Honourable senators, this week is Mental Illness Awareness Week, and it provides us with an opportunity to reflect on mental health and mental disorders, and to acknowledge the contributions of some national leaders for their work in improving the lives of our family members, friends and, indeed, members of our global community.

Good mental health is not about feeling good all the time. It’s about being willing and able to engage fully with the existential challenges that life throws at us: good and bad; happy and sad; joyful and anguished.

It is by so doing that we develop the competencies needed to understand what our feelings are and how to act so we can learn to adapt, become more resilient and — above all — support each other.

It is also a time to speak clearly about mental disorders. Someone who is living with a mental disorder is not by the fact of having it a lesser person. It does not automatically make them unable to make decisions about themselves or their lives, understand complex issues and think critically about what they are facing.

Let’s remember some who have lived with mental illness and ask ourselves this question: What would those people say if competent persons living with mental disorders were deemed unable to make important and indeed life-altering decisions — people such as Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Virginia Woolf and Martin Luther King Jr.? This list is long and getting longer. Indeed, colleagues, it includes some of us who currently sit in this chamber. Certainly, we are not as well-known but are equally able to think clearly and act with agency.

I acknowledge the good work that the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, or CAMIMH, is doing — not only this week but every week of the year — to highlight the contributions that Canadians have made in advancing our knowledge and understanding of mental disorders and advocating for better mental health care for all. This week, CAMIMH announced the 2023 Champions of Mental Health on Parliament Hill. These seven champions have demonstrated exceptional commitment to advancing and increasing access to mental health and substance use services. Their hard work has created important changes in their lives and in the lives of their communities.

As we observe Mental Illness Awareness Week and congratulate the 2023 Champions of Mental Health, let us reaffirm our commitment to supporting and funding the best available evidence-based mental health literacy and care, and doing what we can to ensure that everyone in this country — regardless of where they live, who they are and whom they love — has access to the care and resources they need. Thank you. Wela’lin.