Fifth Annual Mental Illness Awareness Week Luncheon of Champions
Moya Greene
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
Medal Acceptance and Canada Post’s Cause of Choice
Ballroom, Fairmont Chateau Laurier, Ottawa
Wednesday 3 October 2007; 11:30am – 1:30pm
Context: Moya Greene, President and CEO, made this speech in accepting an award for Canada Post’s support of the cause of mental health.
The luncheon brought together members of the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health (CAMIMH) network, politicians, business leaders, sponsors and other stakeholders to celebrate individuals and organizations who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of the mental health agenda in Canada.
Other medal recipients at the event were the Hon. Tony Clement, Canadian Minster of Health; Phil Fontaine, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations; the Hon. James Bartleman, former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario; and Andre Picard, journalist, the Globe and Mail.
Thank you. Merci. On behalf of all of the people at Canada Post, I’m delighted and proud to be here today to accept this award.
Earlier today, I was also delighted to officially announce that mental health will be Canada Post’s cause of choice. Personally, I’m proud that we’ve decided to champion mental health and sponsor Mental Illness Awareness week.
A great deal of work and consultation went in to making this decision. We canvassed our employees to understand which causes they thought were most important, and health topped the list. We then examined various health-related areas to see where there was greatest need. All in all, we spent close to a year making mental health our official cause of choice.
As you know, the battle against mental illness is a fight that for too long has taken place in the shadows, with its many feeling that they had to suffer in silence. That’s why I’m so proud of Canada Post and of our employees for deciding to be a part of the process of raising the profile of this issue so we can examine its full implications properly and better seek solutions.
Mental illness affects us all in one way or another. Employees’ mental health also has an impact on the economic health of businesses, including Canada Post, and of our country.
Mental illness takes a heavy toll on those affected, and it also brings a heavy cost to the Canadian economy. Approximately half-a-million Canadians suffer from depression, and most of these people say their depression affects their work. The growing phenomenon of workplace depression could cost the Canadian economy some $30-billion a year, not including treatment and healthcare costs. $8 to $10-billion of that is due to absenteeism. By 2010, depression is forecast to become second only to cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of disability in the world. More than 35 per cent of work absences in Canada are caused by mental illness, with close to 500,000 Canadians being absent from work each week due to mental-health problems. Thirty to 40 per cent of disability claims are for mental illness.
Those are the costs we know about. But on top of all that are the costs and difficulties confronted by people who suffer mental-health challenges in silence.
We don’t want people to suffer in silence any longer. We want to raise the profile of mental illness and better enable Canadians to deal with the challenges it presents. We want to lead by example.
At Canada Post, we understand the benefits of good mental health to our employees, to the quality of service we provide to Canadians, and to society as a whole. When our people are mentally healthy, they are more positive, more engaged in their work, and they perform their jobs more effectively, and deliver better results.
Canada Post is one of this country’s largest employers. I hope that our involvement will help to raise awareness of the challenges that people with mental-health problems face, and begin to dissipate some of the unfair stigmas still sometimes attached to mental illness. I also hope that other companies will follow our lead and start to create, as we’re doing, a new workplace culture of tolerance and support. In this culture, staff and managers are encouraged to talk about mental health, and are given the tools and programs they need to help them deal with the issues caused by mental illness.
It’s time for these issues to be positioned more prominently within social and health forums. It’s time for large organizations, such as Canada Post, to provide the support that’s needed to give mental illness more visibility. And that’s exactly what we intend to do.
Merci beaucoup. Thank you.
