Our Commentaries

The world of retirement income security is rapidly changing – and leaving most Canadians without a security net. In 1986, a sizeable 39% of the labour force had an employer-sponsored pension and most of these (92%) were Defined Benefit Plans where workers knew clearly the income they would have post-retirement.

Should we baby boomers be feeling guilty now that everyone else seems to have finally clued into the developed world’s worst-kept secret: there are lots of us, we didn’t have enough children of our own to replenish the taxpayer base, and we didn’t contribute enough in taxes to cover our future health needs as increasingly frail citizens.

Many people are willing to pay more for higher quality products. For example, you will be confident that a high quality, brand-name TV will work when you get it home. If it doesn’t, the TV will be replaced free-of-charge.

Want to buy a $100 coffee? Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? However, it’s equally absurd that this is how much more Albertans pay for some generic drugs than people in other countries.

Over the past 30 years that I have worked as a researcher in academic institutions, I have received millions of dollars in public and private funding. Yet, I hold no patent, I have not started a company and I cannot point to any commercial product that has emerged from my laboratory.

Healthcare financing in Canada is no small business. With a staggering $200 billion spent on healthcare services annually — that's more than one dollar spent on healthcare for every $10 of the total economic activity in Canada — debates about healthcare services financing ought to be taken seriously.

Canadian Health Policy in the News is a compendium of the commentaries (or OpEds) we have published in major newspapers across the country since the birth of EvidenceNetwork.ca in April 2011 up to October 2012.

For most parents today, stress is a constant companion. Everyone’s heard of the dangers of high blood pressure, of chronic workaholics having heart attacks at forty, of harried professionals pouring themselves an extra glass of wine (or three) with dinner.

It sometimes takes a long time to discover environmental hazards, and even longer to do something about them, once discovered.

Ever wonder why we have so many pharmacies around town? It seems as if there’s a new one on every other street corner these days. Some of them seem to have found all sorts of ways of making money from the unwary consumer.

We have experienced remarkable improvements in life expectancy over the past 100 years. Reasons for this include: sanitary drinking water, pasteurized milk, safe sewage disposal, work safety, higher standards of living, better education and cures for, or immunization against, many communicable diseases.

It is easy to assume that the real problem with our healthcare system is “not enough” — not enough physicians, not enough MRIs, not enough money. But a growing number of studies show that more healthcare is not always better and the more expensive drug or treatment option is not necessarily the right choice.

As Canadians, we take justifiable pride in our healthcare system with its long record of equitable coverage for most important services. If you become acutely ill and you live close to a major centre you will receive care that is as good as anywhere in the world.

Academics and policy wonks who wish to privatize many benefit delivery systems in Canada have a new media savvy salvo now aimed at the Canadian health care system.

Something largely overlooked by wide media coverage of the federal government’s Economic Action Plan 2013 was that it marked a significant change in the way we will tackle homelessness in this country.

The CBC's Fifth Estate recently produced an investigation on the quality of hospitals in Canada – “Rate My Hospital” – which has been enormously popular and set off discussions across the country about the need to improve our hospital services.