The NDP and Liberal therapy plans illustrate their ideologies.

The social democrat NDP's goal is to move mental health care under the public system, like "regular" health care — while the more centrist Liberal Party focuses on expanding employer benefits.

The Progressive Conservatives have moved forward with the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy program, which started as a pilot in 2017. It's a referral-based, short-term cognitive behavioural therapy program for people with mild to moderate mental health issues.

The NDP promises to fully cover psychotherapy sessions under OHIP. The plan mentions up to 12 sessions, but a spokesperson clarified that there's no cap. Patients would decide with their therapist whether to stop, stick with psychotherapy or move to more complex care after their initial sessions.

While the NDP plan would be covered under OHIP, it wouldn't preclude someone from using their employer benefits as well, the party said.

Horwath said part of the idea for making mental health care public is to let employers "add other kinds of benefits" or just axe it and save money.

The Liberals would require employer health plans to cover mental health services. The party's portable benefits plan would also include mental health coverage, though it didn't say how many therapy sessions that would cover.

Therapy appointments are a small slice of both parties' overall mental health plans, which each include workers, affordable housing, addictions supports and more.

Liberals attacked the NDP's plan in a release, saying it works out to just $64 per person, or "half a therapy session."

But that math assumes every person in Ontario, including newborns, will book a therapy appointment, the NDP said.

That appears to be correct, or close to it. Some back-of-the-napkin math: the NDP's estimated annual cost of the plan ($1.15 billion) divided by the most recent StatsCan estimate of Ontario's population (14,951,825) is $76.91 — not far off the Liberals' $64 estimate.

The Liberals didn't respond to a request for clarification.

The NDP said its costing is based on StatsCan's projected mental health needs of people in Ontario.

Leader Andrea Horwath, clearly amped up to be back on the campaign trail after her COVID isolation, said the Liberals had 15 years to get mental health right and didn't.

She called the $64 attack "trash."

"That's (Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca's) kind of campaigning, not mine," she said, though the NDP has also deployed a litany of attacks on Liberal policies.

Recently, both parties have bounced between attacking each other, and attacking each other for attacking each other. Del Duca said at the last debate that PC Leader Doug Ford smiles every time Horwath criticizes him.

As well he should. Polling shows progressives' only realistic electoral hope this election is to hold the Tories to a minority and form a coalition. Neither side has ruled that out, though the campaign has created a less amicable relationship than that of their federal cousins, who have signed a supply-and-confidence deal until 2025.

Reporters asked Horwath on Wednesday, in various forms, how worried she was about the polling, since the NDP has said it's gunning for a majority — targeting seats to flip, not those it needs to hold onto. That could be a problem given polls show the Liberals may have overtaken the NDP in the race for second.

Horwath gave her standard answer — that most Ontarians don't want to elect Conservatives, and that they don't have to go back to the Liberals who disappointed them.

At a campaign stop in Peterborough, local Mayor Diane Therrien noted, "The polls also told us Trump would never win."

NDP and Liberals spar over free therapy

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