Thank you for the question. I very much enjoyed meeting with your council as well. It's a pretty knowledgeable group.
It is a process. People know what the standards are on blood pressure or what's appropriate for cancer. I think what people don't feel is that we actually know what is the appropriate treatment.
One of the things that are most exciting for me—as I continue to talk about the most appropriate care in the most appropriate place by the most appropriate provider at the most appropriate time—is that throughout COVID we have also seen that the most appropriate place may be virtual. Up until now, the medical community and the mental health community haven't had as much experience with or even a way of paying for virtual care, until COVID.
What we're saying is that developing the standards means that Canadians will know what the appropriate care is, and they can ask for it. They can ask their family doctor or their nurse practitioner to get it. The other exciting part is that we are seeing a stepped care model in which, for maybe the strongest families, the families are just being coached, or it may be that it is peer support or it can be co-treatment with a family doctor and a mental health provider, a social worker, a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
What was really interesting last week, when we did the round table on perinatal mental health, was that from the study of Dr. Vigod, of the 40 people needing perinatal mental health care, only two ended up needing to see the specialized psychiatrist. The rest were helped with other levels of care, so that's the kind of thing.... I think some people think it's not appropriate care unless they get to see a psychiatrist. We know that there are many other mental health providers who are skilled at various other aspects of mental health and substance use treatment.
I think the standards won't mean anything on their own unless Canadians know what they are in terms of mental health literacy, health literacy and all those things that we as parliamentarians are working on.