This article was published in the Globe and Mail on June 15th

Imagine a young woman, 18, who waited many years to see a professional psychologist as her depression and anxiety disorder worsened and impeded her at school and at work. She never achieved her full potential, and her unresolved traumas will eventually affectthe way she raised her children. This is not an uncommon story.

Last month’s World Happiness Report offered a striking data point – Canada’s youth ranked 71st globally on measures of mental well-being. Last year, Ontario’s Auditor-General found that more than half the province’s children and youth didn’t have access to adequate mental health care when they needed it.

This is not just a problem in itself. It weighs on the economy, too, in the form of elevated rates of homelessness, incarceration, lost productivity, entrenched poverty, lost revenues, higher health-care costs. And this continues as trauma passes from one generation to the next, as the continuing crisis among Indigenous peoples makes painfully clear.

James Heckman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, said “the best way to improve the work force is to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children have the opportunity to succeed alongside their more advantaged peers.”

Every dollar invested in vulnerable children can create many times more in value through improved productivity, reduced chronic disease, lower crime rates and stronger communities. The numbers back that up. According to the British Columbia government, “For every $1 spent on the early years support, almost $6 are returned to the economy.”

This is certainly a much higher economic return than the new sovereign wealth fund and skilled-trades training initiative announced at the spring economic update – which together amount to roughly $30-billion in commitments over several years – can expect to deliver.

As many contributors to these pages have noted, the Canada Strong Fund is a disguised business subsidy with questionable economic and social returns. And the Team Canada Strong program for trades is another training program among an “overwhelming” array of training programs whose focus is often misdirected (as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pointed out), and which encroach on provincial jurisdictions.

We often talk about a bleak future for young people. Nearly half of Canadians between 25 and 44 report having difficulty meeting financial needs. Youth unemployment is nearly 15 per cent. In Toronto, 16 per cent of millennials aged 25 to 39 live with parents, twice the rate of boomers at the same age. These are serious, but separate issues. As we try to tackle the big, structural problems of our economy, we must not neglect the equally important issue underneath: A truly strong Canada can only be built on a foundation of healthy, resilient young people – and by that measure, Canada is underperforming.

Children in this country are waiting more than two years for publicly funded mental health services. Access to school-based social workers is severely limited. Youth aging out of foster care receive inadequate support. Many schools – particularly in lower-income neighbourhoods – are in serious disrepair. More than half of Quebec’s schools are in poor condition; in Montreal, three-quarters of them are.

A few weeks ago, UNICEF ranked Canada well below peer nations on children’s mental health, physical health and skills – behind poorer countries like Croatiaand Hungary. One in six Ontarian youth said in 2024 that they had contemplated suicide in the previous year. Half of them reported moderate to serious psychological stress and one in five have harmed themselves. More than half of Canadians experienced some form of maltreatment before the age of 15, according to Statistics Canada. High-school dropout rates hit 50 per cent in some low-income communities.

Why, then, do governments persist in underinvesting? The reasons are largely political. Returns on youth investment materialize slowly, while voters – and electoral cycles – demand quick results. At-risk youth and their families, who are typically low-income, lack organized lobbying power. A portion of the electorate holds the view that poverty reflects individual failure rather than structural disadvantage and prefers spending on enforcement over prevention.

There is also the challenge of complexity. Effective intervention is highly individualized, and senior governments are often too distant to appreciate that complexity – yet reluctant to delegate adequately for fear of losing control. Countries that perform best on youth outcomes tend to be more administratively decentralized than Canada.

The Netherlands and Denmark – top performers in the UNICEF rankings – offer instructive models. Nordic countries prioritize early identification of at-risk youth and rely on community-based, multi-agency collaborations linking education, mental-health services, mentorship and recreational programming in disadvantaged areas.

What works is not complicated to describe, even if it is difficult to execute. Sustained, trusted relationships between youth and counsellors require competitive pay and stable working conditions to survive staff turnover. Individualized services encompassing mental health support, substance counselling and academic assistancemust be tailored to each young person’s situation. Better integration of those services in schools and community hubs, where youth actually spend their time, is also required. Nearly two-thirds of mental health disorders emerge before the age of 25; the window for effective intervention is not infinite.

Ottawa needs to fix the underfunding of the $10-a-day child care program. Provinces need to provide schools and communities with more resources and genuine flexibility to build collaborative local networks. The only thing after that the government ought to do is to work with academics and the stakeholders to set up a process to collect data and evaluate what works and what doesn’t among the multitude of initiatives that are, or will be, set up across the various school boards and community groups across the country. Results on these evaluations in five or 10 years will be precious to determine funding allocation and how stakeholders can make their intervention more effective.

Canada has both the resources and the responsibility to make youth well-being a national priority. The return on that investment dwarfs almost anything else on offer. This is not new. Prof. Heckman and many other economists made this point in the late 1990s. Yet Canada consistently underinvests. The question is whether governments have the political will to think beyond the next election.