Monday, October 20, 2025

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Yes, that’s right. So a couple of different themes: We’ve invested over $4 million over the last two years to support more of the children and youth mental health providers to come on to the business intelligence unit. That funding also goes towards things like replacing—so that they’re on a compliant system for them to send us data and for us to receive the data. That also comes with an investment of quality, so giving them some support to improve the quality of the data that they’re sending as well. So that will continue. I think the biggest, more transformative space for this is around that data digital initiative from the Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence that I was talking about around the standardization of the data set itself and then funding that goes towards them being able to get compliant systems and on to that process. It is, as you understand, quite a transformative process and something that will take time to be able to do that. I think the last stats that we had from the centre of excellence, the number of organizations that have onboarded or are plan to be onboarded, it’s about 90% of the funding space that they’re on. So a lot of progress is being made on that. The children and youth sector is going to start a little bit after the adult sector, in part for two reasons: (1) we already have a data system that we are able to collect information and data from the children and youth space; and (2) we wanted to make sure that the adult space and the addictions space were starting to get onboarded—that’s also where the majority of the money is relative to the different programming—and to be able to learn from that approach that’s happening. Working with this Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence, we’re on track to start onboarding children and youth mental health providers onto that data digital initiative, meaning they’ll come on a compliant system, that they’ll be submitting data toward a provincial data standard, starting next fiscal year. There has been some trial work already under way. We’re working with four pretty large providers just seeing if there’s any additional issues that we need to manage because they’re transitioning on and they’re coming from a different space. One of the most important things that we’re making sure that happens is that, as we’re building up the children and youth mental health centre onto the data digital initiative, we’re not losing the data that we’re collecting from the business intelligence unit solution or the Transfer Payment Ontario solution. We want to be careful that we’re not creating too much burden for the providers themselves and that we’re not losing the data that we actually have, so we want to do that in a thoughtful way.

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

Maybe just to add: We do spend $2.1 million just for the BI right now, and as ADM MacIntyre said, we will be transitioning it to the broader system. So we are investing money right now to help service providers.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

And that will fix the issues around different definitions on wait times and all of these other—

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

You got it.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

—a few of the other things that came out in the report.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

That’s right. That provincial data standard should be defining not only the data you’re doing, but how you describe that data, which would require the providers to work in a way that meets that definition. So that will be across the lifespan, across all the children and youth mental health providers, but also all the adult and addictions providers as well.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

How much time do I have now?

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

You have just under seven minutes.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay, great. There has been a lot of discussion today about the centre of excellence, and then in the report there’s a lot of discussion about the oversight, the role of the Ministry of Health—and also the benefits around that transitional-age youth into the adult system. Are you looking for the child and youth mental health system to be led in more of a similar way out of the centre of excellence, for the adult system? Sorry, I’m tripping on my words here. It feels like, from the report, I’m sensing there’s still confusion on where the direction is coming from and where the accountabilities lie. Is the idea here that we’ll transition that accountability in more of a model to the centre of excellence and the relationship that health care providers have with OH?

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

Those are the options that we’re looking at, but as you know, there are two pieces of legislation, so we need to make sure that there’s legislative authority to do those things. I think that as OH has really developed the centre of excellence—it’s awesome—but we’re still kind of working with agencies on placing children and doing different things, right? And that’s a legislative responsibility that we have, so we have to figure out how to give policy options to how you can do that and streamline it and move it over to one. But I think it does make sense at one point. We’re slowly getting there and we’re building as we bring forth those changes. I don’t know if it would be helpful to talk about CIHI when we’re talking about data, so I don’t know, Kyle, if you want to—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Some of the discrepancies.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Yes, I’ll just answer part of it and then get into CIHI. As the deputy said, there’s two different constituting legislations that manage both the authorities and the role in the children and youth mental health space: the Child, Youth and Family Services Act and then there’s the Connecting Care Act for Ontario Health and the centre of excellence, definitely moving towards making sure that there is a lifespan approach about collecting data, monitoring a person going through the system to help manage transition-age and the like, for sure. Again, we’ve sort of outlined the approach and what’s happening on that front. But there are special and particular things that we want to make sure happen in the children and youth space that is different than adult. They’re much more vulnerable people, different age group. There are requirements under different acts that treat children and youth up to the age of 18 differently than they would be as an adult, so we want to be thoughtful about making sure that we’re capturing them. But we work with both the centre of excellence and the lead agency consortium as well and are thinking through what kind of additional governance mechanisms we can do to make sure that we’re looking at things across the lifespan, including the establishment of a core services framework, for example. With respect to that CIHI-related data that was identified in the report, I think the Auditor General made a recommendation. I won’t say it exactly, but it was around two different things. One is maybe move towards a paying Canadian indicator for wait times, in this case particularly around counselling, and then there was an observation around making sure that, as part of that indicator, you’re looking at being consistent in how you measure a wait time. There’s a CIHI indicator right now that only four provinces are actually reporting fully into; the remainder of the provinces, like Ontario, are partial or incomplete. That’s one observation. The data that we pull and the indicators that we report on internally to ourselves around wait times is the average wait time for a person waiting for a core service like counselling or something like that. What the Auditor General’s report said is, take a look at when someone is counted as coming into the system and take a look at when they’re counted as leaving the system. And so, in the business intelligence solution, it looks at when someone enters—

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Two minutes remaining.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

—the wait time part of the spectrum and then when it leaves the wait time. What the Auditor General’s report said is maybe look at the referral piece and then when they start to service, which is sort of what the CIHI indicator said. When they identified that in the report it looked like if you used the process for the CIHI side it might add a little bit more time in terms of the wait time. But if we were to use the CIHI process and their actual indicator, they use the median wait time data. So if we were to look at the wait time data on the median scale for the CIHI it would be 25 days, as opposed to I think what was in the report, 120 days. So if anything we’re over-reporting if we use the median CIHI data. So that’s something that we’re looking at. We are able to take our data, use the process that CIHI uses for that indicator and submit to CIHI in that way. Eventually what we want to do, to your question, is move towards a consistent lifespan approach, perhaps using the referral and then leaving service as a way of measuring that. But that work, we want to make sure that that’s happening with DDI—that digital initiative—led out of the Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence as well.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Thank you. I do have more questions around concurrent disorders and access to those, but I’ll leave those for the next session.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

We’re at 30 seconds left, so—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Oh, I still have 30 seconds? Okay. So maybe I will quickly ask, and maybe we can come back to it. I do think that we talked a lot about a pretty significant gap in concurrent disorders and being able to support people that have got mental illness and some kind of substance use challenge. Maybe I’ll just seed that now, knowing that I’ll come back to that in my next session.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

We’re at time. We’re now moving to the official opposition, beginning with MPP Lennox.

