mental health and well-being. So I'm sure we'll be hearing about that. Garen Staglin is a private equity and venture capital investor, an owner of the owner, or the co-owner of the Staglin family in vineyards in Napa Valley, and a long-standing philanthropist and fundraiser in the cause of mental health. He speaks here in his role of co-founder and chairman of OneMind, a leading US-based fundraising and funding organization in mental health, and it has its own initiative on workplace mental health involving 19 companies. So it's a great pleasure to welcome you all, and I'm going to turn over to each of them, and then I hope towards the end we'll have time to have some general discussion. So Miranda, over to you. Do tell us about your initiatives in this area. Thank you. And first of all, thank you very much. It's great to be here. And when we were in Davos last year, mental health and the workplace were just starting to take off. And one of the exciting things, despite these incredibly challenging times, is how much that agenda has grown and developed, and how much workplaces are rising to the challenge of saying this is something we really need to address. And in that way, I think the pandemic has actually provided an opportunity to rethink and think afresh about what it means to support mental health in the workplace. So welcome. As Phil very kindly said, I used to head up the priority area. In fact, as of the first of January, I am now director of mental health at Welcome, which is a larger agenda, which includes both anxiety and depression, younger people, but will also include wider mental health issues. And the workplace we increasingly see as a key site where we can promote good mental health sites and really learn what works for who and why. Over this last year, we put out a call to the research community to say, tell us your best ideas of what will really make a difference in the workplace and review the evidence for them. We're aware that those who are running global workplaces are constantly being barraged by all sorts of companies saying, use this intervention or that intervention. This is the way forward to workplace wellbeing or mental health. And there's very little evidence base for many of them. So out of all the proposals that came in, we funded 10. And of those 10, many interesting ideas emerged. So for example, we found that a group that looked at the issue of excessive sitting in during the day, if you can break up excessive sitting by light acts activity of just one hour, in an eight hour day, it can reduce depressive symptoms by 10% and anxiety symptoms by 15%. So it's simple, effective intervention that people can think about in the workplace. Another group looked at the issue of autonomy in role and found that having more autonomy of role can have a positive impact on both anxiety and depression. But the data suggests that the autonomy may actually be a less troubling issue for the younger workers compared with older workers, although still an issue for many, and that it may also interact with personality traits of those who want autonomy and those who are less troubled for it. But a significant factor was how far it was supported within the organization can be supported within role descriptions. Flexible working was another area looked at by our researchers. And they found that flexible working can help reduce work home conflict, which can be a major source of stress, depression and anxiety. But uptake of flexible working is strongly affected by support from supervisors and line managers. And finally, we had a group, not finally of the groups, but of the ones I'm going to give examples of today. There was a group that looked at the issue of mindfulness in low middle income context, particularly looking at the tourism industry in Jamaica, for example, and found that whilst there's a lot of evidence for the use of mindfulness to address anxiety and depression in high income contexts, there's much less use evidence in low middle income contexts. So going forward this year in May, we'll have a second commission on the same lines inviting people to review the evidence for what they think are the best bets for interventions in the workplace. And we're really interested to hear from any of you on this call about ideas that you think you're using in your workplace that may be worth our researchers looking at. And secondly, we're then looking longer term to try and find partnerships with workplaces to embed rigorous scientific research in the workplace to actually test what works so that workplaces have become evidence informed places where mental health can thrive. So look forward to hearing other people's views and look forward to further discussion. Thank you very much, Miranda. Let me just follow up with one question. A lot of people listening might be interested in just what it means to have researchers embedded in their companies. And of course, there are issues of confidentiality and so on. So perhaps you could give a sense given that you've been doing these overviews of how this work has been going, of what those have looked like and what your listeners, the people you're encouraging, should expect. So I would say we're at the absolute early stages of thinking of workplaces as places for rigorous research to be done. So one of the main findings from almost all the review teams was the sheer positive research, particularly for younger workers. And most of it was based on sort of anecdote or very, very small studies. We recognise it's a big burden for workplaces to be involved in scientific study. But we also think there are ways of doing this that can minimise that burden and find ways where they can learn new things. I think we need to move from a position where we are now, where workplaces are asking, just tell us the evidence and we'll do it. Where we have to be honest is we don't know the evidence for most things. We need to work with you to find that evidence. We will try and do that in a completely non-burden some way, but simply sitting back and expecting the evidence to come to you may not be in your or your workers best interests. So we really encourage you, particularly those that are running in many countries, to think about whether you might partner. We will help take the pain out. We will translate for you from the researchers who took research speak to business speak and think about how this can be really effective for you in your workplace. Thank you very much, Miranda. Puneet, please do tell us about your interests in this. Well, I particularly enjoyed Miranda's comments around evidence-based research, and that is something that we certainly need to focus on. But you started off quoting the Deloitte Global Millennial Survey, and this year we focused on mental health. And there were some very interesting and stark data points that came out of that survey. 