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Alberta

Province to spend $92 million over next three years to provide mental health treatment for youth

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

Expanding mental health treatment for youth

Alberta’s government is partnering with CASA Mental Health to expand youth mental health supports to ensure youth across Alberta can access treatment closer to home.

Supporting children and youth who are struggling with mental health is an essential part of Alberta’s recovery-oriented system of mental health and addiction care. If passed, Budget 2023 would invest $92 million over three years to provide critical mental health supports for children and youth in partnerships with CASA Mental Health.

This $92-million investment would include capital and operating funding for two new inpatient CASA House sites in Fort McMurray and Calgary, expanding youth day treatment programs provincially, and the rollout of new mental health classrooms across Alberta.

“Every young person in Alberta deserves the opportunity to access treatment and improve their mental health. If passed, Budget 2023 will dramatically increase access to mental health supports for youth to help families in crisis and provide kids with opportunities to improve their mental health across Alberta.”

Danielle Smith, Premier

“Our goal is to ensure that every young person in Alberta is supported in their pursuit of improved mental health. In partnership with CASA Mental Health, we’re expanding a range of treatment options for youth and their families that includes mental health supports in schools, day treatment programs and new inpatient programs to meet the diverse needs of youth in Alberta.”

Nicholas Milliken, Minister of Mental Health and Addiction

Supporting young Albertans with mental health challenges

With this funding, high-intensity services for children and youth will be delivered in community settings, reducing the need for hospital stays. CASA Mental Health will expand four programs that will help more than 700 additional young Albertans every year.

  • CASA House (for youth in grades 7 to 12): A live-in program for youth where parents and caregivers are still active participants in treatment, but the youth lives at a CASA facility. Treatment includes individual, group and family therapy, social and life skills training, and on-site schooling in small classroom settings.
  • Adolescent Day Treatment Program (for youth in grades 8 to 12): A daily program where youth with a mental illness diagnosis who are struggling in a conventional classroom setting can complete their schooling at a CASA facility while receiving ongoing support, including group, family and individual therapy.
  • CASA Mental Health Classrooms (for children and youth in grades 4 to 12): A classroom-based program where students with complex mental health needs receive individual and group therapy. Students are supported by a team of mental health professionals, including a therapist, psychiatrist and behavioural specialist.
  • CASA Core (for children and youth aged three to 17): Community-based services where families are matched with the appropriate level of service dependent on the complexity of mental health challenges. Therapy incorporates the child’s family, school and community network in treatment.

“CASA Mental Health recognizes a need for increased service to the ‘missing middle’ of mental health, particularly over the last few years. We see a growing need to provide specialized service to children and youth with mental illness, requiring more than low-intensity community-based services, but less than intensive hospital services. We’re pleased to partner with Alberta’s government to help close that gap and make mental health programming available and accessible to more children and families throughout the province.”

Bonnie Blakley, chief executive officer, CASA Mental Health

Alberta’s government is continuing to build a recovery-oriented system of care, where everyone struggling with addiction and mental health challenges is supported in their pursuit of recovery. This includes dramatically increasing access to mental health supports for children and youth focused on prevention and early intervention, including the creation of new mental health classrooms, expanding access to digital supports like 211 Alberta and Kids Help Phone, investing in affordable virtual and in-person counselling, and establishing youth mental health hubs across the province.

“CASA Mental Health is a leader in delivering youth-centred mental health services. This organization plays an important role in the Sherwood Park community, and this new partnership with Alberta’s government will help broaden their reach to support children and youth across our province.”

Jordan Walker, MLA for Sherwood Park

“Children in this province deserve the best care possible, and this funding reflects our government’s commitment to delivering on this promise. I’ve seen first-hand the difference CASA Mental Health makes in the lives of youth in our community, and expanding these services means more families will get the help they need and deserve.”

Nate Glubish, MLA for Strathcona-Sherwood Park

Budget 2023 secures Alberta’s bright future by transforming the health-care system to meet people’s needs, supporting Albertans with the high cost of living, keeping our communities safe and driving the economy with more jobs, quality education and continued diversification.

Related Topics:

This is a news release from the Government of Alberta.

