Do we still believe in Canadian health care?

Calgary Herald

25-04-2025

With less than a week until Canadians head to the polls, it's important to talk about the issue that touches every one of us: health care. This is not about slogans or sound bites. It's about what Canadians are living every day.
ERs closing without warning. Patients waiting years for surgery. Nurses walking away from jobs they once loved. One in five people without a family doctor. These aren't just unfortunate outcomes of a complex system — they are the predictable results of years without leadership, planning or national will.
Technically, health care is a provincial responsibility, but this crisis has outgrown that boundary. For more than a decade, the federal government has watched the system fracture without offering a serious, sustained plan to shore it up. The truth is, Canada has changed.
Our population has grown by nearly 20 per cent in the past decade, driven largely by immigration. I say that not with alarm, but with clarity. As an immigrant myself — someone who came here nearly two decades ago and now serves as a surgeon and educator — I know what Canada offers. But I also know what it demands.
Growth without planning is not progress. When millions of new residents enter a system that hasn't grown in proportion — in beds, staff or funding — the result isn't inclusion. It's backlog, burnout and breakdown.
I see it every week. As an orthopedic surgeon, I meet patients who've waited two or even three years for surgeries that could restore their mobility and independence. These are not elective luxuries. These are life-changing operations, delayed until people can barely walk. During the Delta wave, I volunteered on COVID wards. What I saw wasn't a strained system — it was one on the edge. Today, patients still ask, 'How much longer?'
I wish I had a better answer.
What makes this harder to accept is how avoidable much of it is. We have bright, capable young Canadians who want to serve. But we've capped medical school seats, failed to plan for the workforce we need and leaned on short-term fixes — such as recruiting from abroad, often from countries with their own shortages. That's not sustainable and it's not fair.
Meanwhile, provinces carry the bulk of health-care costs — often 40 to 50 per cent of their budgets — while Ottawa contributes just 22 per cent through the Canada Health Transfer. For years, provinces have asked for that share to rise to 35 per cent. What they've received instead are temporary boosts and pre-election gestures — none of which address the root of the crisis.
And here's what we don't say enough: health care cannot thrive in a vacuum. A strong public system depends on a healthy, growing economy. And that economy — in turn — depends on smart policy, innovation, workforce participation and long-term planning.
Under the federal leadership, Canada's per-capita GDP growth has fallen behind nearly every other advanced economy. Productivity has stalled. Revenues have thinned. The widening gap between ambition and reality is showing up every day — most painfully in our hospitals and clinics.
We don't just need more money. We also need better thinking. A serious workforce strategy. Smarter investment. Less bureaucracy. And leadership that doesn't flinch at hard conversations.
Health care is not just a service, it is a promise we have made to each other — one that says your pain matters, your effort matters and your well-being is part of the national good.
This federal election isn't just about taxes or talking points. It is about whether we still believe in that promise — or whether we're willing to watch it fade — one closed ER and forgotten patient at a time.
Because behind every delay is a Canadian — waiting, hoping, hurting. And behind every vote is a choice: to restore what once defined us, or to settle for less in a country that was meant to deliver so much more.