Claire Elyse Brosseau, tall and elegant, in her skinny jeans, black turtleneck sweater and brown slippers, opened the door in late January, holding a miniature slate-grey Maltese poodle named Olive. She looked me over before inviting me into her mid-town apartment for a conversation about her wish to die. From her bio, she could have been a double for the...
Four Conservative MPs are calling for a Commons committee investigation into the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP), and a pivotal non-profit health foundation says the effort needs an urgent overhaul. Led by Dan Mazier, the Conservative health critic and deputy chairman of the Commons Health Committee, the group requested in a letter that Liberal MP and committee chairperson Hedy Fry...
In 2024, more than 2,150 Ontarians died from opioid-related overdoses, a devastating figure that underscores the urgent need for effective policies. This crisis has intensified just as the Ontario government embarks on a significant policy shift, closing nine provincially funded supervised consumption sites (where people can use drugs under the care of trained staff) and replacing them with Homelessness and...
An Alberta Conservative MP said she thinks the measles outbreak in her province can be traced back to the COVID pandemic and loss of trust in vaccines due to the federal government’s lack of transparency about their risks. Article content “Years after COVID, broken trust in government health directives has not been addressed for many Canadians,” Michelle Rempel Garner, formerly...
At some point in the not-distant future, the errors of this particular provincial government will emerge in starker relief. Be it the grotesquerie of a mega-spa and monster parking tower at revamped Ontario Place or the erosion of environmentally protected land in sweetheart deals with palsy developers — because the halting of one Greenbelt swap, sparked by public outcry and...
Dental association says government dealing with 'avalanche' of submissions. As federal dental care expands to cover most uninsured Canadians, providers say some procedures are being bogged down by paperwork and processing delays. Health Canada says 52 per cent of requests for pre-authorized dental work between November 2024 and June 2025 have been rejected. While the vast majority of claims don't need p
The medical exam room is for the doctor and their patient. Full stop. This simple truth forms the foundation of medicine and is not something I ever thought I would have to make the case for when I first became a doctor 24 years ago. But here we are, so let me say it out loud: Politicians have no place...
Concerns are growing that avian influenza could become a pandemic, resulting in possible widespread lockdowns and potential social as well as economic consequences similar to what occurred during COVID-19. As cases rise, some argue the United States is repeating the mistakes it made in 2020, making this the perfect time to reinvent Canada’s capacity to respond to this crisis and...
I still remember the hope I felt in 2002 when I chose to become a family doctor. It wasn’t the most popular career path in medical school, but for me, it was a calling — the chance to build lasting relationships with patients and be there through every stage of life. More than two decades later, it’s heartbreaking to see...
My friend, Vanessa Davis, died on April 27. The day before her celebration of life, I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I’d planned to write her eulogy on the flight home to Winnipeg. I went for a walk that morning; it was bitterly cold. I saw an arrow pointing me toward the Terry Fox monument, and so I followed the...
U.S. physicians are lining up to serve, but Canada’s licensing logjam is holding them back. In February, I was among the first to alert Canadians that a historic wave of physician migration was coming. I had recently moved to Canada due to the rapid decline of medical ethics in America which, alarmingly, has gone largely unopposed by American medical professional...
Doctor: You need to go to the emergency room. Patient: I’m not going.
Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange had a message for her province earlier this month, “don’t get measles; get immunized”. This, as outbreaks of the highly contagious disease continue, appearing in nine provinces so far, with the vast majority occurring in that province and in Ontario. The good news for health officials is that the outbreak appears to have increased support...
As southern Alberta battles its worst measles outbreak in decades, some doctors are warning the virus is more rampant than the case counts show and they're now struggling to keep up with demand. As of midday Wednesday, 628 cases had been confirmed in Alberta since the outbreaks began in March.
A new U.S. government portal lets anyone report a health-care provider — including Canadian ones — for allegedly “chemically or surgically mutilating children.”
Canadian health care is ripe for major reform. In 1965–66, Canada experienced a paradigm shift – a “big bang” policy change. Since then, the core relationships between patient, state, medical profession, and labour remain the same. For 60 years, political actors have focused on policies that promise incremental change and avoid major reform. Medicare might be one of the most...
Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, encompassing both euthanasia and assisted suicide. Initially limited to those nearing their natural death, eligibility expanded in 2021 to individuals with physical disabilities, with eligibility for individuals with mental illness in 2027. Parliamentary recommendations include MAiD for children. A recent federal consultation explored extending MAiD to those who lack capacity via...
Health care across Canada is in crisis. In addition to known burdens of disease and therapies, Canada’s processes have become too bureaucratic and burdensome. With more barriers and layers of gatekeepers than any other country, Canadians are being forced to wait unacceptably long to access new and potentially lifesaving therapies. There’s already significant shortages of doctors, nurses and hospital beds...
