Good news: Another step forward in the campaign to create a comprehensive affordable housing plan for Canada. The House of Commons has wrapped up debate on the third, and final, reading of Bill C-304 – a private member’s bill from MP Libby Davies that would require the federal government to create a comprehensive national housing […]
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Building Equity Into Health Reform: Innovative Primary Care
Two success conditions for equitable reform of the healthcare system are to increase access to high-quality primary care, especially for the most health disadvantaged populations, and to build on the potential of the many effective front-line and community-based innovations addressing the impact of health disparities across the country. A very interesting recent report from the […]
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Canada inching closer to national housing plan as Commons' vote looms
Canada is inching closer to a long overdue and much-needed national affordable housing plan. Bill C-304, draft legislation to create a national plan that was proposed by Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East, is back for the second round of debate on third reading on Nov. 18. Then the Commons is scheduled to vote on […]
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E-health’s potential for health promotion and equity
Today’s article in the Globe and Mail’s series on healthcare rightly stressed the crucial importance of electronic health strategies to progressive health reform. Unfortunately, this issue has been tainted by scandals around consultants and inefficient spending. But we shouldn’t let that distract us from e-health’s importance; a Wellesley policy briefing sets out the potential of […]
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Book launch: Persistent Poverty – Voices from the Margins, Dec 2
Persistent Poverty, Voices from the Margins documents the real lives of some of the poorest people living in one of the richest places in the world – people living on welfare in Ontario. It’s the third in a series from the InterFaith Social Assistance Review Committee and the stories are drawn from a tour of […]
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Gaps in provincial healthcare: not just a matter of fees but a matter of coverage
Today’s article in the Globe and Mail series on Canadian healthcare highlights how a gap in fees among provinces has lead to reduced access to care for Quebec patients in other provinces. While certainly this speaks to a lack of portability of Medicare, a perhaps greater concern is the population in Canada of individuals with […]
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Maytree’s Alan Broadbent: Canada’s urban areas need more power, autonomy
Canada is an urban nation – 80% of Canadians now live in urban areas, a big change from our founding in 1867 when 80% of Canadians were in rural areas. But while the nation has changed, our governing structures remain stuck in the 19th century. Municipalities are, according to the Constitution, “creatures of the provinces” – […]
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“Get Real: ” For-Profit Care is the Wrong Prescription
Karen Selick of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who are challenging the Ontario government for its “monopoly” health system in court, advises us to “get real” about profit and health care delivery in a Globe and Mail article. Of course, part of getting real may be recognizing that it was precisely the unbridled drive for profit […]
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Home Care Through an Equity Lens
An article in a Globe and Mail series on innovation in health care delivery highlighted the potential of home visits from family physicians to helping people live independently in their own homes. This can both reduce overall system costs through avoiding or delaying institutionalization and significantly improve the quality of people’s lives. But let’s think a […]
Health Care Innovation: But Not Without Equity
The Globe and Mail has been running a week-long series on the potential of innovation and private health care delivery. A Nov 9 article focused on private firms providing second opinions and health system navigation is in danger of missing the key point about this innovation: the point is not that the innovations they describe […]
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