Mental health wait times & "false hope"

By Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

While researching a story on how long it takes for Ontario patients to be moved from the emergency room to a hospital bed, I came across a rather poignant sentence about wait times for mental health services.

The sentence was included in the annual report card from the Wait Time Alliance, but it is originally from the national mental health strategy released by the Mental Health Commission of Canada last month:

Lack of access in the community to crisis support, mental health and primary care services also drives people to emergency rooms for help, increasing waits and stretching resources. Many community services do not even keep waiting lists, because it might give false hope to people in need that eventually their turn will come. Not only is it essential to do a better job of measuring waits for community-based services, but standards should also be set for wait times, similar to those that exist for several physical illnesses. (p.44)

Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews, when discussing the province's decision to track and publish wait times for emergency departments (Ontario and Alberta are the only provinces that do), told me on Tuesday: "We believe in measuring and publicly reporting and that drives change in the system. . . You know as they say, if you don’t measure it you can’t manage it, well, I believe that’s true."

That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is avoiding the responsibility of making promises because breaking them might give people false hope.

A better idea? Measure wait times and make an effort to reduce them. The result is real hope.

Bill C-38 vs. Bill C-36: a study in contrasts*, as explained by Elizabeth May

by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May believes the Conservatives' motive for lumping together all sorts of legislative changes into the omnibus Bill C-38 is "to avoid scrutiny" and she made the case by comparing it to Bill C-36, also known as the Protecting Canada's Seniors Act.

The former, as you have undoubtedly heard before, is 425 pages.

The latter is four paragraphs.

Here is how May described the difference at a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday morning, where she outlined why she had introduced more than 300 amendments to the federal budget implementation bill.

"Bill C-36, by the way, will get full scrutiny in Parliament. It goes to first reading, second reading, committee. We’ll have a lot of time on Bill C-36. It’s four paragraphs long. It amends one sub-clause of the Criminal Code. It’s not as though, for efficiency’s sake, Stephen Harper wants all laws compressed into one omnibus bill all the time. The ones he doesn’t want you to notice are compressed in an omnibus bill. The ones they want to put out in the front window, like C-36, has the grandiose title that it’s [the Protecting Canada's Seniors Act]. All it does, actually, is allow for at time of sentencing, a judge to consider the situation of the victim at the time of the assault. There is a lot I’d like to do to help seniors in this country against abuse, I don’t have any problem with C-36, but just in a contrast, C-36 is getting the full treatment of its own review in a committee, its own opportunity to have witnesses, and 70 bills are changed through C-38 with time allocation and running roughshod over hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition and democracy. This is the most egregious piece of legislation ever tabled, certainly in Canada, and they can’t expect us to roll over and play dead when this kind of outrage is put in front of us.”

 

*Yes, I am aware this is the most clichéd headline phrase of all time.