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MPP Robin Lennox

In the report the vast majority of child and youth mental health agencies reported difficulties with recruiting and retaining staff, and 87% reported that this was largely due to wage disparities between the amount that community child and youth mental health workers are paid when compared to those in the hospital or education sectors. Is the ministry committed to addressing these significant wage disparities in order to address this shortage of clinical staff? If so, how much new funding was dedicated to addressing these wage disparities in this year’s budget?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Thank you for the question. Just maybe a couple of points: One, the investments that have happened since 2019 have increased. It’s $800 million in new base funding. That doesn’t include one-time funding generally. If you add that up, it’s certainly well over one billion new dollars into the community mental health space since 2019. In 2019 the government had a 5% across the board for the children and youth space. In 2023 it also had an another 5% across the board, and in this budget this past year there was a reference to an additional $303 million over four years, which amounts to a 4% increase to the sector as a whole as well. So since 2019 there’s been over 14% in the number across the boards in investing in the children and youth mental health sector programming on top of additional funding just generally around programming as well.

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MPP Robin Lennox

If I may clarify, the $800 million was for both the child and adult mental health sectors? Only $200 million actually went to child and youth mental health?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

An additional $200 million.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Yes, since 2019?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

That’s right.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Those increases that you mentioned, 5% per annum or 4% per annum, are just barely above inflation. These wage discrepancies that are being described are in the range of 20% to 50% below those in the acute sector, in the education sector. How do you expect child and youth mental health agencies to try to match when we’re only giving them a fraction of the disparity that they’re facing in terms of wages currently?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

I think a key component of that, in response, is one of the recommendations that the Auditor General identified, which is the need for a health human resources plan for it. The ministry has accepted that recommendation, and the Ministry of Health has over the last while developed a health human resource plan that looks at education expansion and clinical supports, scope of practice, looking to see if others can also support providing care, different pathways to international practitioners and looking at different ways for retention and distribution. There’s a need to bring the mental health and addiction sector more into that, and so we’re starting to look at opportunities to be able to do that, mindful of the compensation issues that you’ve raised.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Thank you so much. In their 2020 report, Children’s Mental Health Ontario called for an additional $150 million per year to be able to hire the amount of staff they would need to reduce the wait time to counselling within 30 days. The amount of investment that you’re describing falls quite short of an additional $150 million per year. How does the ministry reconcile that shortcoming? And what is the ministry’s intended wait time for first point of counselling and how are you going to get there?

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

I can maybe start on the HHR one. We have been developing a health human resource strategy just globally and we want to do it more specifically for the area of mental health and addictions. We haven’t done it specifically, so that’s kind of our next order of business that we’re going to be working on. We work closely with the Treasury Board to conduct a workforce data survey, in partnership. Some of the things you pointed out—those are what the sector is telling us as well. We need the be able to assess compensation gaps—all of those things as we develop our HHR strategy, health human resources strategy. We need to explore workload guidelines and retention, some of the things that you spoke to. We have done some things, like building the capacity that we spoke to around the training for the 2,200 existing technicians, just to start to give them some additional tools in the space. There’s a lot of work to be done and we definitely want it as a part of our broader HHR strategy. We need to have it specifically for mental health and addictions.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Great, thank you. In the report, the Auditor General identified an agency in northern Ontario which, over two years, advocated for the development of a secure treatment program to better meet the needs of children and youth in northern communities; to support children staying engaged with their communities and their families while meeting that secure, intensive treatment. The AG identified that there was no action taken on this proposal from the ministry and there’s still no access to these programs in the north. When you spoke about your new Ontario intensive treatment program, you spoke about that $22 million going towards live-in treatment but not secured treatment programs. When can communities in the north expect an investment to fill that gap of secure treatment programs that they’ve been asking for for several years?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

As part of that $22-million investment, part of it will allow us to understand where there are gaps in the system. In the north, we know that there have been some providers who have identified the need for potential secure treatment. One of our Indigenous providers, Dilico, has raised this as a potential issue in the past. While it wouldn’t technically meet the need of what we describe to be a secure treatment program, the OITP will allow us to be able to identify those opportunities for more secure treatment programming, for sure. We have been working with the existing providers right now to develop a framework so that they’re providing consistent approaches to accessing care. That’s one thing. And there has been investment for government to expand the number of secure treatment placements in the provider out in eastern Ontario and Ottawa. So there is some expansion that is under way, but we know that there are opportunities to assess for more need, for sure.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Thank you. Speaking more on the issue of concurrent disorders in terms of concurrent mental health and substance use disorders, 70% of the agencies surveyed reported that their services do not meet the needs of youth with concurrent mental health and substance use disorders. At the same time, we’ve seen that rates of opioid-related deaths among Ontario teens and youth have tripled between 2014 and 2021, and rates of treatment initiation in that same group have actually only gone down markedly. What is the ministry doing to address that gap and prevent opioid-related deaths and other substance-related harms among youth with concurrent disorders in Ontario?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

I think that I might take parts of your question the next go round. I would say that the children and youth mental health program is focused on seven core services; addiction isn’t one of them. Most of the addiction programming comes from Ontario Health, so we have a different funding line that’s associated with supporting children and youth addiction-related programming. So there are different investments that are under way. The gentlemen over here raised youth wellness hubs as an opportunity, and the deputy spoke a little bit about that. Part of that is the expansion to 32 youth wellness hubs. We have 23 that are operating right now. We also invest in programming—things like PreVenture, which is an evidence-based prevention program that targets children and youth who might have known risk factors for substance use. It is rolled out in schools through community organizations and also youth wellness hubs. I think we’re at 28 school boards right now, focusing on grades 7 to 9, and I think it’s expanding more. That’s more on the prevention side of things. And then there’s other programming that we have that is also maybe considered transitional-age youth as well. Amani, which focuses on Black youth, also has a substance use focus for that specific population, so there’s additional funding and programming that goes towards that as well for folks with concurrent disorders.

