8:30 AM - CMHO Opening Remarks

8:45 AM - Opening Remarks

9:00 AM - Effective Advocacy: The Missing Link Between Doing Better and Knowing Better

Across Canada, the mental health needs of children and youth are increasingly well understood. Yet First Nations children continue to experience preventable harm, not because solutions are unknown, but because known, evidence informed and First Nations led solutions are not being implemented.

This keynote examines the persistent gap between knowing better and doing better through the lens of substantive equality, which requires services to respond to the actual needs and circumstances of children rather than offering formally “equal” but ineffective responses. Drawing on decades of strategic human rights advocacy, the talk shows how discrimination against First Nations children has been repeatedly identified, proven, and ordered remedied—yet continues through delay, under implementation, and system design choices that normalize inequity.