Trudeau Liberals face criticism about $875M in missing mental health spending

It was a marquee promise of the Trudeau Liberals’ last election platform: $4.5 billion over five years for a new mental health transfer to the provinces and territories. While on the hustings in August 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this brand new transfer was needed “because mental health should be a priority.” But despite the sense of urgency in Trudeau’s remarks last year, no money has yet materialized for this new Canada mental health transfer, including an initial $875 million that was supposed to have been spent or budgeted by now, according to the Liberal party’s 2021 election platform. The Liberal platform document included a line-by-line costing of all its election promises, and it outlined a promise to spend $250 million in 2021-22 on the new mental health transfer, and then $625 million in the current 2022-23 fiscal year, with additional amounts over the next three years adding up to $4.5 billion total. None of the promised spending ove