44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 20, 2022 10:00AM
- Oct/20/22 2:22:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what would we have cut? We would have cut the $54-million ArriveCAN app. We would have cut the half-billion dollars for the WE organization. We said that they should never have given wage subsidies to wealthy corporations that were capable of paying out bonuses and dividends to their executives. That is an easy question to answer.
In fact, $200 billion of the $500 billion in new debt in the last two years had nothing to do with COVID at all. Inflation was already spiralling out of control well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Liberals should stop blaming everyone else and tell us how they are going to reverse the inflation that they caused.
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- Oct/20/22 2:31:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the finance minister had an epiphany after listening to the new Conservative leader's plan for ministers to find savings if they want to spend any new money. The only problem is that before COVID her government ran up $110 billion in debt, and before the Russian invasion added a half-trillion dollars to the debt. Of that, $200 billion was not even COVID spending. The government would rather blame everyone else than take responsibility for its homegrown inflation issue.
How can any Canadian trust the government to fix the inflation crisis it created?
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- Oct/20/22 2:34:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government increased the debt by over $100 billion before COVID and then increased the debt another $500 billion during COVID, half of which it did not even spend on pandemic measures. Now we are supposed to believe the government has a new-found religion called fiscal restraint.
If the government has not shown Canadians any fiscal responsibility in seven years, why should we trust it now?
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- Oct/20/22 6:21:16 p.m.
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moved
That this committee take note of mental health.
She said: Madam Chair, I would first like to acknowledge that I am on the unceded and traditional territory of the Kanyen'kehà:ka who have been the stewards of these lands and waters since time immemorial.
I believe it is important that parliamentarians be able to demonstrate to Canadians that we share their concerns and are listening to those with lived experience of this issue, the experts and the frontline workers. We will implement evidence-based practices to respond the the mental health parallel pandemic.
The past few years have been difficult for several reasons.
Isolation, financial and employment uncertainty, and disruptions to daily life have left many people across Canada struggling to cope with stress, anxiety, depression and loneliness, and young people are expressing their serious concern about climate change.
It is clear that COVID-19 has pushed an already stressed health care system to its limits, and we know that it can be a challenge for Canadians to know where to look for help, find help, find the right help and access that help right away. Sadly, during this time, when so many of us needed support, support was all too often out of reach.
Caring for those struggling with their mental health and substance use has not been consistently available across Canada, and when it was available, Canadians often faced long waiting lists. This is not a new problem, but like so many gaps in our health and social systems, it was amplified by the pandemic. Those who were underserved by our health and mental health systems before the pandemic are suffering even more now. More than half of all Canadians feel that their mental health has worsened since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over 70 years ago, Canadian war veteran Dr. Brock Chisholm, the first director general of the World Health Organization, stated, “without mental health there can be no true physical health.” Mental health must be treated as a full and equal part of our universal health care system. Canadians should be able to expect the most appropriate care in the most appropriate place by the most appropriate provider at the most appropriate time.
We are working with the Standards Council of Canada, as well as our provincial and territorial partners, to develop national standards for evidence-based mental health and addiction services in the priority areas identified with our provincial and territorial colleagues. The work is being supported by $45 million over two years, and we are encouraged by the incredible early progress on national standards for integrated youth services, the wraparound care now being adopted by all jurisdictions.
Since 2015, we have made historic investments, including the $5 billion to provinces and territories to increase the availability of mental health care, $598 million from the distinctions-based mental health and wellness strategy for indigenous peoples, $140 million to support veterans and $270 million for the Wellness Together portal. Through the $5 billion in provincial and territorial bilateral agreements, we are now providing $600 million additional annual funding until 2027 to expand access to community-based mental health and addiction services for children and youth and integrated services for people with complex needs, and to expand proven models of community mental health care and culturally appropriate interventions linked to primary health services.
We also remain fully committed to investing another $4.5 billion through the Canada mental health transfer. Over the past year, we have heard clearly from partners and the community that the new transfer needs to be based upon a comprehensive, evidence-based plan, including the timely sharing of health data to ensure transparency and accountability to all Canadians.
Last Monday, I met with my provincial and territorial mental health and addictions counterparts to share wise practices. Next month, the Minister of Health and I will meet with all provincial and territorial health ministers in Vancouver to chart our way forward, focusing particularly on health human resources, including the expansion of the concept of the mental health workforce.
Tonight I would like to congratulate and thank my colleague from Prince George being appointed critic for mental health and for his hard work on suicide prevention and the 988 three-digit helpline. We also know that it is essential for Canadians to have timely access to suicide prevention. They need to know they are not alone.
We welcome the CRTC's decision to approve the new 988 three-digit suicide prevention line, and are working to ensure it has the capacity for a successful launch next fall, together with the national action plan on suicide prevention, which will update the existing framework.