48% of Gen Zs and 44% of millennials said that they felt stressed or anxious all or most of the time. That was nearly half of the 20,000 that were surveyed, and they said that they ranked it as their number one and number two issue. 80% of the 300,000 individuals that comprised Deloitte, 300,000 professionals, are Gen Z and Millennial. So this is a really big issue for a firm like ours. You know, another data point, $1 trillion, according to the WHO, is lost every year because of mental health issues. So it is imperative for Deloitte to take action, to focus on it. And we are focused on it in three ways. One, to create a mental health baseline for every country where we operate. We operate in about 100-plus countries, so baseline, launched well-being check-ins, launched education. And then what we're doing at Deloitte is partnering with others, other entities like Deloitte, to form a global business collaboration for workplace mental health. And entities like BHB, Unilever, HSBC, Salesforce, and Clifford Chance. And the intent is to take the stigma out of this, to cooperate, collaborate, learn from each other, and really put this on the front burner because this is the time to act. Thank you very much. I mean, a notable thing about your discussion is that you are the CEO. And I think if there's one thing that really matters in businesses is championship from the very top, that this isn't just seen as an issue for the HR department. And you might want to, given your conversations you've had with other companies, you might want to enlarge on that. But another question is about the scale of the companies. You're talking about very large companies. And yet these issues are also, no doubt, really important in companies of any size. And I'd be glad to hear how you see the scale of the companies in your mind's eye for the future in this initiative. Well, there are multiple questions in what you just said. Let me start with this notion that this is just an issue for large companies. That is absolutely not the case. We are starting with six well-known companies, certainly, but our intent is to invite companies of all sizes all across the world to participate. And as I said, the intent is to raise the profile of the issue, to collaborate, to learn from each other, to learn from entities like Miranda's and others, and to build a common set of best practices that we can implement in our companies. HSBC, Unilever, that have been focused on this, like Deloitte, for quite some time, have some best practices that we're going to certainly leverage. So it is focused on both large and small companies. Your question about the CEO issue, go back to the point that I started with. If half my workforce, 80% of my workforce believes that this is a number one or number two issue, it's certainly a very critical issue for me as a CEO. I know that retention of individuals, Deloitte is only successful by hiring and retaining the very best individuals. So retention becomes a very big issue as well. So this is a top CEO issue for me to address and address all elements of it. Miranda talked about work-life balance. Work-life balance certainly in an entity like Deloitte is a very big issue and something that the CEO and the senior leadership team can actually address to create a culture where individuals believe that they can have some semblance of balance between work and life, particularly in this environment that we operate in today with the pandemic where there's a real blurring between work and home life. And that is something that we're also very focused on. Thank you very much, Kunit. Garan, you do tell us about the One Mind initiatives that are engaged with those 90 companies that I mentioned. Well, thank you very much and thanks to the World Economic Forum as you say for highlighting this very important topic and Miranda and Kunit, I'm honored to be on this panel with you. Let me begin by sort of that same reminiscing that Miranda did. I can remember a sunny day in Davos last year where we started and began these conversations and lo and behold COVID happened. If there's anything good about COVID it has reshaped and I believe accelerated the priority for mental health not only among corporations but governments around the world. This is important to me because this topic is very personal to me. I think many of you who don't know me would know that 31 years ago my son Brandon had a psychotic break and that caused us to start running towards the problem. And we've been doing that ever since, working on science and accelerating services but more recently in society. Five years ago we launched One Mind at Work with the effort to really try to understand that if you're going to impact discrimination and stigma the best place to do it is the workplace because we used to say you spend 70% of your waking hours at work. Now you spend 100% of your time at work because work at home are the same thing. So it's even more important. Our five-year anniversary is coming up. We now have over 90 employers and partners covering almost 8 million employees from Singapore to Geneva and soon Beijing working under this charter of principles. I think it's clear now everybody understands it's the right thing to do but I think we're now proving that it's also good for business. And Puneet to your point it's impossible to build a global force today that excludes people with mental health needs. And I think the understanding that we're all on a spectrum of brain health now and that spectrum is likely lower for all of us given COVID the racial tensions that exist, political divisiveness and economic uncertainty. So I'm going to talk very briefly about the responses that we're seeing from our employers or what are their four top priorities, what are they're doing about it and why this is built a call to action to recognize the new term for many of you which is neurodiversity.  