5 FAQs about the Mental Healthcare System in Canada

In this episode of 5 FAQs, we sit down with Jordan Anderson, Executive Director of Alpha House Toronto—a sober living facility dedicated to supporting individuals in early recovery—to explore the critical gaps in mental health care across Canada.As the country continues to grapple with a growing mental health and addiction crisis, access to timely, equitable, and compassionate care remains a major concern. 

Today's 5 FAQs:

1. What barriers prevent equitable access to mental health care across different populations?
2. How does income inequality influence mental health outcomes?
3. What measures are being considered to address the mental health and addiction crisis, and what are the concerns?
4. What measures can be implemented to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and addiction issues within the healthcare system?
5. In your ideal world, what does the future of mental health and addiction care look like to you?

Whether you're navigating the system yourself or advocating for change, this conversation offers clear, compassionate, and honest insight into what’s working, what’s not, and where we go from here. Tune in to hear from someone deeply embedded in the recovery community and committed to building a better, more inclusive system.

To learn more about Jordan and the incredible work he does at Alphahouse, you can click here.

Learn more about EHN Canada and starting your own mental health treatment journey at ehncanada.com.

To learn about how EHN Guardians supports Military, Veterans and First Responder communities, click here: ehnguardians.ca.

Transcript

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (00:07)
Hello there, my name is Jonathan Friedman and you are listening to Five FAQs by EHN Canada. This is the show where we scour the internet for the most frequently asked questions about mental health and addiction and ask an expert for their answers to them. Today it is my honour and my distinct pleasure to introduce my special guest, Jordan Anderson. Jordan is a registered psychotherapist and the executive director of Alpha House Recovery Community. With lived experience in addiction recovery, he has dedicated his career to helping individuals overcome substance use,

and mental health challenges. As chair of the board for Back Door Mission Charity in Oshawa, he advocates for accessible and inclusive care for vulnerable populations. Through his thought leadership, clinical expertise, and personal experience, Jordan remains deeply committed to supporting individuals in recovery. He continues to advocate for accessible addiction treatment and works to ensure that those struggling with substance use receive the care, dignity, and compassion they deserve. Jordan, what a resume. How are you doing today?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (01:05)
I'm

doing fantastic, you?

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (01:08)
I am doing great. Before we jump into the official five faqs official five big questions on the internet about the gaps in the mental health care system in Canada, I'd love to know how you personally got into the field of mental health care. What made you make that decision out of any other field in the

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (01:29)
⁓ Life experience, I think like a lot of people in social work you fall into it. It's not something that a lot of people decide on. I have lived experience, I come from the world of addictions and ⁓ at some point ⁓ my life changed and I went from homelessness to a transformative life experience and in that ⁓

I realized that I liked helping people and that was going to be one of the drives in my life. I initially started trying to help people with disabilities and my cousin has Down syndrome and I wanted to work with people with Down syndrome. I thought that was my calling as a social worker and I went to school specifically for that.

And ⁓ after graduating, I started working in an agency that would ⁓ do that. And I realized I was horrible at that job. not everybody's my cousin. So realizing there's some transference there, I quickly transitioned into another sector. I went back to school. I did my addictions and mental health and my psychotherapy. And I jumped into working in the treatment sector.

And as soon as I got into it, I knew this is it for me. Like this is, I love this job. And it's not a job that I go to just to get a paycheck or a job that I go to try to find some sort of fulfillment. I just, leave work and I'm enthused about people changing their lives. And so I've never really had to make a decision day to day if this is what I want to do. just.

