Hon. Tracy Muggli: Honourable senators, I wish to thank Senator Woo for introducing this motion. We have seen what happens when the world looks away, when international law is ignored and humanitarian norms are cast aside. When journalists are barred, when infrastructure is destroyed and when aid is weaponized, civilians suffer. They pay the price with their lives, their dignity and their mental well-being.
According to Save the Children, at least one Palestinian child has been killed every hour on average by Israeli forces in Gaza during the past two years of violence, with the number of children killed now surpassing 20,000, or 2% of Gaza’s child population.
Over a thousand of the children killed were under the age of one. Four hundred and fifty of those babies were born and killed during the violence. I want to repeat that, colleagues: 450 babies were brought into this world and left it during this genocide, 450 babies who never knew peace for even a single day.
These are some of the facts we’ve heard over the past year from fellow Canadians who have served as doctors and humanitarians in Gaza. Many in this chamber have taken advantage of informal meetings to hear the stories of Canadians who have returned. Many of you have come and heard first-hand accounts of the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. We have heard from organizations like Save the Children – whom I quoted a moment ago — Oxfam, the Red Cross, Doctors Against Genocide, Reporters Without Borders, CARE Canada, UNICEF and many others.
We have heard that people are suffering not only from bombardment and starvation but from the severe psychological trauma of displacement and loss. These are the invisible wounds of war.
I want to pause for a moment to acknowledge that those invisible wounds extend to the humanitarians we heard from as well, those who sacrificed a part of themselves when they volunteered to go abroad. Not a single person who served on the ground in Gaza will escape psychologically unharmed. Not one will be immune to what they endured, and yet they did it. Then they returned home and shared their stories.
With independent journalists largely barred from Gaza, these humanitarians have become the witnesses, reliving unimaginable memories, often breaking down as they speak. We owe them a debt of gratitude, and I think we owe them a response.
Colleagues, we cannot change the past, but we must examine and acknowledge our role in it. I believe we must respond to the moment and shape what happens next.
The World Health Organization estimates that one in five people in conflict-affected populations lives with a mental health disorder, and about one in ten suffers a moderate to severe condition.
In Gaza, even before this latest war, over half of all children showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 2020 study in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Following months of siege and bombardment, UNICEF warns that virtually every child now shows signs of trauma and “toxic stress.”
The United Nations reports that nearly 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced and faces chronic and unrelenting trauma. Recent clinical data underline the scale of this mental health emergency.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study entitled “The Psychological Toll of War and Forced Displacement in Gaza” found that 79% of respondents reported moderate or severe anxiety, 84% reported depression and nearly 68% met full diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, under the DSM-5, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Almost two thirds suffered significant symptoms of all three conditions at once. The majority were unemployed and displaced into camps or shelters, and more than one in five had lost a first-degree relative.
The researchers concluded that Gaza’s internally displaced population is facing “. . . very high rates of psychiatric disorders . . . .” and that mental health interventions “. . . must be prioritized to support society’s long-term recovery.”
As terrible as these statistics are, they are not unexpected. We know what prolonged terror and deprivation do to the human mind: They fray communities, fuel despair and make recovery far more difficult.
In Bosnia, 10 years after the war ended, roughly 1 in 10 citizens was still living with PTSD. In Rwanda, survivors of the 1994 genocide continue to battle depression and flashbacks. A 2018 study on the population found 35% had major depression and 28% had PTSD.
Former senator Roméo Dallaire, who has publicly struggled with PTSD following the genocide, put it this way:
. . . there’s no time factor [for PTSD] . . . . A very close colleague of mine, who was with me over there, ran a program for us with veterans. . . . He fundamentally crashed—22 years later. The stress was so powerful that he could not sustain it and he nearly lost his mind. . . .
Trauma does not stop when the conflict ends. People and families carry the weight of grief long after the world moves on. For Palestinians today, their trauma is layered: war upon war, loss upon loss, famine, destruction, displacement and death. People returning from Gaza have told me that Palestinians feel abandoned by the global community. They are in despair.
As Canadians, we take pride in being a nation that believes in human rights and international law. But those principles mean little if we abandon them when they are most needed.
We must be honest: We did not do enough to prevent this catastrophe. We hesitated to speak when early warnings were sounded. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled it plausible that Israel’s actions in Gaza could amount to genocide. Did Canada do enough to ensure that we were not complicit?
I am speaking in support of Senator Woo’s motion today because I believe we must acknowledge our actions and inactions. I also speak today because I believe we still have a duty to act. We must help those who survived to rebuild and recover. We cannot abandon the people of Gaza again.
Colleagues, I believe that healing is integral to recovery. After every atrocity, we learn the same lesson: If we focus only on infrastructure and if we ignore psychological repair, we leave societies fragile and divided for generations.
In Rwanda’s community-based sociotherapy, the “You heal me, I heal you” approach had significant benefits for mental health and social cohesion.
In my experience as a mental health professional, I have seen the importance of ongoing support in communities that experience tragedies. We know that suicidality becomes a prominent reality and must be addressed for many years following the tragedy. In this case, generations of psychological interventions will be required. We have an abundance of evidence on how to move forward. What we do not have is time.
I believe Canada must step up, learn from the past and lead international efforts for mental health recovery in Gaza and the West Bank, just as we once led on land mines and refugee resettlement.
We can fund humanitarian partners to provide mobile counselling clinics; to train, support and empower local mental health teams; and to ensure mental health is a pillar of all the work that will need to be done to help Gaza heal.
Women and children especially need focused support. A West Bank woman who spoke at an Oxfam panel this year told us:
We need the world to see that mental health is survival too. Food and shelter keep people alive. Mental health helps them live again.
Colleagues, we know what happens when we fail to act, and we know what can happen when we do. Canada has the capacity and credibility to help rebuild lives as well as homes.
We can make mental health support a cornerstone of recovery and help families find stability after so much loss. This motion is not only about looking back; it is also about acknowledging what kind of different roles we want Canada to play going forward.
I want to draw your attention to something I read in an article about former senator Roméo Dallaire, where he described his feelings as the genocide ended and he returned home, carrying the invisible trauma — the mental agony that was manifest through his experience.
The article said:
Already, in the immediate aftermath, Dallaire couldn’t sleep. His right arm was mysteriously fluctuating between sharp pain and paralysis. A voice in the back of his head was incessantly screaming, “Why is the rest of the world carrying on like nothing has happened?”
Colleagues, we cannot undo the past, but we can choose to be present now. We can choose to respond. We can choose to lead with care, decency and the humanitarian values we expect of ourselves.
All Palestinians have left is hope.
We cannot carry on like nothing has happened.
Meegwetch, marsee.