Put criticism on hold......
PM names 17, some directly affected, to mental health boardAppointees include a Nova Scotian with bipolar disorder
Last Updated: Friday, August 31, 2007 | 2:24 PM ET
CBC News
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has named 17 people — including a Nova Scotian with bipolar disorder, a New Brunswick professor with a schizophrenic child and the federal deputy minister of health — to a mental health board led by retired Liberal senator Michael Kirby.
'We see the results of mental health disorders, mental illness, everywhere.'—Prime Minister Stephen Harper
The fledgling Canadian Mental Health Commission "will lead a national campaign to erase the stigma of mental illness," Harper said Friday in a ceremony in Ottawa.
It will also be a cross-country clearinghouse for information on the best ways to deal with mental disorders, he said.
Plans to create the commission were announced in the dying days of the Liberal government in 2005.
In March, Harper's Conservative government provided money for it — $10 million over two years and $15 million a year after that — and named Kirby its first chairman.
Kirby spearheaded a 2006 Senate report on mental health and used his last weeks in office to campaign for a national strategy to stop stigmatizing the mentally ill.
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