It just happened really organically and it fits so well that I'll be in it until the day I die. ⁓

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (03:25)
That's fantastic. I think it's always interesting how, like whether it's on the show or ⁓ most people in mental health care come from something that happened to them or an experience they had with somebody in that field and it brings you into it.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (03:45)
Yeah, I don't know anybody who like, I mean, there's got to be people out there that just go into this thinking like, I don't know what else to do. But I don't think they stay. It's not one of those fields. It'll crush you if you don't have a vested interest in it, the weight of it. But when you have some sort of ⁓ experience, not necessarily always the same experience, but some sort of experience that

drives you to do this, you're able to look past the hard parts of the job ⁓ and really ⁓ push the narrative and all the positive that comes out of this. But it's definitely not something that I see a lot of people just randomly selecting. I know lots of guys that are iron workers because they're buddies in iron worker. ⁓

This is a different type of gig. You really have to love it to stay in it.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (04:43)
It's rare that you maybe finish high school and then look at your best friend and say, hey, you want to be social workers together? Yeah.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (04:54)
I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (04:57)
Yes, absolutely. So I'm really excited about our topic today. I think it's a really big one. And I'm really looking forward to your thoughts, your opinions, ⁓ and maybe some questions that don't exactly have answers, but we'll get through that together. Are you ready to dive into the internet's biggest questions about the gaps in the mental health care system in Canada? Always ready. So let's start off with this one.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (04:58)
Thank

Always ready. ⁓

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (05:25)
What barriers prevent equitable access to mental health care across different populations?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (05:32)
wow. I'd say the very first thing that pops to my mind is knowledge base. ⁓ Working in this field, ⁓ I have a difficult time navigating it.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (05:34)
A small question.

Hmm.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (05:50)
I, when I speak with people, I am baffled on how they're able to do it. I mean, there's a whole bunch of different platforms that people can go on to try to find ⁓ access to care. know, there's Addictions and Mental Health Ontario has ⁓ some of their stuff. You know, there's data, there's government sites that allow you to check Addictions and Mental Health centers, but none of it makes sense.

to the general population. And ⁓ just that base knowledge of how the system works ⁓ is the biggest impediment upon most people. ⁓ I would also say finances is probably right up at the top of the list. There's a diversity of care in Ontario. So for the majority of our healthcare system, ⁓ it is government funded.

You know, so if you go into the hospital, everything's covered. If you go see your physician, everything's covered. We don't have a two-tier system, but in Ontario, we do because of lack of funding. And two-tier only becomes prevalent when there is a lack of resources through the government. So because of ⁓ lacking ⁓ funding contracts, ⁓ shortage of beds, in all various forms of addictions to mental health,

the fee for service model arises to try to fill that gap. And they do a really fantastic job. mean, we have, you know, insurance companies, we have private pay for play, all these other things that try to take people that have ⁓ the availability to pay.

or the coverage to pay and remove them from the ministry funded services. So that way people who can't afford to go have those beds available as well as providing care for other people. But for most people, they can't afford to pay 30,000, $60,000 to go to treatment. the, you know, and.

If they're lucky, they have insurance. If you come from, your parents have an insurance package that will work, or you're part of a union, or you have just a really good employer that provides that kind of stuff for you. But the majority of the clients that I see are a little bit of a different population than would access that type of care. The majority of our clients are impoverished, unhoused.

unable to maintain a job typically on ODSP or Ontario Works. So they have limited resources on where they can go.

We have a really great relationship and we've been able to get bursary beds and different things and sorts of ⁓ finding ways to get around the system that exists because the system is very, very broken ⁓ in this country.

in the way we treat people with addictions and mental health. And building those backdoor relationships allows us to remove some of those barriers for people that don't know how to be, they're not able to do it themselves, if that makes any sense.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (08:55)
Yeah, totally. I like, even as somebody who was a professional in the system, sometimes I'd have families ask me, like, how do I access this specific support? And even me, someone who was fortunate to go to school, I had that privilege in that space, spending 80 hours a week studying and being a professional in that space, I may not actually have the best answer.

And so then you take somebody who might be really struggling with an addiction, trying to find their way to support via Google and you might land on a government site and there's like a thousand clicks between you and waiting on a phone to maybe get the answer that you need. That in itself is challenging. And then you tack on all of the different ⁓ access problems we have, especially in Ontario. ⁓ And it's really challenging and it becomes

sort of the duty of individual services to provide that service navigation to the best of their ability, for better or for worse.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (10:01)
Yeah, there's, you know, I mean, even like you said, between those transitions, there's different requirements for access, ⁓ mental health requirements for stability or medication variances in between each and every agency. So they might be able to get into a withdrawal management center, but they're too unstable mentally to go into a treatment center. And there's not a lot of significantly.

concurrent disorder treatment programs out there. So then they hit these barriers all the way through based on, you know, just separation, right? And the agencies don't do it on purpose. It's almost like the system is designed that way, ⁓ unfortunately, ⁓ to...

to make every agency autonomous. And because they're all autonomous, it's hard to work together because they're almost in competition with each other. They're not trying to be. I talk to these agencies, I talk to every agency in Ontario because we're in the middle. We're not treatment and we're not housing. We're stuck in this gap in between. And because of that, we deal with everybody.

And everybody's got the same problems. And we're all just trying to find any way we can to help these clients. But like you said, sometimes there's not an answer. Sometimes a parent calls me and says, my kid's in withdrawal management. How do I get him into treatment? And I'm like, you're not going to.

Like that's the unfortunate answer. You're going to in four months. So what can we do? Where can we get them right now that'll keep them safe, right? They can go to self-help meetings or, ⁓ you know, you can get them in a pre-treatment program or maybe a long-term stay like Michael Garron usually does extended stays as a withdrawal management center or someplace like that while you're waiting to get services that you need.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (11:47)
They're in a snow broke.

It's really interesting and I think it's a really great segue into our next question, is how do these inequities, whether it's like maybe a physical access concern, like flying down from Northwest territories or income, how do those inequities or inequalities influence the actual mental health outcomes?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (12:12)
⁓ Well, mean, without proper transition of care and access to the entire spectrum of services, the success rate just drops drastically. So, and it depends on what you base success on, I guess. ⁓ If you're talking about minimizing use, ⁓ then just having outpatient drop-in services might be enough. If your goal is to have a transformative change where

you know, maybe you go from, you know, homelessness and addiction to abstinence and housing and jobs and, you know, like autonomy, ⁓ then you need that entire spectrum of services. And the hard part that people don't get usually is, I take somebody that is finally ready to make a change. Their life is in a place where they're... ⁓

completely unable to continue on in the direction that they're going and they have that moment of clarity and they call the Wichita Management Center. Now when they call the Wichita Management Center, it might take a day, it might take a week to get into and during that time, they're super vulnerable and their success rate drops the longer that you leave them in that hiatus. Then if they get into that Wichita Management Center,

They, in that timeframe that they're gonna be there three to five days, they have to find a way to transition into either treatment or pretreatment. And the ability to transfer into treatment, unless you have a whole pile of money, is not probably gonna happen. You're gonna have a four month wait. If you manage to get into pretreatment and everything works out the way it's supposed to, that might take 30 days. In that gap.

that person's chance of ⁓ relapse, overdose, ⁓ homelessness, death, all of those things go right up through the roof. And even more so because you've withdrawn them. Every time somebody comes off a substance, their chance of death and overdose goes up. So we have this massive gap in that timeframe. Then they go into treatment and before from pretreatment to treatment, they have this massive same gap in between that. And every time this happens, we lose them. We lose them. They get disenfranchised with the system.

All their success rates plummet, their willingness levels plummet, and the ability just to track them and maintain some semblance of contact goes down. Once they go through treatment, if they manage to get in there and they're successful and they're doing really well, getting them into a program like my work, which is residential supportive treatment, post-treatment, we have a nine-month wait list.

There's two of us in Ontario that I know of, ⁓ us in Transition House, they also have a nine month wait list. So being able to get into there, you've gone from treatment to there and you have this gap of nine months in between there. And then from there into long-term housing, the Ash Program or most of the other housing programs in Ontario are anywhere up to nine years to 11 years, which is just boggling to the mind. so every one of those gaps just...

just creates these massive barriers and lowers that person's ability to maintain all of the things they've done. We just keep sending them back to ground zero at every turn. And that's the difficult part, right? If we could connect those services.

and go under like, know, Ontario has a new hub model. I'm sure some people have heard of it, a heart hub model where you're supposed to enter a service stream of care and carry all the way through that we're actually able to happen. We would have people changing their lives every single day. We would have thousands of success stories in this province about people having transformative psychic, spiritual changes and ⁓ creating a brand new life.

Unfortunately, that's not the way it works. So in every one of those turns, we run into a massive barrier, which is just breaks my heart to have to tell somebody that's on point in a treatment center that we don't have a bed for you. I think this year we just did our statistics. And this year we had 107 clients come through Elphihouse and we had to reject 962.

And when I pulled those numbers, I wanted to cry. was like, is, that's 962 people's children, you know, or brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers that ⁓ are desperately seeking care. They're not the people who are saying, I don't want to access care. They're people who desperately are seeking care and we can't provide it for them because of limitations in the system.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (17:01)
I'm not sure if you know this show, but have you ever watched the show BoJack Horseman?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (17:07)
No, no. Is it a cartoon? Yeah, okay, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (17:09)
So it's a cartoon and it's kind of like.

It's kind of a silly show at first, but it's actually, in my opinion, like one of the best TV show portrayals of mental health and addiction. I'm on my 7-3 watch, I have a BoJack tattoo. We can get into it another time. But, but get through the first four episodes and then you'll love it. ⁓ The interesting piece, and it's an old show, so not really a spoiler anymore, but ⁓ BoJack.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (17:29)
I don't watch it.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (17:45)
is an actor, he has money, he has resources, he lives in LA, and he is really like, really struggles with alcohol and drug usage. And the show goes through generational trauma and all of the different pieces there, but he's really struggling with addiction. And it gets to points where he goes to rehab, he's fortunate, he's a famous actor, he has all the resources to go.

and do those things. But after rehab, every time he has this period where he's like back home in his beautiful mansion, he like has that like honeymoon-ish period, and then things start to resurface. And even in that case, what I think is really interesting and what I think the show does a really great job of is highlighting all the that without all of these other systems, without thinking of it holistically, ⁓

You can't just put somebody there and expect that in every case it will change and most it won't. I think that's really in a very silly show, a really powerful thing.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (18:50)
That's amazing. I'm gonna have to watch that now.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (18:54)
If you watch the first episodes and then I see you at that baseball game and you're like, Jonathan, what the heck? Just watch the fifth episode and we'll go from there. ⁓

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (19:02)
Awesome.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (19:06)
Back to our official questions. ⁓ What measures have you seen in the maybe the literature, in the news, are being considered to address the mental health and addiction crisis that we have in Canada and in Ontario? I know provincially it's a little bit different, but what are the things you're noticing?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (19:23)
Yeah, I mean, the biggest one right now is the hard hubs. There's been a big shift in Ontario around the type of care that we're going to be providing. I know there's a lot of controversy right now around closing the safe injection sites, which is a really bigger question than either of me or you could answer in a 30 minute podcast. But I would say...

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (19:47)
Okay.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (19:53)
A lot of those agencies are having their funding transitioned, nine out of 10 of them, into heart hubs. There's going to be 28 heart hubs across Ontario. two actually, I live out in Durham region, there's gonna be two out in Durham region, which I'm really excited about. And there's gonna be four in Toronto. And these heart hubs essentially are supposed to be a continuum of care. Eventually, that's all under one roof where

You walk into a building.

and you say, need help, and they take you and put you into day programming, withdrawal management, moving forward into pretreatment, into treatment, ⁓ RST, long-term housing, and going through the entire spectrum of care without leaving care, which is the important piece. Because anything else works that way, right? If you go to a hospital, you don't go in and they see you and then they go, OK, go home, and then you're going to come back, and then we're going to do the

MRI on you. You get everything done in that one session if you're in crisis. Now if you're not in crisis, yeah, it might be split up, but the idea is to not leave the person's side, to stay with them the entire journey and keep them under one roof.

And it's a massive investment. mean, $560 million or something like that is being invested, $6.5 million per hub each year annually. even originally it was going to be 19 hubs and they changed it to 27 and they just added an additional one out in Durham region, which is super exciting. And they're all supposed to be.

They're spectral abstinence, they're called, right? So I'm a proponent of both. understand harm reduction. I understand the need for it. There's a need for every type of service in Ontario. We shouldn't be picking and choosing. We need abstinence-based care. We need harm reduction-based care. And we need something somewhere in the middle. And these are supposed to be spectral. So they'll have abstinence-based treatment with a desire to move people forward through the continuum.

but an understanding that not everybody will. And if you understand the pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance, the stages of change, sometimes people slip back through that. And the problem with the system right now is that if you're in a place and you've relapsed, you can't stay there typically because you're not in the right place at that time. And that usage in that building might

cause damages to other clients. So you're discharged. And because all the agencies are separated, there's a gap. And you're probably going to end up on the street, not in another agency. But with this system, you'll be able to, if you use and you're in treatment, you'll be able to go back to withdraw management or maybe some outpatient group or whatever it may be. And you don't have to leave that care or be punished for the mental health issue that you have. So it's a really big initiative. ⁓

Minister Tiobolo, ⁓ or the Associate Minister Tiobolo, helped develop this along with ⁓ the Ontario government and a whole bunch of big players. And it's probably the most exciting thing that I've seen in the entire time I've been in this field, because I haven't seen any change, any change in the entire time I've been in this field until this. And ⁓ I know a lot of people are skeptical, but...

I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that this is going to be open up beds and open up services and allow those gaps to be broken down. ⁓ they're all supposed to be launching in the next couple of months. So let's cross our fingers and hope that those agencies do a really bang up job and work together and build the system the way they've allocated the funds. And if they do that, I think we're going to have a big, big shift in this province in our homelessness rates and their addiction rates.

and ⁓ our access to care for people that don't know how to access it.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (24:02)
I've been in mental health in one way or another for 14 years. And it is wild how we all kind of just accept the system the way it is. Like it's problematic and you're like, yes, but at least like, you know, like we're the people who are showing up and trying to do the work. We're trying to be that space. And I think change is...

very, very exciting thing because it'll allow, you know, growth, mistakes, learning and getting us to a better place eventually.

that brings us to our next question, is, what measures can be implemented to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and addiction issues within our healthcare system? Just small questions for you today, Jordan.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (24:46)
⁓ Yeah,

⁓ within the healthcare system ⁓ is just as complicated as it is with the public. So, Oshawa has a really good example right now. Lakeridge Health Hospital has just signed off on contracts to open up a mental health

for our mental health emergency room. And it's one of the, I think a few of them in Canada, but this one is really one of the first in this area. The problem is, is when somebody has addictions to mental health, it's different than any other disease or any other mental health disorder where people attach morality to it.

And that's not because of the substance use in itself, because everybody understands, like, you start off, you have a drink, and you don't think you're going to become an alcoholic, or maybe, you like, you start smoking weed or doing something, you don't think you're going to have a serious addiction, or that substance use might trigger a mental health illness. ⁓ People can get that piece and get their mind around that, that you didn't start off with that intention. But the side effects of addiction...

a lot of times are prostitution, ⁓ degradation of yourself or your family, theft, criminality within the community, ⁓ homelessness, which a lot of people feel like that imposes upon them or their business, which is valid. I can always see both sides. I see the damages that addiction to mental health do to the...

rest of the community, which a lot of other illnesses don't have that. So that's why we have such a big issue around it. If it didn't impede upon everybody else, people wouldn't mind it as much. But because it has such a big imposition on the rest of society, it gets this really nasty taste in people's mouths. And even in in the field of ⁓ social work, the hospitals

If somebody goes in, we've had clients that go into the hospital, they have an overdose or ⁓ they're ⁓ an induced psychosis from a substance use issue or a seizure due to a substance use issue. And when they get to the hospital, they're only there for like two hours. They realize that it's drug related and they just discharge them. They're like, stop using drugs and everything will be fine. Instead of looking at...

you still have these issues that we need to address. Yes, there's this thing that's the causation of it that we might need to help. But a lot of times that care isn't offered because we don't have social workers in those hospitals. We don't have ⁓ people that are able to navigate that type of that system. But Lakeridge is that really great example is they are taking their old emergency wing and opening it back up and creating.

a separate room so that way when you come in, you can be triaged. It's addictions or mental health. We're going to send you to this emergency room where we have social workers, where we have nurses and doctors that are significantly trained in addictions and mental health that are going to be able to help and guide you not just on don't use drugs, but how that you're going to accomplish that goal.

and how we're going to mitigate damages done to you. the people we think in the health care are going to be more ⁓ compassionate, but sometimes it's the opposite, because they get burnt out by it, watching the same thing over and over and over. And sometimes there are harder cases than the rest of the population. So I think having that immediate care in there is going to help with ⁓ the stigma.

in social work and in hospital stays. In society as a whole, I think it's a completely different thing. It's bringing people back to the truth that these are our brothers, these are our daughters, these are our kids, right? And people forget that, you know, that these are people. You see somebody sitting on the side of the street asking you for money. ⁓ Like I said, I lived experience and I was homeless and I remember

you know, sitting on the side of the road and asking for money right at the beginning, the first time I ever had to do that in the shame and people would look at you at first. And then you notice that people don't even want to make eye contact because they don't want to feel guilty about not helping because they think the money is going to go to something. Right. And they're probably right. It's probably going to substance use. Right. But, you know, I even in this field, I still give money to people on the streets. And I remember a few years ago,

being out in and my sister, it was Christmas and I gave a homeless man $50 on Christmas. And my sister said to me, you know he's gonna buy drugs with that. Like you're a counselor, you know what's gonna happen. And I'm like, I absolutely know he's gonna buy drugs with that. And she's like, well, why'd you give it to him? I'm like, because he's not gonna have to rob somebody. He's not gonna have to degrade himself today. He's not gonna have to sell his body.

You know, it's going to be a good day for him and it's going to be a good day for everybody else. And I think if people just remove the singularity and we start working as a team and remembering that these are our people and we try to help them rather than judge them and hinder them, that things are going to start getting a little bit better. ⁓ But it's hard. It's hard when you see the impact of it on society as a whole to disregard that.

just remembering those are symptoms of the disease. That's not how that person will behave ⁓ if they were not on substances and they still need help and they deserve help and a little bit of dignity even if they're not providing it themselves.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (30:47)
Totally agree and thank you for sharing that ⁓ lived experience Jordan. So I guess if we were to put on our future hat and go to Jordan's house, what does the future of mental health and addiction care look like to you? Like what if you could peer into the crystal ball, you were the mayor of this town, what would it look like?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (31:10)
Big picture, I think we need a steady continuum of care. ⁓ I think if agencies are funded that they should have in their contracts that they're required to work with other agencies, that we should be aligning policies with each other. So that way there's not gaps in services. We definitely need significantly more beds.

I remember a few years ago, John Tory was the mayor of Toronto and ⁓ he announced that he was getting ready to put $180 million or something like that into the addiction sector in Toronto, of City of Toronto money. And I got called to go onto ⁓ CBC radio and they asked me about it. They said, what do you think about this great plan? And I said, like, you know, we have...

treatment beds right now in Ontario that aren't funded. What are we talking about? Like you want to build treatment centers with this money? Like that's going to take years. That's a way down the road plan. Yeah, we should start building more treatment centers right now or expanding, but we have beds that are available. know, fund all the private agencies appropriately.

Take the beds, you know, at Alpha House, we have 25 physical beds in one of our sites and 10 physical beds in our other site. We're only funded for 18 out of 33. How does that make sense?

How does it make sense to only partially fund something when we have beds available in the middle of an addictions and mental health crisis, in the middle of a homelessness crisis? We're only utilizing half of our services. So I think the big picture would be they need to be fully funded. Every bed that we have accessible in Ontario, we need to be building new treatment centers right now in preparation for what's coming down the road.

We have to have steady continuum of care, more outpatient drop-in programs that are free and accessible for people that are on those wait lists to be able to access care. And we need to simplify it. We need to simplify the system. There needs to be a 1-800 number that you can call that gets you access to everything.

you know, like some sort of central access, they've tried it. know, terror governments tried it. And unfortunately, every time they've done it, they've just taken a really simple idea and complicated the hell out of it. Bureaucracy at its best. ⁓ You know, they try, they're trying, don't get me wrong, I appreciate them. trying, but ⁓ they got really good aim, but they're shooting at the wrong target. So ⁓ if they just consulted rather with

with the bureaucracy and consulted instead with the people that work in this field. And I don't mean me, like the directors. They need to consult with the people that work on the floor, the people that are answering the phone, the mission coordinators, the discharge planners, the caseworkers, and ask them how to build this system. And if they did, they would realize all of the gaps that stand in the way of these clients and even the gaps that stand in the way of counselors.

from being able to do their job. could write a book on the gaps that are created through bureaucracy that stopped me from being able to do my job appropriately. So I would say we just need to break down those barriers and find a way to bring agencies together to streamline the service. Because we have all the things we need right now. They just don't work well.

Right? And ⁓ creating a diversity. keep going from, I don't know if you've noticed this, but right now they're in the swing back to abstinence away from harm reduction. They're trying to close off the safe injection sites. Like stop swinging back and forth. Just create lots of different services so people have options, you know? And don't pick the modality. Just pick modalities, you know, and allow people to make their choices. And...

Make everything free. I mean, nothing's free, it out of our taxes. But it's a good investment. And I think a lot of times they judge that investment and they cut back on it by saying, oh, treatment costs X amount of money and why are we paying for this? Instead of saying, every person, like my work last year, we had 56 % of our clients that came through, ended up coming off of ODSP or Ontario Works.

saving the Ontario government $780,000 a year in future payments to people. That's more than we're funded as an agency. you know, like looking at it, not playing rich for a penny, poor for a pound, and starting to ask yourselves, if we pay for this and we send people through these types of cares, high level cares, expensive cares, the whole continuum of care.

How much money is that gonna save us in the long term? And even from a financial standpoint, not an emotional, not an empathetic or loving or all the right things that we should be doing kind of standpoint, just from the standpoint of finances, it makes sense. And ⁓ so they just need to invest. Invest in it, invest in people and ⁓ you're gonna save money in the long term and our crime rates are gonna go down and people are gonna be happier, right? ⁓

That's my shtick, I guess, is just put money in it and offer services and let's get people back.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (36:39)
Good stick.

It's a good schtick. Jordan's house is a good place to be.

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (36:46)
I like my

house. good.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (36:50)
Yeah,

perfect. ⁓ It has been an absolute honor and pleasure to have you on the show. If you were to give someone one small piece of advice in starting their own recovery journey, what would you say?

Jordan Anderson, Alpha House (37:03)
Don't take no for an answer. There's gonna be a lot of barriers in your way. A lot of ⁓ agencies that say they don't have beds for a while. Just keep applying at places. Get on every list you can. If you're gonna go to treatment, call 20 treatment centers. As many lines as the water as you can and in the interim, don't concede to waiting. Go to meetings.

Whatever, you know self-help 12-step smart recovery, whatever is in your community access as much care as you can outpatient drop-in anything you can do while you're waiting to get into treatment and build your life You can start right now. And even if you continue your use just keep going to all that stuff, you know, it's a I think a lot of people hear the wait times and they just give up, you know, but ⁓

Just don't take no for an answer. Just keep going forward and life will get better. But if you stop, you're going to end up in the exact same place that you are right now. And that's what you're trying to get away from. So just keep going. And if you need help, ⁓ reach out, call out the house, even if you don't want to come to our RST program after. Our staff are more than willing to just walk you through the process. we'll help you find a place that you can get into, even if it's not us.

Jonathan Friedman (He/Him (38:25)
And to learn more about Jordan, the awesome work he does there at Alpha House, check out AlphaHouseToronto.ca. I will also throw the link in that description, so check below for that. And to learn more about the work we do here at EHN Canada, check out EHNCanada.com. To listen to even more episodes of Five FAQs you check it out on your favorite streaming platform. And Jordan, thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.