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MPP Robin Lennox

I did recall that you mentioned youth wellness hubs initially as providing evidence-based addiction treatment, but I wonder what you consider evidence-based addiction treatment that is currently delivered at youth wellness hubs?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

The program itself is part of an integrated youth services model that is actually happening across Canada. It’s actually a big programming focus of our federal, provincial and territorial organizations, and also a big focus of the federal government in terms of funding—what have you.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

There are 10 minutes remaining.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

The program is based off of that integrated youth model and is supported by a number of data. It is run through a backbone organization called Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario, which sits out of CAMH and is being led by Dr. Jo Henderson—very well-known in the children and youth mental health space. They use a number of clinical assessment tools, and it is very data-oriented. It engages each of the youth along the way with surveys, including surveys when they leave the service. They use the best clinical knowledge to support children and youth with substance use disorders and in a measurement framework as well.

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

If I could just add, there are a couple of other programs that I think are important that touch on what you were trying to get at. We’ve got the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program, which offers cognitive behavioural therapy for youth aged 15-plus with depression and anxiety, often reoccurring with substance abuse. A lot of times, people will use to ease the symptoms of what they have in terms of their anxiety and depression—so they’ve got cognitive behavioural therapy skills. Kyle spoke about the Amani program for Black youth, which has been a really good program. It’s a culturally responsive program for Black youth aged 12 to 29, which includes integrated mental health and substance abuse services. I spoke about the Step-Up Step-Down programs earlier as well—that would kind of touch on that demographic as well, to support youth with complex needs that require stabilization either before or after hospital care. Then we did speak about the cross-sector protocol development, because you can’t operate in a silo. What’s happening on the child welfare side, what’s happening in the school—we need to have that protocol, which is what we’re working on as well. Those are other kinds of tools that we’re pulling all together.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Just maybe some extra data points on the youth wellness hubs themselves: There have been studies published in the American Medical Association journal that show that these youth wellness hubs are diverting children and youth away from the emergency department into the community. They’re seeing the same levels of improvements in the community mental health space as they would in an outpatient hospital program as well. We’re seeing something like 39% of the youth that have access to youth wellness hubs in Ontario right now say that, without that service, they wouldn’t know where to go. We’ve got a 99% youth satisfaction rate of the services they have received from the hub themselves. They find 98% of them are saying that it’s the right way of helping that they need, and 90% of youth are satisfied with the length of time that it takes to get the service that they’re in there, so a lot of really positive metrics in terms of both the outcomes and how they are receiving the service in youth wellness hubs. I think we’ve had almost 365,000 visits up to March 31, 2025, so I am sure more have happened there.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Thank you, and I agree. I think youth wellness hubs provide a fantastic service, but they historically have not actually provided the full flight of evidence-based treatment for youth with substance-use disorders. Most often, we’re seeing those youth being referred from youth wellness hubs to adult-focused services to access opioid-agonist therapy, for example, and other medication-based services. Is there any effort within the ministry to adapt to the ongoing substance and toxic drug crisis that we’re seeing in Ontario and actually expand the offerings of the youth wellness hub to match the needs that we’re seeing among our youth, who are increasingly using substances that create more harms and increase the risk of death?

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

There are definitely referral pathways for OAT from the hubs. With the youth wellness hubs, the whole goal is almost like one-stop shopping because you can get somebody in, and then you can refer them or bring them in. I think that is what’s happening within. They’re creating a whole network. All of the hubs also have primary care. They have access to primary care, so they are able to have physicians who can prescribe. That’s why primary care connecting into that was so important.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

To develop your point, it also isn’t a place to get all care. If you need withdrawal management services, you’re not going to go to a youth wellness hub; you’ll go to a different provider. We have a number of providers that do provide live-in treatment for children and youth, so there is opportunity for pathways into that for sure.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Great. Thank you. We know that the child and youth mental health sector has been drastically underfunded in recent years. Actually, over the past 20 years, the funding has been sort of based on historical allocations, as the auditor identified, which has meant that some regions are receiving far too little and can’t offer the programs the communities need. What action has the ministry taken to address this? Are we able to move to a needs-based funding model, and on what timeline are you anticipating that might happen?

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

There’s been an increase of close to 30% since 2019-20, so there’s been a pretty significant increase in terms of the budget.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Is that accounting for inflation or not?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

It would be just the envelope-to-envelope increase, yes.

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

Yes.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

So there has been that increase. There’s also, then, additional programming. We talked about Step-Up Step-Down, for example, and adding new programming there. We’ve also added programming that, irrespective of where you are in the province, you can access without any wait times. One Stop Talk is a really good example of that brief service access to that. We’ve also invested in different programming like Telemental Health, which allows access, no matter where you are, to a psychiatrist in order to get an assessment and referrals. And we’ve heard a little bit about the Ontario intensive treatment pathway; we’ve set up a network for intensive services for that. A key component of what we’re working towards is the establishment of a core services framework for across the lifespan. Right now, we have a core service framework that’s for children and youth. We’ve engaged with a technical table with a number of clinicians and providers across the care continuity, whether that’s children and youth mental health or on the adult and addictions space, to be able to get advice about what the core services are from a lifespan perspective that we should be establishing.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Two minutes.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

We’re working through the technical advice that we’ve heard from the table to be able to identify for that care continuum, irrespective of if you’re a child or youth or into adulthood, what should be the expected type of services that you may be able to have access to. When you take that information and you map it onto some of the work that we’re doing in the data digital space—which is able to, say, map different assets across the province of what providers are providing what service in what way—a step is to make sure that we understand those services, make sure that we’re speaking apples-to-apples about those services. You might say counselling is one thing, another person might say counselling is a different kind of thing—so being able to understand that. Through the establishment of that core services framework and that work that we talked about from the data digital collection, we will be able to better understand, across the lifespan, the different services that might be required—for children and youth is what we’re talking about today, but just in general, for mental health and addictions.

