No, actually, she was just doing the timekeeping.
We talked about five areas needing investment. They are based on the tiered model and the stepped care model, very much in line with what people are saying here. We are a proud member also of CAMIMH, and we support the recommendations in their paper.
What we know, though, is that the area that has been the most significantly underfunded in Canada—it isn't across the board when we compare ourselves to other countries—is the basic community-based services. It's there that we have the biggest gap when we look at ourselves compared to other G7 countries.
If we were to say where you would get the biggest impact from giving a focus to the provinces, the first of the five areas would be structured, community-based interventions. They're widely accessible. They break down barriers. Many are provided through e-mental health and telephone services, and they are having the largest reach. But it's by specialized, trained, peer support workers who are themselves supervised by clinical psychologists.
I'm a clinical psychologist, but we're not going to have one in every backyard. I think we need to have people working to their scope of practice. We have examples of other countries that have found themselves in exactly the same position as Canada and have made dramatic improvements by getting these services out there. It has saved them money. There has been a wave in the WHO toward using a shared care model, recognizing that GPs and family practice clinicians are less expensive than psychiatrists. However, they're in fact less effective and more expensive than psychologists, social workers, and other people trained to do the work.
The next big wave of research in the World Health Organization is interdisciplinary primary care, and that's the second piece. Don't have doctors and nurses try to deal with all of the mental health problems in Canada. Include all of the people who are trained in specialty mental health care.
Third is community-based services and supports—and budget 2017 did make investments in housing, community, and employment supports. We need to make sure we have the housing and employment supports so that people who have received services can thrive in a recovering community.
Fourth, there are those people who have serious and persistent mental illness who are going to need the wrap-around services. But if you're doing all of these other things, you're going to find that fewer people are going to be waiting on supportive housing lists.
Fifth is the full continuum of illness prevention and health promotion. I'll just reiterate that when we're talking about healthy communities, think about where kids spend their time: schools. There are really good evidence-based programs in mental health promotion and social and emotional learning that we could invest in upstream in schools—and for adults, invest in work places.
The Canadian federal government also has an opportunity to show real leadership as the largest employer in Canada to truly implement psychological health and safety standards in the workplace. That's one of the things the Canadian government can do that can actually demonstrate clear leadership for corporate Canada.
Finally, I would say that people have recognized the federal government's leadership on this. It hasn't been popular everywhere that the federal government is trying to have a say in what needs to happen, but every one of the organizations I've heard from has told the federal government that they need it to demonstrate this leadership.
What we at CMHA would say is don't back down. Continue to demonstrate real leadership at the federal level, and most of the provinces we talked to off-side are actually pleased with having this focus on mental health. Don't get lost in the debate. Canada needs it in addition to the earmarked funding for mental health in the Canada health transfer
We're an organization that's part of CAMIMH, and we're changing the name from “innovation fund” to “transformation fund” because of Jane Philpott. She asked why 2017 can't be the year that we transform mental health and mental health funding in Canada. We're saying, if you actually recognize the years of lack of investment and how big the gap is, the first job is to actually accept how far behind we are.
Indeed, it's not as much an innovation fund as a transformation fund. We need to take deliberate action to transform the mental health system, and this government can do it.