Ontario Election 2007: Social investments in human health

Ontario Election 2007: Focus on Addiction and Mental Health

Many of the most important health expenditures made by government are spent outside the health care system. Poor health is often correlated to low income and inadequate housing. Increased and meaningful investments in these areas are critical to improving the health of those who are poorest, including many people with addiction and mental illness.

Supportive housing works. The best models combine affordable, safe, decent housing with a flexible and responsive range of support services. These flexible services recognize the diversity in needs among clients, as well as the need to adjust the services provided to a single client over time. Supportive housing is economical — it costs taxpayers much less to provide supportive housing than to provide a shelter bed, long-term care accommodation, psychiatric hospital care or incarceration.

Many people who live with addiction and mental illness depend on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). ODSP rates are punitively low; yet improved benefits have been empirically linked to improved health and reduced hospitalization.9 The current government has implemented modest increases — most recently a two per cent increase in the 2007 budget—and implemented useful administrative reforms. But the failure to systematically protect our most marginalized citizens from the effects of inflation is a damning indictment of our collective priorities.

To support human recovery, the Ontario government should:

• work with supportive housing providers to increase the supply of supportive housing units in Ontario by at least 5,000 over the course of its mandate
• increase ODSP rates by 10 per cent, and index ODSP rates to the Consumer Price Index.

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