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

If I can maybe just give you the specifics on the numbers as well: It’s way more than inflation, obviously, at 29%. In 2019-20, the initial printed estimates were $406 million. Then in 2025-26, it was $526 million, which was the initial printed estimates, which is a 29.6% increase.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

And that wouldn’t include, more recently—

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

It doesn’t include the 4%.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

—the $303 million over the years, as well.

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MPP Robin Lennox

Great. Just returning to that question about the needs-based formula: Is there movement towards a needs-based formula rather than looking at the more historical allocations?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

The use of the historical allocations—yes, there was a sense of base funding for particular organizations some years, but that has changed over time. At the time of the report, there were 220 or thereabouts providers. Now, there’s slightly less than that, so we see reallocations happening all the time. We work with the lead agencies on reallocations, as their new pro-rate comes up, in understanding who might be better to deliver that service—

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

We’re at time.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

So there is reallocation and looking at services pretty constantly.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

We move to the final round of questions, beginning with the government side. We’re beginning with MPP Cooper. Please begin. You have 20 minutes in total.

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Mrs. Michelle Cooper

From fast-tracking cancer drugs to opening HART hubs, the government has been implementing a number of innovative solutions to bolster our health care system. Can you outline some of the innovative steps the province is and has taken to support the mental health and well-being of children and youth in Ontario?

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

Thanks so much for your question. This is a really good conversation, actually. I’m really enjoying—I wouldn’t say I thought I would enjoy SCOPA, but I do, because it’s important. It’s important for those of us that have young people in our lives. We’re really aware that the experiences of children and youth today are vastly different than it was 10 years ago. Two of my kids graduated from high school during COVID. It has really changed things, and we need innovative solutions to effectively serve children and youth and families today. The Roadmap to Wellness is Ontario’s plan to build a comprehensive and connected mental health and addiction system that delivers high-quality, evidence-based services across the care continuum and across the lifespan. Roadmap to Wellness was developed from consultations with hundreds of mental health and addictions organizations, front-line staff, hospitals, advocates, experts and people with lived experience. The plan will help improve mental health services for communities across Ontario and support patients and families living with mental health and addiction challenges. Built on the four pillars that we spoke about, the road map lays out a path towards meaningful improvements to the care Ontarians receive, enabled by the $3.8 billion over 10 years that the province is investing to expand mental health and addiction services. The plan’s four pillars support the delivery of the services people need, where and when they need them. These pillars are improving quality, expanding existing services, implementing innovative solutions and improving access. To help achieve the goals of the road map, more than $800 million in new base funding has been invested since 2019-20 to maintain and expand mental health and addiction services across the province. A significant portion of this new funding has been invested to support the third pillar of the Roadmap to Wellness, which is implementing innovative solutions. The Ministry of Health has been investing in new, innovative, evidence-based programming. I spoke about this a little bit earlier—it was the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program, to provide access to evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy for people living with depression and anxiety. Cognitive behavioural therapy is recognized as an effective intervention for depression and anxiety, the most common mental health issues to impact Ontarians. It builds resilience by equipping people with the lifelong skills they need to manage their mental health and overall well-being. It can lower the number of emergency department visits and admissions in Ontario, contributing to the broader provincial objective of ending hallway health care. The Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program is the first of its kind in Canada in terms of its scope, scale, focus on quality and public reporting on outcomes. There are no out-of-pocket costs for clients who participate in the program. The program is offered in various forms that best meet a client’s needs, including telephone coaching and clinical counselling, psychoeducational groups, Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy and face-to-face group and individual counselling. Youth as young as the age of 15 can access this programming to support them in dealing with anxiety and/or depression. Since launching in 2017, over 100,000 patients have benefited from the program. Demand for mental health services across the care continuum has continued to grow, placing a strain on the service system and impacting access for clients. To address and build off the success of implementing programming like the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program, the Ministry of Health has implemented several innovative programs aimed at enabling timely intervention by providing low-barrier access to mental health and addiction services. One such program—and ADM MacIntyre spoke about this—is One Stop Talk/Parlons maintenant, which launched provincially in September 2023. This program was developed by the provincial lead agency consortium in 2019 and under the leadership of Strides Toronto support services, the lead agency for the Toronto service area. With the continued support of the consortium and other sector partners, it has become a key provincial resource for children, youth and families. One Stop Talk/Parlons maintenant successfully leveraged provincial technology investments made during the pandemic to offer virtual access to immediate, in-the-moment, evidence-based, single-session therapy for children, youth and their families. The service is available to any child or youth, no matter where they live in the province, and it’s available in more than 200 languages and dialects, including—Kyle spoke about this—American Sign Language. It’s a free, confidential service that lets children and youth get immediate mental health support with a registered therapist. And there is no wait time for this service, which is amazing, because when you’re feeling like you want to talk to someone, you want to talk to somebody. The One Stop Talk model was informed by research as well as the voices of those with lived and living experience. Unlike traditional therapeutic models that may span weeks, months or even years, One Stop Talk offers an immediate opportunity for clients to derive meaningful benefits from just one meeting with a clinician, similar to a walk-in-service model of primary care. This One Stop Talk/Parlons maintenant model enables equity of access for individuals right across the province and leverages capacity among child and mental health service providers across the province as well. Clinicians providing services through One Stop Talk/Parlons maintenant are rostered from agencies across the province and are available to any child or youth in the province, no matter where they live. Kyle gave the example of Windsor being able to service somewhere in the north. This means a 16-year-old in Sault Ste. Marie can access evidence-based counselling from a clinician in Toronto without having to leave their community and their home. One Stop Talk is a team of therapists who are registered health professionals, who can provide psychotherapy services. They are experts in giving focused help in a single session. They regularly undergo reviews and meet with supervisors to make sure they’re offering the best care. The program also has a continued focus on improvement and skill development of the team. Here’s how it works. Children and youth and their parents can access the service by phoning the dedicated line at 1-855-416-TALK—8255—or they can access services online at onestoptalk.ca. It starts with a greeter and welcoming, and questions are asked to better understand the child or youth’s needs. Then the child and/or parent is connected to a registered therapist, in under five minutes, for a session. Sessions are always free and usually last up to one hour. During the session, the therapist will talk about what the child or youth is going through and feeling. Then, together, a plan will be developed to help the child or youth move forward and feel better. If additional or ongoing services are needed, the therapist will offer to connect the child or youth and/or parent with a One Stop Talk navigator that will connect them with services within their local area or other appropriate services that they may need. Before the session ends, a referral will be made to connect that child with what they need. There is no limit on the number of times a young person can access the service, and it can be accessed anywhere in the province. For children and youth and their families, this means that access to service can be just one phone call, text or a web click away. Numerous studies have evaluated the efficacy of single-session therapy, particularly in comparison to longer-term therapeutic interventions. While single-session therapy is not a replacement for ongoing therapy in complex cases, evidence indicates that it can be highly effective and all that’s required for certain client populations and presenting issues. In the face of growing demand, pressures on the mental health care system, One Stop Talk/Parlons maintenant is also an effective wait-list management tool, as it takes people off the wait-list whose needs are less intensive or complex and can effectively be met through a single-session counselling model. Again, there are no wait times for this service. For those who require additional services, it does get them to the right service without having to call around to different providers, navigate the system themselves and potentially be put on a wait-list for the wrong service that they don’t need. Since its launch, the service has seen a steady increase in usage numbers. Within two years of the provincial launch, there have been more than 47,000 connections with One Stop Talk/Parlons maintenant. These are people reaching out to learn more about the service, either for themselves or, frequently, for their children. It also represents children or youth who might have a mental health related question but are not yet ready to participate in counselling. Since the launch, there have also been almost 4,500 completed clinical sessions. The Ministry of Health also supports the child and youth mental health sector to adopt innovative models of care, leverage research to design services and build awareness of emerging evidence to inform high-quality care by funding the Knowledge Institute on Child and Youth Mental Health and Addictions at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. The Knowledge Institute is a key provincial expert partner that mobilizes the most current evidence and knowledge and provides system supports to the children and youth mental health and addiction sector. They work closely with lead child and mental health agencies and the broader community-based child and youth mental health sector to make services more responsive to the unique needs of children and youth, easier to navigate and better integrated with services and supports in other sectors. The Knowledge Institute also works with service providers to build sector capacity to deliver high-quality services. This includes working with the sector to implement evidence-based practices, to meet and respond to the changing needs of children and youth and families, and to implement data collection solutions to measure activities and outcomes. The Knowledge Institute is leading the development of quality standards for the children and youth mental health sector, with a current focus on live-in, intensive services. These standards will provide evidence-based guidance to providers across the province and support them in keeping up with innovative solutions. In recognition of research that has consistently demonstrated that the early years of a child’s life—especially from zero to six—are extremely important in terms of brain development, the Knowledge Institute has also begun to focus its efforts on opportunities to enhance supports for early and infant mental health, including an integrated care pathways project. The Ministry of Health is also using technology to empower children and youth to access information about mental health, addictions and related services through the funding of Resources Around Me. Resources Around Me is operated by Kids Help Phone, an organization that is well known and trusted by children and youth across Ontario and Canada. Resources Around Me is a powerful, searchable directory of over 40,000 free, trusted virtual and in-person mental health, addictions and related services. It empowers children and youth to seek services to meet their needs, and it helps them navigate the mental health, addictions and complementary human service systems. Finding the right support can be a barrier for youth.

