POLICY - HEALTH
COVID-19 is causing a national mental health crisis and Canada needs a national response
The tragic death by suicide of a frontline physician ought to raise red flags about the mental health pressures of the pandemic. Will it?
The sooner health-care workers in Canada and in every country in the world, along with Canadian humanitarian workers battling COVID-19 overseas, are vaccinated, the sooner we will all be able to return to normal life.
Government spending on mental health services since the pandemic’s start has not directly included or addressed the unique and growing needs of grieving Canadians.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that CERB recipients who had received warning letters from the CRA but had acted in ‘good faith’ wouldn’t be penalized, and told them not to worry about repayments this year.
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While not as radical as the anti-vaxxers, those who are hesitant once presented a danger only to their children; now, in COVID times, they are a threat to all of us.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said once Moderna’s vaccine gets Health Canada approval, deliveries could begin within 48 hours—with up to 168,000 this month.
‘With vaccine procurement, we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel,’ says Anita Anand as the first Pfizer shipment of 30,000 doses arrived in Canada and vaccinations began.
Youth everywhere in Canada deserve access to high-quality, integrated mental health services and this should be even more widely recognized. All provinces and territories should be supporting these services. 
As much as it seems to reassure us to have a uniformed soldier handing out vaccines, it would make more sense if that same delivery were made by a guy in a Purolator jacket. 
You wouldn’t hire a dentist to fix your plumbing or a plumber to fix your teeth, so why a soldier to hand out medicine?
We’re getting a lot of finger-waving, personal responsibility crap, which has always been a strawman argument to ignore the systemic and systematic failures in response to a global pandemic.
'We are seeing the inevitable conversation about crucial policy decisions on resources come to the fore with [where] inevitably you'll see differences,' says former Liberal strategist John Delacourt.
Myanmar’s COVID-19 response, testing coverage, and distribution of protective equipment and assistance is sorely lacking in the country’s war-torn border areas of Indigenous communities.
Striking a special or joint committee to study the MAID law makes more sense than sending it to a standing committee, say NDP and Liberal MPs.
The Trudeau government continues to support incomplete measures, such as more safe-injection and safe-supply sites, without supporting the other necessary social services.
The changing and evolving landscape of cannabis use has intensified the need for answers and has raised new questions.
The percentage may be too high for some, but the predicted escalation in the number of young people indulging in cannabis use as a result of legalization has not materialized.
The PMPRB’s recent experience, which saw the new guidelines challenged in court by the pharmaceutical industry, provides a glimpse of the challenge ahead.
Given what we now know about the insidious way cannabis regulation has historically been a vehicle for systemic racism in Canada, a legislative review without a racial equity impact assessment would be negligent. More policy stories
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