The Canadian Mental Health Association has released an in-depth report on the state of mental health in Canada, and the results are damning.

Among the findings are that no jurisdiction in the country is spending enough on mental health, in part because they aren’t obliged to.

The provinces and territories are only spending an average of 6.3 per cent of their overall health budgets on mental health.

Canada lags behind countries like France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, all of whom allot more of their health care spending to mental health.

According to lead author Dr. Layna Lowe, where you live in Canada also matters. She says people receive “drastically different care depending on their home province or territory with people in rural and remote areas faring far worse.”

Canadians also reported having “poor” or “fair” mental health three times more often than before the pandemic(26 per cent in 2021 vs 8.9 per cent in 2019), while 57 per cent of young people (18-24) who had early signs of mental illness said that cost was an obstacle to getting services.