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

Resources Around Me helps them find what they need, whether it’s an in-person youth wellness hub, a sexual health clinic or support for a specific issue like housing or substance abuse. Kids Help Phone ensures the resources listed have a high level of clinical oversight, so that children and youth know that they are accessing safe and well-researched options. It’s available 24/7 through their website. This tool provides an instant connection to support options and it has become one of the most popular pages on the Kids Help Phone site. The ministry also has committed to funding to St. Clair Child and Youth Services to support an innovative mental health program for children and youth in Lambton county, an intensive outreach treatment program. This is a three-year pilot aiming at providing flexible and accessible mental health services to meet specific local need. Over the past year, St. Clair has been collaborating with local agencies and other stakeholders and partners to better understand the local needs and identify a model to address young people with more complex mental health needs, because the community saw a 25% increase in children and youth with complex mental health needs over the past four years. An intensive outreach treatment program will deliver individual therapy, family therapy, social skills training and parent-caregiver coaching in clients’ homes, making services more accessible and personalized. This holistic approach will integrate services across health, education and child welfare sectors, providing a seamless and coordinated care experience. The program aims to treat children and youth with complex mental health issues, offering intensive services to prevent the worsening of their conditions. Intensive case management will ensure smooth transitions and continuous support, helping families navigate the mental health system effectively. The integration of support through partnerships with multiple service providers is a key component of this model. This will include the launch of a newly developed, enhanced mental health respite program, delivered by Sarnia-Lambton Rebound, along with specialized education supports offered in partnership with the Lambton Kent District School Board. The intensive outreach treatment program also provides an evidence-based assertive community treatment approach, like the adult program operated by Bluewater Health, providing intensive services in home and community settings to reduce the severity of issues. This program is aligned with the Roadmap to Wellness and the strategic goals of the Sarnia–Lambton Ontario Health Team, aiming to reimagine community-based care and create healthier communities through an integrated and innovative approach. By reducing the need for high-cost institutional programs and decreasing reliance on emergency hospital services, this program is expected to significantly enhance the mental health landscape for youth in Lambton county. This intensive outreach team program is a significant step forward in ensuring that children and youth receive the support they need. I just want to share another similar innovative, collaborative initiative that the ministry is supporting. It’s a multidisciplinary intensive services team pilot led by the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa, in partnership with the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa. This initiative is also being piloted in the adjacent services of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry through a collaboration with Cornwall Community Hospital in Prescott and Russell, in collaboration with Valoris pour enfants et adultes de Prescott-Russell. A number—13—child and youth mental health agencies are being engaged to support this pilot initiative, alongside other community partners, including children’s aid societies, school boards, hospitals, primary care and police. This initiative is designed to offer an innovative approach to deliver intensive mental health treatment to children and youth served by the society with complex needs, including dual diagnoses and those who face barriers to timely and appropriate intensive mental health treatment. The initiative includes a dedicated pathway for Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa clients—

Official source

The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Two minutes remaining.

