Backgrounder
Through Canada’s first-ever Black Justice Strategy, the Government of Canada is investing in initiatives that address substance use and addictions, support mental health, and help build healthier futures for Black communities.
As part of this strategy, the Honourable Marjorie Michel, Minister of Health, has announced more than $6 million in funding under the Substance Use and Addictions Program and the Supporting Community Mental Health Crisis Response Initiative.
Substance Use and Addictions Program
Black Health Education Collaborative ($708,548)
This project, led by Black Health Education Collaborative, a national Black-focused, Black-led, and Black-serving (B3) organization, is strengthening the capacity of substance use and addictions providers across Canada to deliver culturally relevant, anti-racist care to Black communities through the development and delivery of new substance use and addictions care-focused tools and training.
Canadian Women of Colour Leadership Network ($392,500)
This project is addressing substance use and recovery among Black adults in the National Capital Region by connecting individuals leaving institutional or hospital-based treatment to culturally grounded peer support, harm-reduction education, and community recovery circles led by trained Black peer facilitators.
East African Community Resource Center ($338,174)
This project is engaging Black youth and their families in Windsor-Essex, Ontario to enhance access to safe, culturally responsive substance use prevention, early intervention and harm reduction support services. The project, grounded in East African cultural values, is delivering community outreach and awareness events, providing workshops to youth and families, training youth as peer leaders and acting as a community hub to deliver system navigation and referral services.
The Enough Initiative Canada ($199,948)
This project is creating substance use awareness, prevention, harm reduction, and reintegration infrastructure for Black communities in the Northwest Territories, including substance use prevention education for youth, caregiver training workshops, harm reduction awareness and naloxone training, healing groups, and cultural connection. The project is training ten Black peer facilitators with lived and living experience to lead comprehensive programming, reaching Black residents in the territory.
Health Association of African Canadians ($272,660)
This project is delivering culturally sensitive trauma counselling and substance use prevention, harm reduction and treatment supports for Black Nova Scotian youth (ages 12-24), parents and families. The goal is to reduce harms caused by trauma, violence and substance use, strengthen community wellness, and improve access to evidence-based services by offering individual and family counselling, support groups, youth resilience programming, parent support workshops, crisis intervention, and referrals to substance use services.
Humanitarian Solidarity for Development & Empowerment Canada ($198,001)
This project is increasing access to culturally safe, trauma-informed substance use prevention and early intervention supports for Black immigrant, refugee, and newcomer youth (ages 15-24) in Winnipeg. This includes delivering community-based prevention, harm-reduction education, and early intervention activities that address stigma, stress, and systemic barriers.
Midaynta Community Services ($581,371)
This project is expanding access to culturally grounded substance use care for Black youth (ages 15-29) in Northwest Toronto who are post-treatment or pre/post-correctional or institutional involvement. The goal is to provide youth with culturally grounded, holistic and trauma informed supports that reduce early risk factors, strengthen protective factors and promote healthier decision-making by offering culturally adapted case management and clinical counselling services, prevention education, leadership development, life skills workshops, peer support, and system navigation services
The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada – Committee on Black Health, Innovation and Advancement ($626,476)
This national project is improving awareness, navigation, and referral to culturally responsive substance use prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery services for Black communities across Canada. Through consultations to identify barriers to care and map culturally responsive substance use services across Canada, this initiative will develop and pilot a web-based navigation tool designed to improve visibility of services and strengthen referral pathways for Black individuals and Black communities across Canada.
Think2wice International ($524,651)
This project is reducing substance-related harms among Black youth and young adults (ages 16-29) in Toronto who have been impacted by violence, incarceration, gang involvement, and systemic inequities. Using hip-hop therapy principles, credible messengers, mentors, therapists, and artists with lived experience, the project is creating culturally safe spaces where youth can receive peer mentorship, participate in events and workshops, and receive referrals to support services.
Supporting Community Mental Health Crisis Response Initiative
University of Toronto ($420,994)
The project aims to improve the effectiveness and quality of care, strengthen system integration, identify key gaps in care where development is needed, and reduce the reliance on police-led crisis responses. Funding will help support the development of three tools for mental health professionals to provide culturally sensitive care to Black individuals from diverse communities experiencing mental health crises. These tools are an Environmental Scan Report, a Crisis Response Toolkit, and a Care Pathway Integration Framework.
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health ($606,447)
The project aims to strengthen the capacity of community organizations to provide non-police-led crisis intervention to Black individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. This will be done through the development and delivery of community-informed, culturally safe, anti-racist, and person-centred online training tools and supports. The project will include five key components: an online asynchronous course; a webinar series; an online community of practice for community organizations and service providers; a toolkit of resources to support Black individuals experiencing crises; and an online platform to disseminate tools nationally.
City of Toronto ($700,000)
This project harnesses the strengths and resilience of Toronto’s Black communities to destigmatize mental health crises, foster trust and elevate Black leadership and support in crisis response. Through co-development, piloting, and evaluation of specialized training with the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS), the initiative strengthens an established non-police-led crisis response model. The project aims to enhance culturally responsive crisis support and referral pathways, establish Black-led training priorities that reflect the diversity of Black communities into curriculum design, enhance non-police-led training curriculum for the TCCS, and improve community awareness of racial and mental health stigma.
City of Ottawa ($700,000)
The objective of this project is to expand the geographic reach of the Alternate Neighbourhood Crisis Response (ANCHOR), a non-police, culturally safe, anti-racist, and person-centered mental health and substance use crisis response in Ottawa. The scope of the expansion will extend ANCHOR services to additional priority neighbourhoods, which includes four of the top five Ottawa neighbourhoods with the largest Black populations. The project will provide streamlined and integrated, culturally safe crisis response to Black individuals experiencing mental health crises and offer culturally responsive post-crisis referral pathways.