We have partnered with CAMH to oversee the implementation of the crisis line, and we are investing $21 million over five years through CAMH to implement and sustain a fully operational pan-Canadian suicide prevention service. We are also working closely with American counterparts to learn from their four-year implementation process for the similar service they launched earlier this year.
Tonight it is imperative that we all communicate that, if people are struggling with thoughts of suicide right now, or know someone who is, help is available at 1-833-456-4566.
While the pandemic exacerbated the gaps in mental health supports available to Canadians, it also accelerated the use of virtual care options to help expand the availability and flexibility of those services. In April 2020, we launched Wellness Together Canada. Its online portal has served as an invaluable connection for many Canadians, allowing them to get the help they need even when they could not leave their homes, and it can be used as a stepping stone to receive advice on where to find more specialized care.
The companion app, PocketWell, also ensures that Canadians have access to the mental health and substance abuse services they need, no matter where they live, and that they are able to access resources 24-7. As of October 17, nearly three million individuals across Canada have accessed the portal in over eight million web sessions, and the app has been downloaded over 30,000 times.
A total of $130 million was invested in the Wellness Together Canada portal between April 2020 and April 2022. Budget 2022 has provided a further $140 million over two years, so it can continue to provide Canadians with tools and services to support them. The feedback from the users of the portal has been very positive.
Although COVID has resulted in more people struggling with mental health, it seems to also have resulted in us all becoming a bit more open to talk about our own mental health. When more people are comfortable talking about mental health, it helps to reduce the stigma that is still a tremendous barrier to seeking care, but the care must be there when they need it. We must design wraparound supports from the bottom up, listening to those with lived and living experience, together with the people who are in their communities who are doing such great work.
We know there is much more to do.
I look forward to participating in this timely and important debate. I also look forward to hearing what my hon. colleagues believe we can do to better support Canadians' mental health.
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- Oct/20/22 6:38:56 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I thank the member for Guelph for all of his advocacy and for hosting us in Guelph, where we learned a lot about the great things happening on the ground there not only at the university but throughout his community.
We cannot pretend that we can go forward without being able to fund what works and stop funding what does not work, or without understanding the areas of greater need and being able to put additional resources there. We can only do that with data. Last week, I was pleased that the OECD thanked me for my intervention on data at the world mental health conference.
Even with the opioid crisis, at the moment, the Public Health Agency of Canada has placed federal public servants in each of the provinces and territories just so we can get data on the opioid crisis. With the pandemic, the provinces have been struggling, and we cannot do this without the appropriate data.
As we have seen with COVID, we now have better data on immunizations, diseases, emergency visits and ICUs. I hope that will transfer into a real ability, as I am meeting with the health ministers next month, for us all to understand that Canadians deserve to know what is working.
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- Oct/20/22 7:59:01 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I appreciate my colleague, whom I work closely with on the committee. We are in a crisis in this country. No family or community has been left untouched. As many have mentioned tonight, dozens of Canadians die every day as a result of the mental health and addictions crises. This is a crisis that has had a profound impact on so many families and so many communities.
The government acted so promptly for the banking sector when COVID hit, with $750 billion in liquidity supports. However, for this mental health crisis, which is an acute crisis that is killing Canadians, we have still not seen the Canadian mental health transfer. Why is the government so slow to provide those vital supports that so many Canadians need when it was so quick to meet the needs of bankers and the banking industry?
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- Oct/20/22 9:38:08 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot could attest that it is very rare that we get along or find common ground on issues, but this is one tonight on which I really do appreciate his speech. It was excellent. He talked about a sense of urgency. He shared his personal story and his vulnerability. It was very generous.
We have an issue that we are seeing around this House, which is the need to deal with the patchwork of the provinces that deliver health and the urgency of the need to get resources out to them. We saw that urgency when it came to child care, but the government has not demonstrated that here, on this issue.
Margaret Eaton, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association, stated that even if the immediate impacts of COVID-19 are subsiding, the mental health effects persist and will likely continue for years to come. The community mental health and addictions sector cannot meet these growing needs with the current patchwork funding and disjointed service delivery model. It is time to overhaul our mental health system.
I cannot say enough about how much—
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- Oct/20/22 9:39:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, often we do disagree on things, policy-related and whatnot. However, I am so pleased that there is common agreement.
We may differ a little on what that action looks like, but I am so pleased that in this House, and across the country, we could find significant agreement with our provincial counterparts to ensure that we simply get to work.
With respect to the consequences of COVID, although we are seeing the pandemic-related measures subside, the consequences of the mental health side of things are going to be long felt. That certainly has to be addressed when developing both the frameworks surrounding the health transfer and other related areas of policy regarding mental health in Canada.
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