Canada needs a workforce action plan to tackle overlapping crises in mental health and overdose deaths
Canada is grappling with overlapping crises in mental health and overdoses that are outpacing the capacity of the mental health and substance use health system to respond. While governments across the country are taking steps to increase access to mental health and substance use health (MHSUH) services— including a recent federal government announcement of $500-million to […]
Moving beyond Band-Aid solutions to deliver health care fit for kids
The Conference Board of Canada estimates the annual costs to treat anxiety and depression in young people to be $4-billion, which balloons to nearly $1-trillion over a lifetime without timely interventions.
Feds must expand pharmacare to include essential drugs for our deadliest diseases: cancer, heart conditions, and stroke
An expanded pharmacare framework offers a lifeline for millions of people in Canada. It is time for federal, provincial, and territorial governments to deliver it.
Protecting public health care has never been more important
National pharmacare will be extended to 3.7 million Canadians with diabetes and nine million Canadians of reproductive age.
All hands on deck for the future of health care
One major gap that health providers have identified in testimony before the Standing Committee on Health has been the lack of high-quality, comparable data across provinces and territories.
Exploring the legacy of COVID pandemic panic
The following is an excerpt from Pandemic Panic: How Canadian Government Responses to COVID-19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever, one of the five books shortlisted for this year’s $60,000 Donner Prize.
Funding for Manitoba landfill search welcome, but First Nations-led response still needed
My office is still waiting to hear whether the First Nations-led response noted in our reports will be given the utmost consideration.
Buried in the budget: a potential breakthrough in meeting Canada’s net-zero goals
Budget 2024’s support of carbon removal procurement as a climate solution is a welcome breath of fresh air.
Correcting the record on Bell’s restructuring: BCE exec
Re: “Should telecommunications be nationalized?” (The Hill Times, April 17, opinion piece, p. 3). Last week’s opinion piece in The Hill Times authored by Mark Hancock, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, contained inaccuracies concerning the recent restructuring at Bell, which need to be corrected. To be clear, none of the recently […]
Tenants’ advocates warn of landlords ‘double dipping’ into green retrofit fund without greater transparency or strings attached
A recent survey by ACORN Canada found more than half of 100+ tenants in Alberta-based Avenue Living’s properties saw rent increases of $300 to $600 in the past two years. The organization entered into a financing agreement with the Canada Infrastructure Bank for energy-efficient retrofits in June 2022.
