Commentary The current Liberal government might achieve a windfall in popularity from concluding agreements on health care with each of the provinces. Perhaps the agreements will be used as the trigger for an early election. It is impossible to evaluate the deals without seeing and studying the details. In the meantime, there are some questions…

Ontario’s economy will be “doom and gloom” before bouncing back next year, the province’s fiscal watchdog said Tuesday. In its latest outlook, the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario said the province’s economic growth is expected to slow sharply this year with a modest recovery beginning next year. The FAO’s economic and budget outlook report projects…

Commentary For the second time in as many months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has surprised me on the national health-care file, and in a positive way. The health-care system has been well-established as a sacred cow in Canadian politics. Many politicians will decry the state of health care in the nation, but few will dare…

The Liberal government announced Thursday it will seek to delay the expansion of Canada’s assisted-dying regime to include people whose sole underlying conditions are mental disorders. Justice Minister David Lametti said during a news conference that the government has heard concerns that the health-care system might not be prepared to handle those complicated cases. “Some…

When the pandemic hit, the Canadian government ordered several mobile health units (MHUs) that could be deployed to help when hospital capacity was maxed out. To date, four units have been procured at a cost of $189 million, plus some $600,000 monthly to store them. None of them have been used. Two of the units…

Commentary The story is the same in every province in Canada. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed, hospitals are short-staffed, and ICU space can never seem to keep up with extraordinary pressures whether they be from a local disaster, a flu outbreak, or a spike in COVID-19 cases. Waiting lists for medical specialists continue to grow while…

More than 1.5 million Canadians have been diagnosed with cancer in the last 25 years and were still alive in January 2018, according to a new report on cancer prevalence published by the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS). Among the Canadians with cancer, there were almost 1.7 million cancer cases, as one person can receive more…

Commentary It seems finally to have dawned on Ontario’s political leadership that our crumbling health-care system is crumbling. Brilliant. You learned a simple word and after 40 years of denying waiting lists existed while promising to fix them and failing miserably, recognized an obvious situation. You must have an IQ of 16. Unfair, you say?…

Commentary As inflation continues upward, many Canadians worry about the increasing cost of living and their household finances. However, there’s a crucial expense line missing—the amount we pay for public health care. Most of us intuitively know that health care isn’t free. At some level, we all understand that the money in the government’s coffers…

Commentary Former B.C. deputy minister of health Lawrie McFarlane’s July 24 commentary on the “Cambie Surgery Centre ruling” (a descriptive that ignores two cancer patients and three children who were co-plaintiffs) contained some valid commentary. The crisis we now face in our health system is there for all to see and observe. Notably, McFarlane offers…