The Written Word
for April 30, 2000

In this province we have a number of people outside the bureaucracy and the government caucus who perform services for us. I think they can roughly be broken into three categories; the individual who is on contract for one special job, such as Dave Barrett and the leaky condos Commission, those individuals or groups who are in place simply to advise ministries for an indefinite period – I gather that former Finance Minister Elizabeth Cull would be such a person and those who are contracted for a particular job for a long period or even an indefinite period. Into this latter category one might put the auditor-general, the Children’s advocate and the Ombudsman. This latter function is also divisible into two groups – those who are employed by the government, which is to say the Premier and Cabinet and appointed usually by order-in-council and such might be, for example, the press secretary to the premier, or the person hired by and answerable not to the government but the legislature such as the Ombudsman, the auditor-general and the like.

The reason some are appointed by the legislature is two fold – by requiring unanimity of an all party committee and 2/3 of the legislature the person tends to be non party political and secondly because their employment cannot be terminated by the government assuring freedom to speak and act.

Next Monday the Mental Health Advocate, Nancy Hall will be my guest. Ms Hall is not, lamentably appointed by the legislature but by cabinet and she reports to an Associate Deputy Minister of Health.

First let me indulge in a contradiction. There should be no such job as Mental Advocate and it’s one of the most important of positions.

The reason there shouldn’t be one is that there ought to be no distinction between mental and physical help. Why should there be? It is as if to say there is something rather odd about mental health … that it’s something to be treated as a quasi-health problem and certainly not dealt with seriously like real illness such as heart disease, strokes or cancer. If society and the government representing it simply treated mental illness like all other illnesses there would be no more need for an advocate for the mentally ill than there is for someone with one of the more fashionable ailments.

But the fact that we cannot, as a society, bring ourselves to accept mental illness as an OK illness means we must indeed have a Mental Health Advocate so that those who have difficulty speaking for themselves can not only have a voice but, if necessary, a scold to remind government of its responsibilities.

But if a mental health advocate is to be effective he or she must be absolutely free from government control. After all, as the title implies, the office is one which advocates the cause of the mentally ill with the government. How on earth can an advocate do that when it that very government can terminate the advocates employment with the stroke of the pen. She must report on how the Health Ministry is doing to a high official of that ministry who can punish her by taking away he job if he doesn’t like the report.

Ms Hall’s first annual report will be out sometime within the next few days. And knowing Ms Hall as I do it will be a frank and honest appraisal of the situation.

But, and this is the critical question, will it be seen as that, given that she is not on a long term contract with the legislature with the tenure and independence that implies? I suggest not. In fact I’m told that Ms Hall will soon be past her contract time and has no idea whether or not the government will re-hire her.

This is not a scandalous situation I’m reporting on – it’s a matter of form but extremely important form.

Mike Farnworth has made a good start as Health Minister and one cannot expect all matters in a huge complicated ministry to be handled by a new minister a few weeks after he is appointed. So I leave this simply as a suggestion for the minister. Pass legislation for a Mental Health Advocate like that for the Ombudsman or Auditor-General, creating the office of Mental Health Advocate to be appointed by the Legislature on basis of 2/3 majority following unanimous recommendation by an all party committee of the House. He or she should be paid as others in this position are and should have a term of no less than five years. She should be answerable only to the Legislature at large.

It’s a damned shame that we need an advocate for mentally ill people just because society as a whole as represented by the legislature insists on keeping mentally ill people hived off from the rest of sick people. But we do. We must, therefore make the job of the advocate short enough that an error of choice can be corrected but long enough for the Advocate get a full grasp of all the issues and to make recommendations without fear of retaliation by those to whom he reports. One can only do that be treating the job as one so important that there must be freedom from government interference.