Op-Eds
Canadian governments’ lack of transparency is a high-profile concern – and for good reason. Alongside such problems as bureaucratic circumvention of freedom of information laws and ministers responding to questions in legislatures or from the media with mechanical talking points, government finances are far too opaque.
Which brings us to the pandemic of 2020. COVID-19 was not only a health and economic crisis, it was a fiscal crisis. It prompted unprecedented jumps in government spending and borrowing. But how much exactly was going where? We don’t know.
Two years have passed since our federal, provincial and territorial governments closed their books on the fiscal year that ran from April 1, 2020, to March 31,…
Following passage of the Ford government’s Bill 60, Ontario’s ministry of health now has the option to contract out to independent clinics the provision of certain kinds of health-care services normally provided in hospitals. Its opponents have cast the bill as favouring “privatization” and as a threat to the Canadian model of public health care. An emotionally charged television commercial commissioned by the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU) conjures up a dystopian future where stone-faced capitalists in dark suits push a gurney with a teary-eyed post-surgery patient through dim hospital corridors and present her with a touch screen that she must push to pay for pain relief. In case anyone…
This past May, six family physicians in a Kingston, Ont., practice retired, leaving no successors to refill a prescription, check out a child’s persistent cough, the pain in dad’s knee, mom’s upset stomach, grandpa’s aches and pains, granny’s forgetfulness—every family’s worrying signs of potentially failing health. Ask any of the approximately 8,000 now-orphan patients about this being a crisis.
Combine that with hours of waiting in an emergency room—even longer to be admitted—and longer still to be discharged from hospital in the absence of an alternative, either a nursing-home bed or what people really want: home care and support in the community. These and other problems have been around a while. What’s new is that they are…
When Canada’s premiers journey to Manitoba for a crucial Council of the Federation meeting from July 10 to 12, the route to health care reform should be top of mind. Rarely has a summer road trip been so vital to the present and future of Canada’s once cherished health care system. The premiers need to come out of the meeting prepared to follow a roadmap back home on real health reform.
From coast to coast to coast, Canadians are increasingly worried that health services will not be there for them. Memories of the record number of deaths from COVID-19 in long-term care homes still linger. There are millions of Canadians without family physicians and other providers of primary care, while long wait times and even closings of…
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…
