The executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Cochrane-Temiskaming made a direct plea for better funding on Tuesday to the Ontario legislature’s budget committee.
Paul Jalbert says the health care system is in crisis, especially in treatment for addictions and mental health. Among its needs is money for supportive housing.
“That’s not just the bricks and mortar, which is really important, we need more housing stock and affordable housing stock for sure,” he says, “but the actual supportive component of this, the people who help people with activities of daily living.”
Jalbert told the MPPs that improving mental health and addiction services will help ease the crisis in other sectors those people turn to as an alternative.
He adds that staffing in mental health and addiction services experiences high turnover and long vacancies.
“We support individuals, you know, in on-the-job training and what not, but then oftentimes what happens is they move on to these other sectors in health care that pay 20%-30% better than we can.”
There’s more from Paul Jalbert on his presentation to the committee in this audio link:
