Recently, the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) issued a report entitled “Could a National Long-Term Care Insurance Program be a Feasible Solution to Address Canada’s Growing Long-Term Care Crisis?”
In the wake of the high COVID-19-related death rates in Canada’s long-term care (LTC) facilities and the aging of the population, the NIA report is a helpful avenue of interrogation, providing a thorough analysis of how other countries have implemented LTC insurance models.
But we can sharpen the question: how will support and funding be managed to meet the doubling over the next 20 years of the number of Canadians 75 years of age and older? That is an increase of over 3 million older seniors.
NIA forecasts that…
Governments need to realize — better health depends on better health data - Financial Post Op-Ed
Canada’s governments recently came to broad agreement on renewing federal-provincial health transfers. Ottawa asked the provinces and territories to modernize Canadians’ access to their electronic health information with “standardized health data and digital tools.” Bilateral negotiation will define the details of these digital aspirations. Canadians should pay attention: their health depends on it.
Canadian healthcare is not so much a system as a complex network of interdependent agents — governments, publicly funded services, private providers, professional orders and others. Whether you’re a nurse, doctor, health researcher, public health practitioner, health administrator or in government, trustworthy information is essential…
High and unpredictable inflation has made labour negotiations more difficult. The recent strike by more than 150,000 federal public servants is but one illustration. Lasting 12 days for most affected workers and two weeks for 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees, it brought into focus an issue all Canadian governments need to address, and quickly: What methods can they use to ensure critical municipal, provincial or federal public services continue without interruption, and at a tolerable cost to taxpayers? I believe they need to make more use of binding arbitration.
Several decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour vs Saskatchewan in 2015, have created new challenges for public…
