QUESTION PERIOD — Health
Canada Mental Health Transfer
November 7, 2023
Government leader, the Trudeau government has yet to fulfill a promise — another promise — made during the 2021 federal election campaign to create a new federal transfer to the provinces and territories called the Canada Mental Health Transfer, with an initial investment of $4.5 billion over five years.
In March, after the federal budget failed yet again to put this transfer in place, the Canadian Mental Health Association said that your government was out of touch with the mental health crisis in our country.
When the previous minister of health was asked about this a year ago, he would only say that he’d continue to engage with the provinces. Leader, what is the current status of the Canada Mental Health Transfer?
Thank you for your question and for underlining that support for mental health in Canada is an important and pressing issue, as is support for other dimensions of our health care system of which all aspects are feeling the strain of increased demand, increased costs and never enough resources, either provincial or federal.
The federal Minister of Health and his counterparts have regular discussions about the provinces’ priorities and capacities, and those discussions will continue.
The Liberal government has failed to live up to its promise to fund a Canada Mental Health Transfer despite the growing scale of the mental health crisis, the government’s expansion of medical assistance in dying and the widespread use of dangerous, highly addictive drugs.
Should Canadians expect that the Canada Mental Health Transfer will be included in this fall fiscal update? If it’s not there, what should Canadians make of that omission?
I’m not in a position to advise as to what may or may not be in the fall economic update, but when that becomes public, I think Canadians will know exactly what the government is intending to do.
