Mr. Speaker, as members are well aware, I am rising again, as I have on many occasions in the past, to raise the issue of mental health for Canadians and the government's failure to follow through on its commitments. I am flagging that again because mental health is health.
Back on October 7, I asked the minister why the Liberals were abandoning their promise to make mental health a full and equal part of Canada's universal public health care system. At the time, I indicated this: “It is estimated [that] every dollar invested in mental health generates two dollars of long-term savings, while untreated mental health issues cost our economy more than $50 billion every year.”
First of all, I need to correct the record right now. That figure of $50 billion was from 2012. A new report released earlier this year by the Mental Health Commission of Canada estimates that the monetary cost associated with untreated mental health issues is actually more like $200 billion. That is an increase of $150 billion over 13 years.
I asked the Minister of Health to acknowledge that it is time to invest in the mental health of Canadians as a nation-building project. The response I received during question period, and I am being quite generous here, was woefully disappointing. She said, “Mental health is top of mind for this new government”.
We do not see that reality reflected in actual investment dollars in the past budget, apart from some funding for youth mental health that the NDP helped advocate for. Again, the Liberals made commitments in their 2025 election campaign that they would make the youth mental health fund permanent and earmark $150 million per year toward it, beginning this year and continuing through fiscal year 2028-29. They failed to do that.
What happened to these great ideas between the recent federal election and the budget? Even if the government followed through on its campaign promises, these figures are woefully inadequate, and they fall far short of meeting the $200 billion in annual costs to the Canadian economy resulting from untreated mental health issues, as I stated earlier. If the government is actually serious about improving productivity in this country, we need to double investments in mental health and we need to support workers, especially when we look at nation building. Investing in mental health is nation building. It does help support the GDP.
We are only spending about half what our peer countries do on mental health, when we look at the OECD average, and we are seeing the results of that underfunding. I go outside, and I can see the impact. Every family in this country is touched by someone struggling with mental health issues. Mental health funding is an investment in Canada's workforce, and while the youth mental health fund is an important investment, we need to ensure that all Canadians can access appropriate supports.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information found in data published just last month that in 2024, 41% of Canadian adults and 36% of children who needed mental health care had needs that were only partially met or were completely unmet. That shows we have a long way to go. As Canadians, we pride ourselves on taking care of each other, but right now too many people are being left to struggle on their own.
It is time to change that. It is time to finally bring mental health into our universal public health care system. That is why I tabled the first private member's bill in the 45th Parliament, Bill C-201. If that bill was passed, it would bring community-based mental health services into the Canada Health Act so that we would have parity, and all Canadians would access supports with a health card, not a credit card.
My question for the minister and the parliamentary secretary is whether they will commit here and now to fixing the Canada Health Act to ensure that we have parity with mental and physical health and make sure that it is implemented in our universal public health care system.