So to this point about what are the responses that are happening as a result of COVID, let me go through four that I think are important. First, it's important that there's increased awareness about mental health needs and not just the conditions themselves. You must normalize the idea that it's okay not to be okay and everyone needs to have an option to improve their own mental health or brain fitness. This idea of brain health and brain fitness I think allows people to focus on the positive side of this issue as opposed to the negative. Second, a culture of connection needs to be established. We now in this work for home environment have to look at closely at ways to connect and collaborate different than how we would do on just a Zoom call. Third, new tools and resources are being developed. We all know about telepsychiatric services which are now not only growing more prevalent but also being reimbursed. We have guides to digital health on apps to take advantage of neuroplasticity and interventions that Miranda is leading in this effort by the Welcome Trust are certainly going to lead us to new ways to bring this together. And finally, to Pune's point and to others, it needs to be a strong and consistent message from leadership. Our charter requires a C-suite signature and it is really important if you're going to change culture you must do so on a broad and global scale. And empathy versus autocratic I think is the new leadership style. So these factors plus others come back to my point. I believe it's now a mandate for recognizing neurodiversity as an equal priority. So what does that mean? Each of you may have your own definition but I would like to suggest it's the difference in how we all receive interpret process and express information. It influences how each of us responds to communication with colleagues, our ability to deal with change, our ability to deal with stress, and our approach to problem solving. So given that definition how can we all support neurodiversity in your own workplace? Well first I would say we must remove barriers to entry and advancement. Targeting recruitment of underutilized groups such as autism, veterans with post-traumatic stress and others is an important way to go forward. Fostering a culture of inclusion is another one. Understanding we're all on this spectrum of brain health we all need to not only be open about our condition but also seek help to do so and finally emphasizing flexibility and customization of how each individual needs to be treated. One size does not fit all when it comes to this issue. So I hope this has been helpful and piqued your interest, enthusiasm to support neurodiversity. I would invite you to join a virtual working group that we are putting together to explore and develop neurodiversity metrics and narratives ultimately for ESG reporting which but not only the International Business Council as well as the World Economic Forum that just produced new guidelines. This working group in addition to being chaired by ourselves will be chaired by Marnero Chappelle is supported by the World Economic Forum and we have a number of confirmed participants and we would invite many more of you to join. If you'd like to participate please let me know or my colleague Katie Riddick at infoatonemind.org. This will be in the second quarter we'll be happy to share a paper we've done on neurodiversity. So again I'm passionate about this and persistent and I think the time is exactly right for us to pursue neurodiversity as an integral pillar of diversity and inclusion across all employers. Garen thank you so much. I think you've got some slides which you're going to post after the session. Yes I do. That presumably has contact details for those people who are interested and I'm hoping also that the other two speakers who might want people to contact them can find a mechanism with the World Economic Forum to help that. I do want to talk to both Puneet and Garen about communications in companies and I mean this is something that may be worth studying if it isn't already being studied by Miranda's initiative but you know communication is sound so easy to talk about but there comes a point especially when the company is at the very top level struggling in the time of what we're in at the moment to meet its financial objectives and it can't always be open about how that's going internally or externally and yet at the same time if employees are not in the picture about that that can lead us to attention. I don't know whether that's reflected in your experience and your views of the company but I guess the question I'm asking of both Puneet and Garen is where is that a problem where do you need to be most thoughtful about that or where is that a problem a challenge in terms of communication particularly in the current era so Puneet let me ask you that first. First off communicating is incredibly important and certainly starting with the CEO to destigmatize the issue again going back to the data that I cited it is a it is not only the right thing to do it is the right business thing to do and so we have communicated in terms of the issue whether it is work-life balance or inclusion and try to destigmatize it. I've also tried to communicate the leadership buy-in that this is not just a CEO issue but the entire leadership team is behind this and view this as