B.C.’s Community Counselling Has Outgrown One-Time Funding

By September 2025, B.C.’s low-cost community counselling programme had delivered more than 362,000 sessions, according to the province. It had been running for six years. The province announced another $6.7 million to continue the work, and the Canadian Mental Health Association’s B.C. division welcomed what it described as a one-time investment. A service with six years of work behind it was still being offered only temporary funding to continue.

The government’s own description of the care was considerably more assured. When someone reaches out for mental health support, Health Minister Josie Osborne said in the funding announcement, “services must be there for them.” The counselling was part of the province’s intended continuum of mental-health and addictions care. Its role was continuing; the latest contribution was one-time.

Ottawa has now announced a one-year extension of federal money for mental health, addictions and home and community care. That gives governments time to negotiate beyond a March 2027 expiry. It also gives B.C. another opportunity to decide whether established community services should continue to rely on temporary contributions or receive the multi-year support their work requires.

Counselling has become part of the system

The 2025 provincial announcement described a network of 44 community organisations providing free or low-cost adult mental-health and addictions counselling. The work included help with trauma and grief. Some counsellors also connected people with housing or addiction treatment, and accompanied them to appointments.

These were functions the province had chosen to support over several years. By its own account, community counselling had become a way of providing care through organisations people could already approach.

CMHA B.C. welcomed the continuation while calling for multi-year funding. Its concerns were the ability to plan ahead and retain experienced counsellors, as well as uncertainty among clients about the continuity of a therapeutic relationship. The funding term reaches into the care through the organisation’s ability to keep the people providing it.

The legislature’s budget consultations heard the same operational concern. Dan’s Legacy argued that multi-year funding helps organisations offering youth services retain qualified staff and deliver consistent care. The argument concerned what an organisation can build and maintain beyond the announcement of another award.

One-time money has a legitimate use. A government can fund a new service, examine what happens and decide whether to continue it. A six-year record of delivery creates a different decision: which services have earned a continuing place, and on what terms? B.C. should make that decision explicitly for its counselling network.

Ottawa’s extra year leaves the longer agreement open

On 14 October, Ottawa announced another year of funding worth $1.2 billion nationally across mental health, addictions and home and community care. The following day’s official communiqué confirms that ministers had received the extension letter.

CMHA National welcomed the decision while continuing to seek long-term dedicated funding.

For B.C., the often-cited annual amount is roughly $82 million in dedicated mental-health and substance-use funding originating in the 2017 federal commitment. Its purposes extend beyond overdose response to services such as youth intervention and culturally appropriate Indigenous care. It is a provincial allocation, not a Downtown Eastside budget.

A separate, newer federal stream supports broader health priorities. The 2023 Canada–B.C. announcement described approximately $325 million in new annual funding, alongside the ongoing dedicated contribution. The broader federal commitment runs through 2032–33.

That longer horizon is an important limit on the funding-cliff story. The expiry of the dedicated component would not end all sources of mental-health funding. Equally, broad health funding cannot be counted automatically as a replacement for a dedicated allocation. B.C. would have to make that spending choice.

The extension leaves room to make a more durable arrangement. Ottawa has responsibility for the length and design of its contribution. The province decides what services to fund within its own system. A longer federal agreement would help that planning; it would still need to become provincial commitments to the work being delivered.

The Downtown Eastside is already in the network

Watari Counselling and Support Services appears on Community Action Initiative’s 2026–27 counselling grant list. Watari describes its counselling as serving the Downtown Eastside and other Vancouver neighbourhoods. The funding discussion, therefore, concerns an existing part of neighbourhood care, with a current provincial grant programme supporting it.

The list contains 38 recipients. It also says 22 organisations are receiving additional scale-up funding intended to reduce or eliminate waiting lists. Funding is being provided and capacity is being supported. A claim that community counselling has simply been abandoned would ignore those commitments.

A targeted grant to reduce a waiting list can reasonably have an end date. The established counselling service beneath that expansion needs its own funding decision. B.C. should distinguish the work it intends to support continuously from additional projects with a defined finish.

Watari’s listing does not identify a federal revenue source, so its award cannot be assigned to the $82-million component. Nor does the national extension establish the term of a particular local contract. The federal and provincial decisions matter at different points in financing community care.

For B.C., the next useful step is to identify the counselling capacity it intends to sustain over several years and to offer funding on that basis. The grant programme already supplies the organisations through which it delivers care. Its continuing role should be a budget decision, with a stated service commitment attached.

Longer funding with annual scrutiny

None of this makes every existing programme entitled to indefinite funding. The case for a continuing service must include evidence of what it provides and whether people can access it. The province’s cumulative session count establishes years of delivery; it does not, on its own, establish the effectiveness of the counselling.

The legislature’s budget committee had already set out a way to combine stability with scrutiny. In its August 2025 report, it supported multi-year funding for community organisations while retaining annual reporting. Recommendation 77 called for stable multi-year core funding for trusted community-based organisations and updated funding formulas.

A provider can plan against a longer commitment while remaining answerable each year for the service it undertook to deliver. Continued funding would entail an obligation to demonstrate the work: access to counselling, the capacity maintained, and the results of any promised expansion. A review could then determine whether to renew, alter or end the arrangement.

That would require decisions from both sides. An organisation seeking a continuing place would have to explain what its grant pays for. The province would have to state which services it intends to sustain and the term of that commitment.

Participating federal, provincial and territorial ministers agreed on 16 October to meet again before the end of 2026 about longer-term financing. B.C., in its election caretaker period, was not a party to that communiqué. Its counselling network gives the province a concrete funding model to bring to that discussion: multi-year commitments to established services, with an annual public account of their work.