I would just like to add that the community-based services are the least well funded of all the mental health services. For example, in Ottawa right now they are having great difficulty attracting home support workers into the home care system, because they don't pay them enough. Home support workers are the backbone of home care, so we have a catch-22. The human resource issue has to be addressed.
Just to come back to a comment of the other member, there's an urgent need for a national human resources strategy in mental health on both the supply and demand side. I think that's a really important area of research that we need to look at.
In terms of funding, we had on the books at one point a mental health transition fund. That seems to have gone by the boards. That kind of federal fund would go a long way to making funds accessible to community-based services across the country. I think at one point there was a half-billion dollars in the mental health transition fund. It would have to be revisited. But there's a good example of how the federal government could show leadership, yet the provinces could use those funds in appropriate ways.
Just to deal with the other issue of the federal-provincial dynamic, I think what the federal government can do very well is to set those national standards. But the provinces, obviously, have the responsibility to implement these programs. I think one of the downfalls with the health funding a few years ago was that it remains important to have accountability on the provinces' side of how those funds are spent.
In terms of a housing strategy or a mental health funding strategy, yes, make the funds available, give the provinces the freedom, but have some accountability mechanisms built in for their use so these funds don't go into general revenues, for example, as has happened in the health care system.