in this environment particularly the right thing to do and the right business thing to do so we certainly have taken this as a has a really important issue and are very consistently communicating across our organization. And is Covid putting giving you extra dynamics in that if you like is it giving you extra challenges that because your meeting number going to help you in the future? Absolutely I mean Covid is certainly very challenging on multiple dimensions the fact that you can't actually meet with somebody interact with somebody provide mentorship and apprenticeship complicates it you can't address all of these issues through zoom I think that's why communication destigmatizing the issue providing the tools and techniques that are available to our professionals takes on added importance. Right and Karen do you want to comment on this? Sure I would echo Pune's comments I mean it's really important that they hear from leadership that their own personal experience and their own activities and engagement on this topic are equal to theirs we like to say that everybody has somebody and that if you think of the illnesses from early autism learning disorders eating disorders on through my son's illness and late life illness there isn't anybody that doesn't have a friend a family member a neighbor a workmate or potentially themselves with issues along the spectrum and to the extent that you can do a fireside chat I've done these with Brian Monahan at Bank of America with Tim Arnold at the capital group of the CEOs of Merck Nasdaq and others where we to their entire employee base I talk about my own condition our family condition and once you have this openness about the fact that it's personal to everyone there's a cathartic effect where the barriers to talking about a drop people come forward and you constantly hear you know I've never told anybody but you know I come to work every day worrying that my daughter with eating disorders won't be there when I come home and these personal stories propel the momentum forward to eliminate the discrimination that people might feel from accident so it's absolutely critical and it needs to be consistent yeah um Miranda Garand in his talk was talking about the new technologies and tools that are available and I don't know to what extent those make a difference in the business content over and about the way in which they're helping everyone in psychiatry and dealing with mental health the digital telehealth etc so I'm interested to know whether there is a particular angle of those within the company context that is of interest to you and and related but different as the issue of social media and how they can be both positive and negative in these circumstances and that too may be something that you're looking at so I'm just inviting you to comment on at least those two issues you're on mute I think yeah I have the privilege of being part of a Lancet Financial Times Commission chair by Lena Kirk which and others around looking at the issue of digital technology and health more generally for the current generation and so there's some very interesting cross sections as you say around digital both as an enhancer and a radical opportunity to roll things out at scale to large numbers of people across the world and then real concerns about how some access to social media may actually harmful or if I'm mediated may be difficult I think the jury's out on both aspects there's certainly opportunities here and there are things to be concerned about I suppose the main message I would want people to take from today is that we don't yet know so much about what really helps and I think there's a real danger that workplaces in a well-meaning way think this is the way to do it and you know whether it's people talking to each other or not talking to each other there is so much yet for us to learn about what helps different people and we have to take the rigorous approach we take to other interventions to mental health in the workplace so one of the things we've been discussing with colleagues today is the fact that for physical health there's almost an assumption expert will know better than you and there's almost too much assumption that experts should know and that you don't know yourself whereas with mental health it's almost the other way around there's an assumption that we all know intuitively it's just a question of doing it but actually there's so much for us to learn from the science about actually what will make a difference for different groups of workers in different contexts and it may not some of it may be talking some of it may be training but there may be other interventions some of which can be digitally mediated some of which is to do with physical activity some of which is to do with sleep some which is to do with workplace packages and pay and working conditions so we need to think of health mental health is bigger than health care and the opportunity for the workplace to trial different ways of helping mental health that don't focus purely on psychological interventions is something we're particularly interested in. Can I just add to what Miranda just said I think the point that she's making is an excellent point which is there's so much more to learn and that's why we've formed this global business collaboration. These are six world-class entities and we are suggesting that we can learn from each other we can learn from Garen and from Miranda and we want to share this in a transparent way because there's so much that we don't fully understand and I think this is a really important point and the reason why we formed this collaboration to get these six firms together put our experience and then be able to share it with everybody. So I'm probably going to give Garen the last minute the last word given the word running out of time but let me just ask you your point of view on that. I've been working with 90 companies clearly people are doing things so over to you just for the last minute. I would echo that exactly because listen when you