Sounds like a plan

Everything’s in it: not just the kitchen sink, but the faucets, the drain piping and trap, yards of copper pipe and brand new lines out under the yard to the street and the mains, both sewer and water.

The report from the province’s all-party committee on mental health and addictions, “Towards Recovery: A Vision for a Renewed Mental Health and Addictions System for Newfoundland and Labrador” is a compendium of what needs to be done to repair a mental health system that has lagged behind both in established practice and in financial support.

Started by a private member’s motion from the NDP’S Gerry Rogers, the committee has produced an exhaustive list of recommendations, ranging from addressing mental health care needs in Labrador to gambling and alcohol addictions support for seniors. If you want to know what we need, it’s literally all there.

It’s comprehensive, but expensive, too. There are clear weaknesses in the existing system, but the new goals are lofty, to say the least. And while it is necessary spending, the money has still got to be found.

To give you an idea of the massive scope of the recommendations, they include the capital costs of replacing both the Waterford Hospital and Her Majesty’s Penitentiary — for a start. Just one of the 54 recommendations is to “Increase provincial mental health and addictions spending from approximately 5.7 per cent of the total annual health care budget to nine per cent in five years (by April 2022), to better align with the recommended national average.”

That increase in overall spending? In ballpark terms, including limited health-care inflationary costs of about three per cent per year — around $150 million a year in new money, once we reach 2022 and that nine per cent figure.

Either that’s new money that will have to be found, or somewhere else, spending will have to be reduced.

Finding the money is the area that will now present the biggest challenge to an already cashstrapped government. You need look no farther than the last report on Her Majesty’s Penitentiary to see how this year’s commitment can become next year’s doorstop.

The committee clearly knows that its recommendations are broad-ranging and probably beyond the financial reach of the government right now — hence, recommendation No. 53: “The Minister of Health and Community Services must report publicly on the implementation of the report’s recommendations. The first report must be released 6 months after the release of this report, with subsequent reports released at 12 and 24 months.”

We look forward to progress, as well as this clearly defined plan.

It has spectacular goals, careful timelines and the best of intentions.

But what happens when you desperately need a plumber for all that kitchen work, and don’t have the money to pay?