The national mental health hotline that Cariboo-Prince George Conservative MP Todd Doherty helped create been operating for more than a year now, but he thinks the country could still be doing more on mental health.
Speaking to The Citizen for a year-in-review interview after his Dec. 18 open house at his shared office with Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies MP Bob Zimmer, Doherty said more than 30,000 Canadians are either calling or texting 988 every month.
Doherty is the Conservatives’ Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. Back in 2023
Earlier this year, the federal government announced a National Suicide Prevention Action Plan aimed at building onto previous work done through the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention.
However, Doherty said no funding for it has been announced, including in the fall fiscal update presented on Dec. 16.
“We need to treat mental health in parity with physical health,” Doherty said. “I always say that if you have a broken arm, I can see that you’re injured but if you’re struggling with a mental health injury or mental illness, I can’t see that you’re struggling yet that pain is probably just the same.”
Doherty said a $4.6 billion mental health transfer from the federal government to the provinces promised in 2021 never materialized.
A report from the Canadian Mental Health Association on the state of mental health care issued on Nov. 19 said that this funding was rolled out through bilateral health agreements with the provinces and territories.
However, in the 2024-25 fiscal year, CMHA reports that just $903 million of the $52.1 billion in total health transfers was earmarked for mental health, addictions and substance use health. That figure, the report said, is half the recommended amount.
After COVID, Doherty said Canadians are struggling more with mental health, but the funding being delivered is pennies on the dollar compared to what’s needed.
Heading into 2025, Doherty said he’d like to promote more jobs coming to his riding.
Since the Liberals took power, Doherty said they’ve failed to deliver a softwood lumber trade agreement with the United States. That, he said, is resulting in mill closures and job losses.
“When communities don’t have those projects, don’t have those mills or those high value jobs, those families are going to go elsewhere,” he said. “We’ll become ghost towns in our region.”
In less than a month, Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States, four years after he lost his first re-election bid to Joe Biden. He has threatened to put blanket 25 per cent tariffs on all products from Canada and Mexico entering the U.S., unless those countries improve border security and crack down on drug trafficking.
Doherty said Canada needs to do everything in its power to negotiate from a position of strengfh.
“What we have seen over the last nine year is we’ve got a government that have limped into negotiations and hope that they would charm their way into these agreements,” he said. “They made promise after promise after promise and yet they’ve done nothing.”
Closer to home, Doherty said he wants to see a change to what he referred to as “hug a thug” crime policies.
He said he has a constituent in Mud River who came home earlier this year to find his home being ransacked and got run over as the perpetrators fled. After that, Doherty said, those arrested were released on bail within 24 hours.
The MP also raised the situation with the RCMP station in Vanderhoof. In November 2021, a man fired at the station and police vehicles. Doherty said the bullet holes are still there, despite former Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino discussing potential safety improvements to the building like bulletproof glass.
Crime isn’t just costing individuals, but also businesses that Doherty said would rather relocate than go through more break and enters.
To accomplish this, he said communities not only need to have a full complement of police officers but that those officers need to be provided with the resources to do their jobs properly.
When it comes to the issues raised by his constituents, Doherty said affordability is top of mind. He said people are struggling with the costs of food, housing and fuel.
Doherty connected a lot of that unaffordability to the carbon tax. While residents of jurisdictions like BC get a rebate from the carbon tax implemented by their province or territory or a rebate from the federal government in jurisdictions without a price on carbon, Doherty said the idea that Canadians get back more than they pay is “Liberal spin.”
In October, the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported that when it comes just to the fiscal impact of the carbon tax on fuel, the average household will receive more from the federal backstop than they pay directly by the 2030-31 fiscal year.
However, the PBO also reported that when you account for both fiscal and economic impacts, the average household would see more costs than they receive in payments from the Canada Carbon Rebate.
For those unhappy with the current direction of the country, Doherty said Canada wasn’t the same before Justin Trudeau became prime minister and it won’t be like that when a Conservative government is elected in 2025.
