Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone. It's great to have everyone here this afternoon.
I'm going to keep my remarks very short, and I'll just ask one quick question. This is an issue that we're sort of happy to talk about because I think we're going in the right direction. It's basically a non-partisan issue, but our government is going in the right direction, I think, with funding. However, it's also a very sad or melancholy issue to have to talk about mental health because it does impact so many Canadians and costs our economy literally tens of billions of dollars every year.
Recently, I was able to participate in the Kids Help Phone walk up in York Region, up in Vaughan. It was very well attended. I think the Kids Help Phone raised $250,000 that day. It was just a great event, and the stories that were told were very touching. There also was the CAMH One Brave Night for Mental Health, called “the one-night stand”, where people stayed up for the entire evening in support of mental health. There seems to be a lot going on to end the stigma and to ensure that we help kids and all Canadians impacted by this.
My question comes out of a case that came to my office. A father came in asking for help for his daughter. The question in this case was that the resources available in downtown Toronto in this situation were not equivalent to the resources in York Region. At his age, he couldn't drive his daughter downtown daily to get the treatment and then come home. It was too arduous for him. There seems to be, I feel, a gap between the resources and what's happening in the core of the city versus the outer area. The region I have the privilege of representing is not really rural. It's actually quite urban up in Vaughan and York Region. I just want to get a general feel, from your familiarity, of the resources available in the suburbs versus downtown because that seems to be something that will come up, and it's come up in a couple of cases. How can we close that gap?
Thank you.