I think there has to be a national plan. One of the problems with the mental health system is that the entry points are often gatekeepers. One of the things that could begin to happen with the national strategy is they could expect to become more navigators through the system to help people. Now that there are national standards among all the provinces and programs, we know what we're aiming towards. A definition of what mental health looks like would be helpful.
Also, there is the question of access to systems. There's someone here in the Central Region who every Thursday has to pull her kid out of school. She's on assistance. Every Thursday, she hops on a bus, pays her own money or sometimes she gets help from assistance, takes her kid into the health science centre, and gets programming for her there.
Why can't those programs start to come out here, and why can't there be federal money for that kind of stuff in the rural systems?