The Horgan government’s proposed Bill 22 – the Mental Health Amendment Act of 2020 – is being slammed in a recent report by the province’s representative of children and youth, Jennifer Charlesworth, and that’s renewing calls from the leader of the Green Party to scrap the idea all together.
The bill would allow minors to be detained for up to a week after an overdose and the lack of Green support was the reason John Horgan used to call the fall election.
Appearing on the NL Morning News, Sonia Furstenau pointed out her party weren’t the only ones to be against the proposed legislation.
“There is nothing that our government should take more seriously than the well being and the health of the children of this province and when they introduced Bill-22, the Chief Coroner, the Representative for Children and Youth, UBCIC, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Health Justice and many, many others raised very serious concerns about how this bill could actually cause harm to children,” she said.
“And what we were advocating for, and what all of the others were advocating for, is that there be a network of voluntary mental health supports for youth and children and that those supports be available in communities around the province and that’s where this government should be putting it’s efforts.”
Furstenau didn’t pull any punches when it came to the Premier.
“For Premier Horgan to use this as an excuse, which is exactly what he did, to call an unnecessary election as the second wave of COVID-19 was happening was inexcusable,” she added.
“He threw the election because the polls indicated he could get the majority that he now has and we now have the representative for Children and Youth indicating that this bill was as dangerous as everybody was saying it was in the summer.”
Furstenau says the province should tear the whole thing down and start over from scratch.
“Try to do this properly but in the meantime, here’s what we need. We need more councillors in schools. We need people to have access to mental health care as part of their MSP coverage, which is what we advocated for last summer,” she said. “We need to get mental health supports out for people as a preventative, as a way to provide people tools before they’re in crisis.”
“This bill was all about the moment that people are in the greatest point of crisis. Let’s work to avoid those points of crisis and to do that we need to bring in mental health supports for youth, for children and for adults in an urgent way.”
Furstenau says there have been indications that the bill will not be reintroduced in the spring session of the BC Legislature, which notes is a good first step.