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Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans

Published on May 2, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Spencer Gudewill and Tegan Hill

Last November, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government will give up to $1.8 billion in subsidies to Dow Chemicals, which plans to expand a petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. In other words, $1.8 billion in corporate welfare.

And this is just one example of corporate welfare paid for by Albertans.

According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, from 2007 to 2021, the latest year of available data, the Alberta government spent $31.0 billion (inflation-adjusted) on subsidies (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to select firms and businesses, purportedly to help Albertans. And this number excludes other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory or tax privileges for particular firms and industries. So the total cost of corporate welfare in Alberta is likely much higher.

Why should Albertans care?

First off, there’s little evidence that corporate welfare generates widespread economic growth or jobs. In fact, evidence suggests the contrary—that subsidies result in a net loss to the economy by shifting resources to less productive sectors or locations (what economists call the “substitution effect”) and/or by keeping businesses alive that are otherwise economically unviable (i.e. “zombie companies”). This misallocation of resources leads to a less efficient, less productive and less prosperous Alberta.
And there are other costs to corporate welfare.

For example, between 2007 and 2019 (the latest year of pre-COVID data), every year on average the Alberta government spent 35 cents (out of every dollar of business income tax revenue it collected) on corporate welfare. Given that workers bear the burden of more than half of any business income tax indirectly through lower wages, if the government reduced business income taxes rather than spend money on corporate welfare, workers could benefit.

Moreover, Premier Smith failed in last month’s provincial budget to provide promised personal income tax relief and create a lower tax bracket for incomes below $60,000 to provide $760 in annual savings for Albertans (on average). But in 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on corporate welfare—equivalent to $1,034 per tax filer. Clearly, instead of subsidizing select businesses, the Smith government could have kept its promise to lower personal income taxes.

Finally, there’s the Heritage Fund, which the Alberta government created almost 50 years ago to save a share of the province’s resource wealth for the future.

In her 2024 budget, Premier Smith earmarked $2.0 billion for the Heritage Fund this fiscal year—almost the exact amount spent on corporate welfare each year (on average) between 2007 and 2019. Put another way, the Alberta government could save twice as much in the Heritage Fund in 2024/25 if it ended corporate welfare, which would help Premier Smith keep her promise to build up the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.

By eliminating corporate welfare, the Smith government can create fiscal room to reduce personal and business income taxes, or save more in the Heritage Fund. Any of these options will benefit Albertans far more than wasteful billion-dollar subsidies to favoured firms.

Authors:

Spencer Gudewill
Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
and
Tegan Hill
Associate Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
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Alberta

Official statement from Premier Danielle Smith and Energy Minister Brian Jean on the start-up of the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Published on May 1, 2024

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Alberta is celebrating an important achievement for the energy industry – the start-up of the twinned Trans Mountain pipeline. It’s great news Albertans and Canadians as this will welcome a new era of prosperity and economic growth. The completion of TMX is monumental for Alberta, since this will significantly increase our province’s output. It will triple the capacity of the original pipeline to now carry 890,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to British Columbia’s Pacific Coast.
We are excited that Canada’s biggest and newest oil pipeline in more than a decade, can now bring oil from Edmonton to tide water in B.C. This will allow us to get our energy resources to Pacific markets, including Washington State and California, and Asian markets like Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Alberta now has new energy customers and tankers with Alberta oil will be unloading in China and India in the next few months.
For Alberta this is a game-changer, the world needs more reliably and sustainably sourced Alberta energy, not less. World demand for oil and gas resources will continue in the decades ahead and the new pipeline expansion will give us the opportunity to meet global energy demands and increase North American and global energy security and help remove the issues of energy poverty in other parts of the world.
Analysts are predicting the price differential on Canadian crude oil will narrow resulting in many millions of extra government revenues, which will help fund important programs like health, education, and social services – the things Albertans rely on. TMX will also result in billions of dollars of economic prosperity for Albertans, Indigenous communities and Canadians and create well-paying jobs throughout Canada.
Our province wants to congratulate the Trans Mountain Corporation for its tenacity to have completed this long awaited and much needed energy infrastructure, and to thank the more than 30,000 dedicated, skilled workers whose efforts made this extraordinary project a reality. The province also wants to thank the Federal Government for seeing this project through. This is a great example of an area where the provincial and federal government can cooperate and work together for the benefit of Albertans and all Canadians.
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