where all companies all employers are on a journey of of where best practices and where it is right for them and the thing that you can't afford to do is pay this a tuition fee twice so why not learn from others you develop the aha ideas and that is our coalition is really a network and the power of that network is the sharing and the working together to get to these ideas. So we absolutely welcome that collaboration and learning. I would just say one thing quickly up to Miranda's point and then to emphasize Pune's Gen Z and Millennials did not there are many of them will not take a pill they don't want a pill as an answer to their health conditions. So neuroplasticity and positive feedback loop apps have actually proven well to others. Meditation mindfulness yoga exercise. These are all elements of a therapy for people that we need to continue to explore. And as Miranda says there's so much more we don't know that we do. We have to keep trying a lot of stuff and keep what works. I think that's a very good point on which to end. We have three people here who obviously now are in contact even if in some cases they weren't before and the working together of research and companies and learning from each other's experience is the key message. So the above all the key message is that the World Economic Forum can I hope help everyone who's listening to this contact whoever they want on the panel to help things to happen in their own context. So thank you all of you speakers. Thank you Garan Puneet and Miranda. Thank you to the World Economic Forum and thank you all for listening. Thank you.


member statements the member for Niagara Falls thank you mr. Speaker this week I rose in the legislature and told this government they must act to fix one of the biggest issues facing my community housing since then I've been inundated with messages from the people of Niagara telling me their stories both those renting and looking to enter the housing market heartbreaking stories of people leaving their families and their towns they were raised in because they can't afford housing there's no denying it this is a crisis and it's a responsibility of all levels of government to address it it's not complicated it takes political will and determination present a policy solution we can take concrete steps today to ease this crisis and assure communities like Niagara aren't torn apart by unaffordable housing market we can start by making renting more affordable and providing those with renting security like ending the unfair rent evictions we can we can help first-time home buyers get into the market by assisting with their down payments home ownership provides stability financial security and it shouldn't just be a dream for young people in this province and ultimately we must take on greedy billionaires speculators flippers and bad developers to cool the completely unstable housing market too many young families renting are going to bed at night wondering if they'll ever own a home of their own too many seniors are wondering if they'll be the next victim of rent evictions struggling to find housing on a fixed income we can't let the current and past government's failures drive us into even more of a housing crisis is someone in our community is facing a house housing insecurity that's a failure we must all address thank you member for Niagara West thank you mr. speaker an important project which has united local residents in Niagara West is the redevelopment of our West Niagara Hospital a campaign which has brought together neighbors businesses municipalities and frontline care providers in our community I'm excited to provide my community with another update and an important step forward in building our new hospital infrastructure Ontario and Hamilton health sciences recently announced the three teams pre-qualified to undertake the rehabilitation project selection criteria includes design construction capability experience qualified personnel and financial capacity to undertake a project of this size and scope the pre-qualified teams for the hospital build our amico saser alliance elaston infrastructure health care and pomeru health care partners a request for proposals is expected to be issued to these pre-qualified teams in the summer of 2021 and once submissions are received infrastructure Ontario and Hamilton health sciences will evaluate the proposals select a preferred team and then negotiate a final contract the successful team is expected to be announced in spring of 2022 a fairness monitor will oversee the entire procurement process this is good news for the constituents of Niagara West speaker as we are eagerly awaiting of the opening of our new hospital I want to assure residents in Niagara that the government of Ontario remains committed to making sure this build is completed in a timely way we will not stop fighting for this expedited build until the new doors of our hospital open I want to thank our provincial and municipal partners including the leadership of premium forward on this important project as well as the passionate volunteers and local front line providers involved with the save and rebuild campaign together we will build our new hospital the member for Parkdale high park speaker people are tired frontline health care workers essential workers parents teachers students children the list goes on we're tired of this government shoot from the hip policies and handling of the pandemic I got my vaccine last week thanks to Vax hunters someone happened to see the tweet texted it to me luckily I didn't have any more meetings grabbed my kid hopped into the car drove 30 minutes and got into a line with about a thousand other people so many things had to align and still it took three hours why is it that we have to go on a vaccine hunt these are realities we didn't need to face this pandemic as hard as it is then on top of that this government makes life unnecessarily difficult by closing outdoor amenities for everyone how did you come up with such an irrational policy the