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If Canadians lived healthier lives, we could reduce demand for emergency services, orthopaedic surgeries, primary care and more.
For instance, if you visit the Canadian Cancer Society’s website, you’ll read that “about four in ten” cancer cases are preventable. The Heart and Stroke Foundation notes that “almost 80 percent of premature heart disease and stroke can be prevented through healthy behaviours.” A similar number of Diabetes cases are also preventable.
Many joint replacements and visits to ERs and walk-in clinics could also be avoided through healthy living.
To be sure, not all health problems can be avoided through healthy living – everyday the system treats Canadians with genetic conditions, helps those injured in unavoidable accidents and more.
But there is an opportunity to reduce pressure on the health care system through Canadians shifting to healthier lifestyles – better diets, more exercise, etc.
To learn more, watch our Health Reform Now documentary (scroll up) or see this column.
European countries will partner with anyone who can help patients.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a non-profit, a government entity or a private clinic. What matters is that patients receive quality treatment, in a timely manner and for a competitive price.
In Canada, governments often delivery services using government-run hospitals instead of seeing if non-profit or private clinics could deliver the services more effectively.
When governments have partnered with non-profit and private clinics, the results have often been quite good – Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia are just a few examples of where partnerships have worked well.
Canada should pursue more of these partnerships to reduce wait times and increase the volume of services provided to patients.
To learn more, watch our Health Reform Now documentary (scroll up) or see the links above.
In Canada, citizens pay high taxes each year and we’re promised universal health care services in return. The problem is, wait times are often extremely long in our health system – sometimes patients have to wait years to see a specialist or receive surgery.
If patients don’t want to wait long periods, they often have to reach into their own pocket and pay for treatment outside the province or country.
Throughout the European Union, we also find universal health care systems. But a key difference is that EU patients have the right to go to other EU countries, pay for surgery and then be reimbursed by their home government. Reimbursements cover up to what the patient’s home government would have spent to provide the treatment locally.
If Canada copied this approach, a patient waiting a year to get their hip operation could instead receive treatment next week in one of thousands of surgical clinics throughout the developed world.
Governments benefit too as the patient is now back on their feet and avoiding complications that sometimes come with long wait times – meaning the government doesn’t have to treat those complications on top of the initial health problem.
To learn more, watch our Health Reform Now documentary (scroll up) or this shorter video.
Canada is the only country in the world that puts up barriers, or outright bans patients from paying for health services locally.
For instance, a patient in Toronto cannot pay for a hip operation at a private clinic in Toronto. Their only option is to wait for the government to eventually provide treatment or leave the province and pay elsewhere.
Countries with better-performing universal health care systems do not have such bans. They allow patients a choice – use the public system or pay privately for treatment. Sweden, France, Australia and more – they all allow choice.
Why? One reason is that allowing choice means some patients will decide to pay privately. This takes pressure off the public system. For instance, in Sweden, 87% of patients use the public system, but 13% purchase private health insurance.
Ultimately, more choice improves access for patients.
To learn more, watch our Health Reform Now documentary (scroll up) or watch this short clip on this topic.
In Canada, most hospitals receive a cheque from the government each year and are then asked to do their best to help patients. This approach is known as “block funding”.
Under this model, a patient walking in the door represents a drain on the hospital’s budget. Over the course of a year, hospital administrators have to make sure the budget stretches out so services are rationed. This is why you might have to wait until next year or the year after for a hip operation, knee operation, etc.
In better-performing universal health systems, they take the opposite approach – hospitals receive money from the government each time they help a patient. If a hospital completes a knee operation, it might receive, say, $10,000. If it completes a knee operation on another patient, it receives another $10,000.
This model incentivizes hospitals to help more patients – to help more patients with knee operations, cataract surgery, etc. This approach also incentivizes hospitals to spend money on expenses that help patients (e.g. more doctors, nurses, equipment, etc.) rather than using the money on expenses that don’t help patients (e.g. more admin staff).
To learn more about this policy option, please watch our Health Reform Now documentary (scroll up) or see this post by MEI.
FINANCIAL POST: B.C.’s unique health-care opportunity
November 6, 2026
SecondStreet.org weighs in on the unique opportunity awaiting a new government in British Columbia.
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Two promises in its election platform could help British Columbia’s new government improve health care for patients and become a policy leader in Canada: a “universal health-care guarantee” and a willingness to learn from more successful peers around the world through a “100-day patients first” review. With almost 100,000 British Columbians on wait lists — up eight per cent since the end of the pandemic — change can’t come soon enough. In fact, these are two changes other provinces should be making, too.
The Conservative government’s guarantee of universal health care could offer immediate help to patients, promising “publicly funded treatment through another qualified provider when medically recommended surgical wait benchmarks are exceeded.” Basically, if public hospitals can’t provide surgeries in time, the government will pay private clinics to do them, with priority presumably being given to patients requiring cancer treatment, heart procedures and other lifesaving services.
In the private sector, businesses face consequences when they accept money from customers but then don’t deliver promised services or products. Consumers regularly win in small claims court for such failures. But provincial health-care systems across Canada routinely shrug their shoulders when they fail to deliver.
In Europe, there’s the opposite: accountability. At the turn of the century, Denmark also faced long wait times in its public health-care system. Their experts credit a similar wait time “guarantee” with reducing wait times. Danish patients who face a delay of more than 30 days for surgery can visit a private facility and the public system will pay for it.
The European Union also has an accountability measure: the “cross border directive.” It allows EU patients to travel to other countries, pay for surgery and receive reimbursement from their home country up to what it would have paid for treatment locally.
Many such lessons can be drawn from our international peers, which is why the “100-day” review promised by B.C.’s new government is also encouraging. There is no need for B.C. or any other province to reinvent the wheel. Sweden, Denmark, France, Japan and many other developed nations have what Canadians want: a universal system that covers everyone, provides quality treatment in a timely manner and does not send patients a large bill after receiving treatment.
All these countries allow patients to pay at private facilities if they don’t want to use the public system. This allows their public systems to focus on helping those who can’t afford private treatment. In Sweden, for instance, about seven per cent of people use private insurance that covers basic services, not just those, like dental care and physiotherapy, that are covered by “supplementary” insurance in this country. About the same percentage of hospitals are non-government facilities (compared with just one per cent in Canada). Non-profit and for-profit private providers also help drive innovation and provide greater access for patients.
One change the Conservative government has not committed to, but should, is the reform of hospital funding. Instead of providing hospitals with a large cheque each year, as is common across Canada, better-performing health-care systems typically provide hospitals with funding each time they help a patient. This “activity-based funding” gives hospitals an incentive help more patients and spend the money they receive on doctors and nurses (who actually help patients) rather than on more bureaucracy.
Our peer countries put patients before ideology and partner with whatever institution — be it a government hospital or for-profit clinic — can help patients. More partnerships with publicly funded private suppliers could help improve access for Canadian patients.
The sooner British Columbia reviews best practices from abroad and starts in on reform, the sooner patients can enjoy the timely, high-quality treatment that is common in Europe and elsewhere and that Canadians want to have here.
Colin Craig is President of SecondStreet.org, Bacchus Barua is Research Director at SecondStreet.org.
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