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

—through a one call, one click, centralized access mechanism for children and youth services in the Ottawa area. This facilitates screening, intake and initial assessment for the service. The initiative also includes care coordinators who work closely with clients and caregivers to create an integrated care plan that aligns with the client’s needs, connects them to the services needed and provides immediate, on-the-spot clinical support as well as all of the other service connection points. The initiative offers a range of specialized services, including in-home services, delivered by a multidisciplinary team—or “pod,” as they refer to it. These services can be accessed depending on each client’s needs. In addition to the care coordinator, the pod includes psychotherapists, psychologists for assessment and treatment, behavioural specialists for assessment and treatment, addictions consultants, occupational therapists, caregiver capacity-building, mobile crises response, trauma and attachment therapy, children and youth mental health therapy groups and mental health and addictions nurses. Positive outcomes are already being reported through the children who have been going through this pilot. This pilot reduces service silos, increases partnerships and collaboration among service providers, which means that usage of publicly funded resources are being optimized. More cost-effective community resources are being used, where appropriate, where more specialized services are accessed. The initiative has improved client mental health and well-being through seamless and wraparound care and improving stabilization of living environments, including preventing child welfare placement disruptions.

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The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Thank you. We’re at time. We now move to the third party. MPP Fairclough, you have 20 minutes.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

I’ll say I have four questions that I want to ask so maybe we can just judge the response times accordingly with that. I want to start by saying I think that—you highlighted the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program in your response, and to me this is a great program. This is a program that should be what we’re aiming to do to address the recommendations throughout this report. We know it’s accessible to people; we know that we’re measuring whether the program actually improves their outcomes; we know that there’s transparency among all the providers around how we’re doing from a performance perspective in that program. As I said, I think really, really importantly, people are able to self-refer, be assessed quickly and get connected to the right services. I do just want to say it’s a good example of what we should be targeting in all of our mental health programs. I don’t think that we’ve developed things to the same degree in other areas. I do just want to come back, first of all, around the concurrent disorders and addictions. If I heard you correctly, you said that that’s sort of funded out of a separate line of funding. But I am interested because in the report itself, 70% of agencies said that they don’t feel that the services today currently meet the needs for concurrent mental health and addiction disorders for youth. I just wondered, again: What’s going to be the plan to really close that gap, as part of this? One in five kids are trying an opioid before the end of high school. I’m a mom of teenagers too. I think that we know where our kids are at these days, and unfortunately, I’m quite concerned this is going to be an even more pressing need.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Yes, thank you for the question. The previous question that touched on this topic focused on at least three different programs that we’re focusing on: There’s the youth wellness hubs side of things, there’s—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Yes, but there’s limited concurrent, right, in it? That’s what I heard from your comment. Am I correct in that?

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Well, there are going to be 32 hubs.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

Yes.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

The youth wellness hubs themselves don’t provide the full care continuum related to addiction services.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

No.

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Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

So for instance, as I described, you’re not going to go to withdrawal management if you’re at any youth wellness hub, and that’s not the intent. The—

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

I think the big gap, if I understand from this—sorry to interrupt you—is actually around quite intensive concurrent treatment for people with mental illness who also have substance use. I can say this, too that I think this has been supported by data: I’ve had four families in my office in the last six weeks telling me their stories about not being able to get this care for their teenagers, 15- or 16-year-olds. So I think it’s great that we’ve got something starting, but I really was a little concerned with the response, which is that addictions is kind of funded over here, so it won’t be part of this plan. I feel like the agencies are telling us they don’t think it’s there either. The families are saying it’s not there.

Official source

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Maybe I can just spell it out and speak to it in a way that’s more clear. The government invests different funding for different kinds of programming across a number of different kinds of programs. All I was saying is that the children and youth program doesn’t include addictions funding specifically. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t addictions programming or funding for children and youth mental health. It was just that it was outside of the audit, was my point that I was trying to make.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Oh, okay.

Official source

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Included for children and youth mental health addiction related programming that is out there, we did talk about youth wellness hubs. Amani is another one. I did talk about PreVenture. There is a number of programming that happens at schools as well, more on the preventative side of things. Youth wellness hubs do, though, offer referral pathways into different programming. I think we have four or five live-in addiction treatment programming for children and youth up to the age of 18—so live-in, bed-based services for folks. Some of the HART hubs, which you might have heard of—the homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs—there are going to be 28 across the province. Some of them do actually focus on that population of children and youth. Guelph has a focus on that, supporting folks in addictions and treatment itself. I think more broadly, the systemic approach that’s being undertaken was identified as part of the report in terms of when they reference the core service framework and make sure that you have a children and youth addiction core service. As part of that work that we’ve talked about is that we’ve met with a technical advisory group, including addictions specialists, children and youth providers, adult providers, and we’re taking a care continuum approach to that. So because we’re focused on the community side of things we’re really—this is sort of a technical answer—focusing on the level 2, the level 3 and the level 4 severity for children and youth, so the acute sector sort of sits outside of that, more connected on full pathways on that way. As part of the development of the core services framework, some of the technical advice that we’ve received from those providers is to look across the early prevention side to the more intensive services side and build out more service in that space for children and youth addictions. That will include, as I mentioned before, the build-out of minimum standard requirements for that service. That work is under way to finalize some advice to government around the core services, but that will be a key component of being able to take the addictions care for children and youth as a care continuum approach. Some of the things that we’ve heard today already are also around making sure that we have the right transitions in place when you’re under 18 to 18-plus. The reason why I’m mentioning that is because the core services do take that lifespan approach, where we haven’t done it in that way. So I’m really excited to being able to finalize that and work with the centre of excellence, the Knowledge Institute and the providers to eventually roll that out.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Thank you. My next question is related to the standards and the accreditation that was referenced in the report. Again, unfortunately, we’ve seen a few of these examples of organizations that aren’t necessarily even operating to some of the basic HR standards that we need. We’ve seen situations, right? So I wanted to just ask about that more generally. There’s a large number of these agencies in the province. What do you see developing in terms of just general organizational standards?

