Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford issued a statement for Bell Let’s Talk Day, the annual campaign to end stigma around mental health issues.

“Mental health challenges can affect those closest to us – family members, friends, colleagues, and even ourselves,” he said. “Together, we can support everyone on their journey to mental wellness.”

Over at Children’s Mental Health Ontario, they must have wondered if Ford was living in another dimension.

If ever there was an SOS in print, it came just two days earlier with the agency’s report “Kids Can’t Wait,” a document that shames a province and its government.

“An estimated 200,000 kids with serious mental health issues have no contact with mental health services at all,” it said.

Think of it. Tens of thousands of young people, with serious mental health issues, possibly at the very window of opportunity at early onset when treatment could make the most difference.

Unhelped. Unsupported. Getting worse. And odds are, some bound for the streets, institutions or premature death.

But that’s far from the only alarming news in the report, compiled from a survey of community child and youth mental health centres across Ontario.

As many as 28,000 children and youth in Ontario (under age 18) are on waiting lists for mental health treatment, the report said. That’s up 12,000 in just two years.

And some of those waiting lists are as long as two and a half years for mental health treatment.

Ford occasionally says the right thing in scripted remarks. But perhaps his true attitudes – or ignorance – are revealed in periodic outbursts when he has described troubled Ontario citizens as “crazy people,” “nutcases,” “animals,” and recommended that society “throw away the key.”

His first budget allocated $1.9 billion over 10 years for mental health and addictions. That’s less than the previous government’s promised $2.1 billion but it’s a significant amount of money, especially when matched by federal government funding.

So where is it? If the Ford government has increased funding to reduce wait times for youth who need treatment, as it claims, why have they doubled?

As bad as they are, wait times now at an all-time high are likely understated in the latest survey because of the gaps of services, especially in remote, rural and Northern communities.

There are no wait times to report, after all, for services that don’t exist.

“There are significant inequities in wait times based on where you live, how old you are, who you are, and what type of treatment you need,” the report said.

Waiting lists are longest in and around Greater Toronto: York Region 919 days; Durham 827 days; Northumberland 792 days; Peel 737 days, Hamilton 710 days; and Toronto 684 days.

Services are particularly inadequate in areas of priority populations, including Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ and francophone communities.

There’s been a huge spike in depression and anxiety reported among young people. The wait times in receiving treatment cause extraordinary stress in families, cost parents and caregivers time off work, disrupt classrooms.

They also boost costs as desperate young people seek help in emergency departments, adding to the very hallway medicine crisis the premier promised to end.

Then, of course, there is the ultimate cost.

“We are losing young people,” the report said, noting that suicide is now the second leading cause of death among those under 18.

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The premier has presented himself in the last six months as having undergone a change in outlook. Less bluster and pugnacity; greater willingness to seek solutions and agreement.

Here’s a chance to put some meaning behind his fine words by helping those for whom his government should consider itself most responsible.

Young people in urgent need. Ordinary families.