As the death toll from the ongoing opioid poisoning crisis in Canada continues to rise, jurisdictions across the country struggle to find solutions. Safe consumption sites, where people can use drugs in a supervised setting that provides clean syringes and overdose kits, have opened across Canada. Addiction medicine clinics that provide treatments for drug use have proliferated nation-wide. Controversially, the...
The call to Angela Rasmussen came out of the blue and posed a troubling question. Had she heard the rumour that key data sets would be removed from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website the next day? It's something Rasmussen had thought could never happen. "It had never really been thought of before that CDC would actually...
National pharmacare, as proposed by the federal government, will not improve patient access to innovative medicines without major changes to current gatekeeping practices. Without deeper reforms, it could make drug access worse for patients. Canadians used to be proud of their “national medicare,” but health care across the country is now in crisis (Angus Reid Institute 2023). There’s a significant...
Health Canada says a synthetic dye newly banned from the U.S. food supply does not pose a health risk to the general population in Canada. The federal agency said it won't echo a ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration unless new information comes to light about the additive known as Red 3. Health Canada said it reviewed a...
The fate of Canada’s pharmacare plan—for which not a single province has signed on—is unclear as Parliament remains prorogued with the possibility of a spring election to follow. Part of the plan requires provinces and territories to sign bilateral agreements in order to receive their share of the $1.5-billion that has been set aside to help the jurisdictions cover a...
Over two in five Canadians each say they either plan on losing weight (43%) or not losing weight (44%) in 2025, while over one in ten are unsure (13%). Asked how they are planning to lose weight, over nine in ten say they will do so by changing their diet/eating better (93%) followed by exercise (80%). Nanos conducted an RDD...
Calgary removed fluoride from its water supply in 2011. Rates of childhood tooth decay increased sharply. Calgarians voted to bring fluoridation back in 2021, and the renewed system is expected to be in place by 2025. It seems wrong to call Calgary’s experience a cautionary tale. “Cautionary tale” implies an unintended, negative consequence. That the collective dental health of Calgarians...
The Canadian healthcare system is heading toward a perfect storm—a “double demographic whammy” that will strain health and long-term care and dominate the political agenda for the next 5 to 10 years unless the problem is addressed. This collision is driven by two inexorable forces: a rapidly aging population and a shrinking supply of family physicians and other healthcare professionals...
There's been a sevenfold increase in refugee health care costs in the last eight years. The federal government is asking Parliament to approve hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending to cover the health-care costs of eligible refugees and asylum seekers — a budget line item that has soared in recent years as the number of these newcomers reached...
Legislation was only ‘the tip of the iceberg’ because it was ‘really light on details,’ says former Ontario PC staffer Carly Bergamini. ‘Now all of the hard work begins.’
The Quebec government’s decision to move ahead with advance requests for medical assistance in dying in defiance of the Criminal Code presents a political and legal “hornets’ nest” for federal parties, says a Quebec-based political scientist. “There’s clearly a lot of contentious debates” between Quebec City and Ottawa right now, particularly on immigration, said Laval University political science professor Thierry...
As federal and provincial governments continue to look for new ways to address concerns Canadians have with the current healthcare system, policy discussions have turned to the management of access to virtual care options. A leaked Health Canada memo suggests the federal government is considering intervening to prevent workplace and group benefit plans from offering virtual care coverage at no...
As federal and provincial governments continue to look for new ways to address concerns Canadians have with the current healthcare system, policy discussions have turned to the management of access to virtual care options. A leaked Health Canada memo suggests the federal government is considering intervening to prevent workplace and group benefit plans from offering virtual care coverage at no...
The provincial government says it will force new doctors trained in Quebec to work in the province's public health-care system for the first years of their practice. Health Minister Christian Dube told a Montreal radio station this morning that those who want to leave Quebec or work in the private system will face "consequences."
The Alberta government has tabled three bills that will change, among other things, how transgender youth and athletes are treated in the province. Premier Danielle Smith first introduced various policies aimed at transgender youth in January, saying they are designed to "protect the rights of kids" to make medical decisions as adults.
More than a million Canadians have now received dental care under the new public insurance plan, with each patient receiving an average of $730 on oral health-care services. The Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) helps cover the cost of dental visits for people who don't have access to private insurance and have a household income under $90,000.
Health Canada is investigating after Canada's National Observer revealed that government officials supported efforts by the pesticide industry to discredit a researcher's findings and overturn a proposed ban on a class of pesticides harmful to bees, the environment and human health. During Friday's Question Period in Ottawa, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May pressed the government to respond to the Observer's...