Official source

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

I think the report did identify a substantial portion of the organizations do get accredited. It’s not a requirement in terms of related to the funding. Don’t quote me on that, but I think it was in the 80-plus per cent range, but someone could tell me that I’ve got that wrong. It’s just not a requirement. So it is something that we will be looking at in terms of whether or not that is something to be able to do. But the space that you’re talking about in the quality standards area is what we’re tying to the core services work. One area, for example, is the Ontario intensive treatment pathway. We will have standards in place for that that will go into the transfer payment agreements that we have—so the formal contractual agreements that we have—that we can monitor and put into place. As those core services get implemented, working with the centre of excellence, those minimum programs will be put in there and will be a key component not only to drive the quality aspect of it but the performance side of it as well and the accountability.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Thank you.

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Ms. Deborah Richardson

If I could just speak to that as well: There are transfer payment agreements, and agencies need to comply with the transfer payment agreements. There are guidelines and requirements for existing—so I don’t want there to be a perception that agencies aren’t professional or doing standards. Most of our agencies offer top-notch service and they do comply with our standards. Like Kyle said, we’re going to build off of that, particularly the live-in standards. I think that will be really important. But we definitely have confidence that most of the agencies are doing really, really great work. Many of us know them. They’re in our communities. They don’t make a lot of money and they’re delivering incredible work.

Official source

The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Ten minutes.

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Ms. Lee Fairclough

I do agree. I know many, many agencies that are providing really good work.

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

And we have taken action. If transfer payment agreements aren’t complied with, we unfortunately have had to do interventions.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Yes, and again, I’m speaking just from the experience of parents reaching out that have had—it will be one agency or a small number that unfortunately cloud the rest of the field. But it’s good to hear of the work that’s happening. My next question was really around just the coordinated access and the integrated care. There are some comments in here on how that could be digitally enabled, what some of those connections to the broader system could be. I just wondered if you had any comments on that. There was discussion on the use of the OHIP card as one of the foundations to help that. I just wondered if you had any comments about that.

Official source

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

I think the report identified that there are a number of coordinated access programs that are already across the province. A review was undertaken a couple of years ago and I think we’ve identified over 100 already, not just in the children and youth space but in the adult sector as well. What there is a need for is to standardize that. We do have some work that’s under way around how someone accesses the system, get in somewhat of an assessment and then navigate to the next service if they need the next service. We talked a little bit about One Stop Talk, which does that work. So if someone accesses through the website or does a phone call, there are a few questions that are asked, then an assessment is done. At the end of that session—which is often at least an hour long—if that child or youth requires another type of service, there’s a warm hand-off and referral that happens in the moment to a provider who can do that service with all the information that’s been collected through the conversation such that they know who to go to next and when. So there is a warm hand-off. I think from a provincial perspective, one of the key components of work that’s under way—that really is also tied to the data digital initiative—is the creation of a provincial coordinated access system that’s happening out of the Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence. So they’re developing this, focusing on being able to systematize an approach such that no matter where you are there’s a regional network access point and a provincial one to be able to do that. That is starting to roll out; there have been investments over the last couple of years to try to build that up and understand that. It’s going to take a lifespan approach. It will include the children and youth mental health sector as well, so when people access that point there will be an assessment and a referral to a provider. What’s great about that as well is they’ll be able to help us with some of the other pieces of the conversation that we’ve had about collecting data into the Auditor General’s report around being able to understand demand better. When someone comes in, that’s a data point; when they get referred and we know that they’re getting service, that’s a data point. So the provincial data standard and the provincial coordinated access system will be able to help across the lifespan approach using the core services when they’re rolled out to be able to measure all of that.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Great. Thank you. I think my colleague may have other questions on that. My last question is really in the spirit of true public accounts. I think that the report identified an outstanding transfer payment reconciliation that was needed for the 2023-24 fiscal year and a plan to recover those unspent funds. Did you want to just comment a little bit on what the plan is to do that?

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

Sure, I’ll dive into that one. So the ministry obviously is taking steps and making progress in completing outstanding reconciliations for the transfer payment agreements it oversees, focused on prioritizing reviews by fiscal year and programs with the highest volumes of outstanding reviews. A transfer payment reconciliation is a process where the ministry works with partners that receive government funding to reconcile the funds we see with the actual expenditures incurred during the fiscal year. The reconciliation ensures that funds were used according to the terms of the transfer payment agreement and any unspent or surplus funding is identified and recovered. The results of the reviews also help the ministry assess performance and program effectiveness and provide information to support future decisions. This process requires many steps, including the collection of information and ongoing communication between the ministry and its partners, to complete the reconciliation review. Oftentimes the number that is there isn’t the actual number that comes back because there’s a lot of reconciliation—literally. That’s why it’s called reconciliation; that needs to happen. After the end of each fiscal year, transfer recipients are responsible for submitting detailed reports to support the completion of the reconciliation. These reports include both financial data, including final third-party audited financial statements and data outlining performance against service targets. Child and youth mental health agencies provide this information to the Ministry of Health through the Transfer Payment Ontario system—TPON, we call it—which is the centralized online portal used to manage transfer payment funding and agreements. In these reports, agencies may report estimated unspent or surplus funding amounts. This information supports a detailed review by the Ministry of Health in dialogue with the agency to determine whether funds have been expended in alignment with the eligible expenditures and other requirements, as outlined in the transfer payment agreement. It’s only when this review has been completed that the Ministry of Health can confirm the funds have been spent in accordance with the transfer payment agreement and determine whether a final settlement is required to recover any unspent funds. While a recipient may identify an amount potentially to be recovered in the submitted financial statements, recovery amounts may vary and can only be finalized after a review is finally completed. The Ministry of Health has implemented a plan for completing outstanding reconciliations which has included adding additional dedicated resources. We needed to bring on some extra bodies to actually be able to do this work because it’s quite intensive, and to be able to go through outstanding reviews from previous fiscal years across all programs. In addition, the Ministry of Health is implementing changes to its processes to be more efficient and deliver sustainable reconciliation business practices to limit the accumulation of volume over time and avoid future delays. Supporting this work, there has been a lot of progress over the last year to onboard additional programs to the TPON system. So we’re actually moving on to TPON—I think when I first came into the ministry, we weren’t on TPON, so we’ve got a significant number of programs that are actually on TPON now. That supports a more efficient and timely transmission of documentation from recipients and other reporting tools. We’re really committed to completing all outstanding reconciliations by the end of this fiscal year. As outstanding reconciliations are completed for those reviews which result in an identified amount owed to the ministry—

Official source

The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Two minutes.