science and the data doesn't support it the people don't support it did the premier just wake up one morning and think let's close the only thing people can do safely during the pandemic please we'd like to hear the logic behind it the chair of the science table himself said that closing outdoor amenities was not recommended in fact the opposite Toronto Public Health is asking the province to open outdoor amenities and sports it's low risk and good for mental health finally speaker i want to say we really want to see a plan for a safe return to in-person learning i've given up for the rest of the school year but come september we want our kids back in school no more last-minute announcements no more just winging it you've got plenty of time don't mess it up again and thank you but i remind members to please make their comments through the chair not directly across the floor member statements the member for peterborough core thank you speaker this week is national nursing week in canada and yesterday was international nurses day in a normal year many of us would talk about appreciating what a nurse does or how the nurse made us feel when they helped us this year's a little different though speaker joce patterson was my mother's youngest sister the godmother of my daughter and a nurse at prhc in peterborough right up until she was diagnosed with glioblastoma in fact they discovered the brain tumor while she was working that's how much she loved her job a section of prhc has been named after her because of the care she provided my sister started as psw became an rpn and then went to o u it while we're well nursing full-time and became an rn she's been in rn for a number of years now at prhc the ccac the lin and returning back to prhc because of covet she's been redeployed to a gta hospital and is currently nursing patients with covet 19 i haven't seen my sister since last summer because of covet but we talk frequently on the phone and i hear the pain in her voice like other nurses she's doing everything possible so those patients can go home speaker if we want to show our appreciation to nurses this week follow the health guidelines so that no nurse has to watch someone fight to breathe remember for london north center throughout the pandemic we've been told to stay home but what about those who are struggling to keep a roof over there or have no home at all according to the london housing stability report there is no available vacant rental housing that is affordable for londoners with low to moderate incomes this means that more and more london families are being pushed out of their housing with nowhere else to go tragically london lost four people in just four days due to chronic homelessness earlier this month these are our neighbors and they should still be with us today we simply can't afford to lose one more person to homelessness london programs like wish coalition have stepped up and have done phenomenal work trying to ensure londoners are safe supported and housed during the pandemic but they can't do it alone for decades successive governments have made the housing crisis worse and worse by cutting and capping funding for municipal homelessness prevention programs no one in Ontario should be denied the basic human right of a safe place to live especially during a pandemic it's time the provincial government invested in affordable housing again so that people can find housing that meets their needs the time to act is now thank you thank you member statements the member for Ottawa south thank you very much mr speaker on friday may 14th is children and youth in care day and there are approximately 12 000 children youth in care in Ontario they're living with extended family group homes foster homes and they're amongst the most vulnerable group in ontario many are survivors of violence and abuse some are refugees some have developmental disabilities and these kids there are responsibility as legislators so you've probably heard me say a few times in this chamber my dad used to work with the family court when i was young so he looked out for kids who came from broken homes who got into trouble with a law or who are truants and he always made sure that none of them got left behind and he took his responsibility for these kids just like he took his responsibility for the three of us at the time my sisters and I and that's the same thing that we have to do with these kids there are responsibility that's the mantle that we take when we come here so today we celebrate their strength and the resilience will also pledging to protect and support their growth and help them thrive so i want to just say thank you to the ontario association of children's aid societies for your ongoing advocacy and unwavering support for our children and youth in care thank you thank you member statements the member for Perth wellington thank you speaker speaker the signed wars are raging trevor court owner of speedy glass enlist will fired the first shot his target the dairy queen next door trevor wrote on his business marquee signed hey dq want to have a sign war it didn't take long for aamie hamilton owner of the dq to fire back you bet your glass we do the enlist will and surrounding communities throughout perth wellington hundreds of businesses churches charities and other organizations soon joined in atwood presbyterian took aim at dq hey dq our son our sundays are the best in millbank and amaze didn't mince words are you two chicken to get broasted by an out of towner the war is heating up and the world is taking notice the bbc and the washington post have covered it the bbc quoted trevor of speedy of speedy glass there's businesses that compete against each other that are poking fun at each other and people are laughing together again smiling at each other it's brought our community very close to the last seven days and he's right this is still a stressful time for people in a tough time for local businesses we need reasons to come together we need reasons to smile in the sign wars there are no