Our Kids Are Not OK

Canada is in shock after one of the deadliest high school shootings in modern Canadian history, in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a town of fewer than 3,000 people. In a place that small, everyone knows everyone. First responders would have known the families. They may have known the children.

Nine are confirmed dead, plus the shooter. Twenty-five more are injured. Some are barely hanging on to survival.

Entire families are shattered. An entire community forever changed.

When tragedies like this happen, we grieve and struggle to comprehend the loss, but we also reflect to make sure it never happens again.

Every week, I hear from parents trying to navigate a system that’s supposed to help children in crisis. They are desperate. Their kids are struggling with anxiety, depression, behavioural breakdowns, and suicidal thoughts. They are told to wait. Six months. Twelve months. Eighteen months. If they can even get in.

By the time help arrives, if it does, families are exhausted and often in full crisis mode.

When I served in Parliament and sat on the Status of Women Committee, we studied youth mental health. The testimony was sobering. The average wait time for teens is 18 months. That is a lifetime for a family in crisis. Parents were left managing serious psychiatric issues at home with little support. This is not ok. One parent told me, I know my child is going to seriously hurt or kill someone, and no one is helping or doing anything.

These tragic outcomes didn’t just spontaneously happen. They are a result of a failing system.

So what do we do about it?

We are increasingly medicating children, yet we still do not fully understand the long-term effects of many of these medications on developing brains. Mental health is complex. It requires early intervention, community support, strong families, and access to qualified professionals.

Instead, families face fragmented services, long waitlists, and bureaucracy.

And while this system struggles to meet basic needs, the pressure on children has intensified.

Today’s kids are growing up in an environment no previous generation has experienced. Social media delivers relentless comparison, online bullying, identity pressure, and exposure to adult content directly into their bedrooms. Then came the lockdown years, during critical developmental stages when children were isolated from peers, disconnected from sports, school routines, and real-world interaction. The consequences of the over-reaching lockdowns are deadly.

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among Canadians aged 10–24. One in five youth aged 12–17 reports symptoms consistent with a mental disorder. Nearly one in five Canadians aged 15 and older meet criteria for a mood, anxiety, or substance use disorder.

Self-harm accounts for 9% of contacts to Kids Help Phone. More than a quarter of those involve children aged 5 to 13.

Youth in the lowest income group experience anxiety and mood disorders at more than twice the rate of higher income peers, yet they have the least access to care.

Girls aged 15–17 now visit emergency departments for mental health crises at dramatically higher rates than boys.

This is not a small problem. It is systemic.

There are reports that the shooter in this tragedy was identified as transgender. The RCMP referred to the individual as the “gun person,” reportedly to avoid misgendering. Let me be clear: the focus must remain on the victims. Public safety, accountability, and truth matter more than political correctness in moments like this.

Recently, a high school student approached me to say he had been suspended for misgendering someone.

This is ridiculous.

The deeper issue is this: are we building resilient, capable young people?

Are we prioritizing literacy, numeracy, discipline, social skills, responsibility, service to others, a sense of community and mental strength?

Or are we cultivating fragility, encouraging young people to view themselves primarily through the lens of trauma and identity rather than agency and responsibility?

Author Abigail Shrier argues in Bad Therapy that when adults over-pathologize normal adolescent distress, we risk reinforcing vulnerability instead of resilience. You may agree or disagree with her conclusions. But the broader question deserves serious discussion: are we equipping kids to cope with life or teaching them to interpret every discomfort as damage?

Compassion does not mean lowering standards.
Compassion means telling the truth and building strength.

Meanwhile, families are buckling under economic pressure. Housing costs are crushing. Food prices are rising. Parents are working longer hours. Divorce rates are climbing, and intimate partner violence is an epidemic. Children absorb that stress. When families finally reach out for help, they are often told there is no capacity.

In 2021, the Liberal government campaigned on a $4.5 billion Canada Mental Health Transfer. It has yet to materialize as a dedicated, transparent funding stream. There is no clear line item in the 2025 budget that prioritizes mental health.

We can fund many things in this country. We should be able to fund timely mental health care for children.

Mental health challenges are not new. But the scale and intensity we are seeing today demand serious evaluation, not slogans.

We need:

• Honest research about what prolonged screen exposure is doing to developing brains.
• A serious look at social contagion effects.
• Early intervention programs that reach families before a crisis.
• Schools that build character, resilience, and real-world skills.
• Clear accountability in how mental health funding is allocated and measured.

We also need to restore the importance of family, service, and community, institutions that anchor young people in something larger than themselves.

Children who struggle today become adults tomorrow. Problems that go untreated in childhood rarely resolve on their own.

The families of the victims in Tumbler Ridge will carry unimaginable grief. The shooter’s family will carry their own devastation. Entire communities are wounded.

It is not compassionate to pretend everything is fine.
It is not responsible to ignore warning signs.
And it is not political to say our children deserve better.

This is not about partisanship. It is about priorities.

When our kids are not OK, our country is not OK.

And if this tragedy does not force us to confront the failures in our systems and the culture surrounding our children, then we will have learned nothing at all.

Michelle Ferreri is a political commentator, strategic communications and media consultant, and the former Member of Parliament for Peterborough—Kawartha