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

—there will be steps that we’ll take to recover the funds from the recipient, either through reductions of future payments, where possible, or other direct payment arrangements. Basically, we have completed over 236 settlements and recovered a total of $9.2 million. We’re still working on 318, but those will be done by the end of this fiscal.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Just a quick follow-up: Is there a mechanism with this sector that, if it looks like they’re tracking to underspend and you know that there might be demand for services in other areas and those funds could be used, do you actively manage that closely with the sector to really limit the need to even recover funds at all in that final year? Do you do that with this sector?

Official source

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

Yes, we do, and just generally at the Ministry of Health, we get quarterly reports and monthly forecasts as well. We use that to understand where there may be underspending that’s happening and if there is a need somewhere else, there often is an approach to be able to reallocate that.

Official source

Ms. Lee Fairclough

Okay, that’s great. Thanks very much. I appreciate all the questions.

Official source

The Chair (Mr. Tom Rakocevic)

Okay, we are now moving to the final rounds of questions, for the official opposition. MPP Gélinas.

Official source

Mme France Gélinas

I will start by bringing you way back, when Christine Elliott put the motion in front of the House. At the time, she was in opposition. We had a majority Liberal government and she got the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions to be put together. Sylvia Jones, the present Minister of Health, was on that committee; so was I. We made 23 recommendations at the time. I am speaking about this committee because the need at the time to improve children’s mental health was huge. It motivated people on all sides of the House. She was in opposition, she was a brand new MPP and she brought this forward, and the majority Liberal government accepted to put this select committee together because we all recognized that things needed to change. I will always remember: We stood in the media studio, all three parties—Liberal, NDP, Conservative—and we all agreed that this needed to be moved forward. It is the only time that all three parties have stood in the media studio and said things need to change. We made 23 recommendations. I’m sad to say that we only moved on two of them. We moved on the recommendation that says that children’s mental health should be moved under the Ministry of Health, which happened, and to create a centre of excellence, which has happened. The other 21 recommendations are still there and are very, very similar to the 22 recommendations that the Auditor General has put in the report 16 years later. What we heard in 2009, 16 years ago, is that children’s mental health agencies cannot recruit and retain a stable workforce because they are too underfunded compared to other parts. They were hoping that moving them from community and support services into health would help, but it has not. Just like the MPP was saying, not a month goes by that I don’t have a family come to my office. I go to Costco to buy Kleenex, because this is how much crying happens in my office. It’s a child with complex mental health that is on a wait-list that by the time anything happens, the family will have fallen apart. Dad thinks that we should do this and mom thinks that we should do that, but none of them are mental health workers. They do their best, but the stress on the family—they’ll end up split up. Often, children’s aid has to come in. In my neck of the woods, I represent 33 small, rural northern communities. The child will be taken away from its community and shipped somewhere else. Why is it so hard to properly fund children’s mental health so that they can recruit and retain a stable workforce? Why do we have, in recommendation number 12—you say all the right things, but why does it never get done? To tell me that in 2019 you had a 5% increase across the board and in 2023 we had a 5% increase and in 2025 we had a 4% increase across the board will never change the fact that if you work in children’s mental health, you make 50% less than if you do the exact same job in another—go to the hospital, go to public health, go to the education sector, open up your own business and you will make more money than if you choose to help children with complex mental health issues. So my question to you is, can you give me hope that we will fund children’s mental health agencies in a way that will allow them to recruit and retain a stable workforce?

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

There were a few things that you were asking—the first was the select committee. There have been more than two things that have been implemented—

Official source

Mme France Gélinas

I’m interested in recruiting and retaining a stable workforce in children’s mental health agencies.

Official source

Ms. Deborah Richardson

That’s what we spoke about a little bit earlier—the importance of having that health human resource strategy that’s specific to mental health and addiction. So we are working with the Treasury Board on—they’re doing that labour market analysis. We need to be able to tell that story and build that case to be able to make those decisions. We’re developing a specific HHR strategy in children’s mental health.

Official source

Mme France Gélinas

In your response, you said that cycle 4 of the TBS survey is expected to be launched in the sector in November 2025. The results are expected in the spring of 2026—I’m reading your response here—and implementation of this will come in 2027. Really? This is my hope—that in 2027 we will have a plan? When will we act upon the recommendations of the Auditor General that say there is a wage disparity? We knew in 2010 that there was a wage disparity. We did a study that showed this, which was supported by all parties. The Minister of Health was there, sitting beside me during those audits. We know that there’s a wage disparity. Why is it so complicated to address that?

Official source

Mr. Kyle MacIntyre

It goes back to an earlier question that was raised around this. There has been, you did mention, the 5%, 5%, 4%, which is a significant investment in the sector as an across-the-board—but there has been an increase of over $200 million to the sector itself since 2019, which is a significant investment. When we talk about the health human resource aspects that you’re talking about, it isn’t just looking at wage either. An approach that we need to develop will be looking at the supply of health workers as well, which goes towards something that you’ve been saying before, that requires us looking at the types of training that would be required. We have started to roll out training programs to support the providers in this space—

Official source

Mme France Gélinas

I live in northeastern Ontario, a rural area. We have providers willing to take those jobs. They just don’t want to work for $30,000 a year when they can make $70,000 doing the same job in a hospital. We do have them, even in northern Ontario, but we don’t pay them.

Official source