Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today’s Member’s statement will be about bullying, and the speech I will be reading today has been penned from the eyes of a 12 year old, who is my son, McKinley, who is in the gallery here today. He has a way of not mixing words, and he has a particular way of being direct, so as such, I will read the speech he gave to his class a few days ago.
One in four teachers see nothing wrong with bullying. This is bad because teachers, the adults, are supposed to give students a proper education and prevent bullying, not sit around and not doing nothing about it.
My name is McKinley Hawkins, and I am here to tell all schools the negative effects of bullying and how it affects many students. Hopefully, this speech can change bullies and schools, because bullying is not right, it is wrong, so now I will talk about the facts on bullying.
One in seven students are bullied or a victim of bullying. I am here to drop that number, and I am here to speak up for all victims because all students deserve a good education. About 160,000 teens skip school every day because of bullying. That is a lot of teens that miss out on learning. Over two-thirds of students think that teachers and schools respond poorly to bullying, with a high percentage thinking that adult help is ineffective. This is hard to believe, but schools do not care about bullying. This is the reason why many students drop out from schools.
Bullying can be a problem, but if it continues or gets really bad and violent, it can lead to possibly suicide, which was what happened to Amanda Todd. Suicide is something that a victim of bullying may think solves their problems, but it does not, it makes it worse for other people. Nearly 4,000 Canadians commit suicide, with an average of 10 suicides per day. That is bad, because a high percent of causes are bullying.
Bullying victims are two to nine times more highly to consider suicide than normal victims, and with girls aged 10 to 14, they are even at a higher risk of suicide. Bullying-related suicides could be connected to any other type of bullying, like cyberbullying, physical bullying, verbal bullying, emotional bullying and texting bullying.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
These are the warning signs of suicide sometimes: showing deep depression, ongoing sadness, showing interest in dying, engaging in dangerous activities and saying things like they can’t handle things anymore. If you know anyone with these signs, get them help, because suicide never makes things better. Schools can prevent bullying, like encouraging students to stand up for them when bullied. Other ways that students can prevent bullying is having school-wide events to prevent bullying.
Now is the time to prevent bullying because it is now clearly becoming an illegal offence. So I encourage schools to stop bullying and take action now because if everyone works together, everyone will have a good education and a good life.”
In closing, he says, “I hope this speech will help many, and many schools stop bullying, because bullying is bad and can affect many, many lives. If you were bullied, I want you to look at the outcome of other victims and how he or she feels because if it gets bad it can lead to suicide. This can happen to anyone, so please help stop bullying.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for hearing me. These were his own words he gave to his class the other day. I tried to read them exactly how he wrote them, and they were his. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Good job, McKinley, and keep doing what you’re doing, young man. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
