Good afternoon.
For my part, I'm going to tell you why we want psychoeducation services to be tax-exempt, both federally and in Quebec.
As my colleague Ms. Maillette said, psychoeducators carry out psychosocial interventions with a varied clientele, particularly in mental health. In fact, you had the chance to hear about it earlier, from Ms. Woo Dearden, who is a psychotherapist.
Psychoeducation is currently helping to reduce waiting lists for mental health services, which are a primary public health need in Quebec and Canada. However, the taxation of our psychoeducational services represents a real barrier to referral. For example, some professionals, and even some clients, are reluctant to come to our services, precisely because they are perceived as being a little more expensive, compared to the services of other professionals who are not taxed. Examples include occupational therapists, psychologists, acupuncturists and naturopaths. There are plenty of other services that are tax-exempt.
I can attest to this: often, taxes can prompt the client not to sign up for psychoeducational services, even when these would be the preferred services, for example because of adjustment difficulties or the need to develop a certain skill in their development. Professionals also tend not to refer their clients to a psychoeducator. We believe that tax exemption on our services would ease the financial burden on those seeking help. The costs of psychoeducation services are high. So, if we were to remove the taxes, which represent around 15% of the price of the session, it would allow people who need help to save significant amounts.
I'd also like to describe the expertise of psychoeducation. It lies above all in understanding the human being, developing abilities, managing emotions and developing skills. Moreover, our clinical process corresponds to the definition of the work of therapeutic counsellors, which we would like to see added to Bill C‑59, as we have seen. So, we believe that psychoeducation services could fall into the category of therapeutic counsellors.
To proceed in this way, you would first need to amend the Excise Tax Act by including the term “therapeutic counsellor” in the definition of “practitioner”. It should be made clear that psychoeducation is included, so that there is no ambiguity. That way, Revenu Québec, to which we also report, will be able to rely on federal documents to grant us tax-exempt status.
So there's still a long way to go before we can benefit from this exemption.
Thank you for listening.