losers even so i want to remind everyone that they stay at home order is still in effect so please stick to inside jokes thank you member statements member for hamilton mountain thank you very much mr. speaker tomorrow is youth in care day a day where we recognize the challenges youth in care face and honor their resilience it is also a day for us legislators to remember our obligation to the 12 000 youth in care in Ontario we all know these youth have had a difficult time during this pandemic this government canceled safety regulations like in person home inspections police checks and they increase the limits of kids per foster home these young people also lost their child advocate to the government's cuts despite these challenges that they face young people with lived experience have stepped up to push for better they fought to put a moratorium on youth aging out of care during the pandemic and they won they've been pushing for a ready readiness-based system for leaving care and they finally have the government's ear kudos to Cheyenne Ratman and to the Ontario Children's Advancement Coalition for the great work on that issue and some groups like youth empowering youth are stepping in to fill the void by the cut to the child advocate's office so i am encouraged by these young people who are pushing for change i've met so many of them in my past 10 years as the critic for children's services and i've watched them grow up i want them to know that new democrats are with you and i am so proud to honor you today and every day thank you member statements to member for flamberl glanbrook good morning mr. speaker i would like to extend birthday greetings to miss audrey johnson who celebrates her 104th birthday this week audrey is currently living at bathony lodge in unionville but she lived in capriol until she retired to move to southern Ontario to be closer to her family audrey worked with my mother in administration for national steel at the moose mountain mine outside of capriol while a resident of the town she could be found volunteering at any number of community events her sense of civic duty continued after retirement as she was a hospital volunteer at her local hospital in southern Ontario she retired from volunteering at the age of 100 that's also when she gave up her driver's license because she said she was getting a little tired but then she started volunteering at the nursing home but before she retired she received her 50-year volunteer pin for her years of service we should all aspire to be like audrey even though through times of tragedy such as the loss of her very young daughter audrey and she is a picture of calm of grace and of class she has worked hard and has always given back to her community so on behalf of the Ontario legislature all your neighbors and friends in capriol your friends and family audrey a very happy 104th birthday member statements the member for barry anisville thank you speaker as many people in the legislature know the second tuesday of may every year marks action the provincial day of action on litter it's our government's way to continue its strong effort to reduce the amount of waste going into our landfill and making sure that we reduce litter and our waterways including our lakes and our rivers we know that by bringing awareness to the impacts of waste on our environment and encouraging people to take action at home and in their communities this work will ensure we keep our environment clean and healthy for future generations meaningful change happens when we individually become more aware of our own actions when we all work together even the smallest individual acts of change have substantial benefits and our communities prosper socially and environmentally the provincial day of action may be just one day but every day must be considered an opportunity for us to make impacts and improvements to reduce our impact on the environment that is why the day of action on litter is so important because we all know that improving our environment starts at home in my own writing of barry anisville i'm proud to see so many dedicated individuals and organizations who have taken the initiative to clean up litter around our lake and green spaces not just on the day of action on litter but throughout the whole year in 2020 youth for lake simcoe founder zoe completed six cleanups collecting nine recycling bags 8.5 garbage bags and they continue to advocate and promote the day of action on litter by encouraging all interians to get involved and get outside and help be the change local charity group barry uh barry unite has also done cleanups clean up barry and they're tackling the 10 worst places in in barry to clean up so i want to thank all of them for taking action on litter thank you point of order the minister of children community and social services thank you very much mr speaker for recognizing me this morning i just wanted to point out that a very important person in the legislature uh was born on this day may 13th of 1970 i'm not sure if it was a friday or not but he is our government house leader and he only wants one thing for his birthday and paul colander would like to answer as many opposition questions as he could today in a moment he'll get his chance leader of the official opposition has a point of order well thanks speaker and i want to wish congratulations and happy birthday to the government house leader but also to uh brethen sing the mpp for brampton east it's his birthday today as well so happy birthday to both of you happy birthday point of order the leader of the opposition thank you speaker now on a more solemn point of order i seek unanimous consent for the house to observe a moment of silence for the 187 ontarians who have succumbed to COVID-19 over the past week under the opposition is seeking the unanimous consent of the house to have a moment's silence now for the 187 ontarians who succumbed to COVID-19 over the past week agreed agreed members will please rise thank you very much members will please take their seats