In This Issue:

Opinion Piece: Canada’s Wake-Up Call: It’s Time to Rethink Health Care (Part I) [<3 min]
Quote Of The Issue [10 sec]

Canada’s Wake-Up Call: It’s Time to Rethink Health Care

For generations, Canadians have taken pride in our universal health care system, enshrined in the Canada Health Act (CHA) and built on the principle of ensuring access to medical care based on need rather than ability to pay. But this system, designed in an era when our understanding of health and disease was rudimentary compared to today, is now showing its cracks.

The CHA, written in 1984, reflects a time when health care largely meant treating acute illness—mending broken bones, curing infections, and performing life-saving surgeries. It does not account for what we now understand about chronic disease, the mind-body connection, the active participation of the patient in the healing process, and the vital role of proactive health optimization. Our system remains reactive, waiting for people to become sick rather than supporting them in staying well. And now, with an aging population, rising rates of chronic illness, and physician shortages, we are seeing the consequences: long wait times, overwhelmed emergency rooms, and a system teetering on the brink.

It is time to shift our mindset. No public health care system can meet every health need and want of every person all the time. The belief that universal coverage should equate to unlimited access is an illusion that is failing both patients and providers. Instead of clinging to a model that no longer serves us, we must redefine our relationship with health care itself.

This moment of reckoning for our health care system coincides with a broader challenge facing our country: the urgent need to assert our economic and political sovereignty amid global trade instability. Just as Canada can no longer depend on its largest trading partner for economic security, we can no longer assume that our health care system, in its current form, will always be there to meet our needs, nor should it.

Growing up as a country means taking greater responsibility for both our economy and our personal health. It means recognizing that optimizing health is not the job of the government alone, but of individuals, communities, and a range of health care providers—not just those covered by the public system. It means valuing prevention as much as treatment, investing in lifestyle medicine, and supporting a range of health solutions beyond the hospital setting.

The Good News

The timing of this shift is ideal. We are more informed than ever about how to prevent chronic disease through nutrition, stress management, and lifestyle choices. Innovations in digital health, telemedicine, and integrative care are expanding access to support beyond the limitations of our publicly funded system. Canadians have the opportunity to embrace a more proactive, empowered approach to health—one that lightens the burden on an overstretched system and allows us to take back control of our well-being.

We must reimagine our health care system as a safety net, not a sole provider of all health-related services. The future of Canadian health care is not about privatization versus public funding—it is about evolution. Just as we are being called to redefine our economic self-reliance, we are being called to redefine our expectations of health care. The sooner we embrace this shift, the sooner we can move from a system that is crumbling under the weight of outdated expectations to one that supports a healthier, more resilient population.