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SecondStreet.org Internship Program

In addition to our research and storytelling activities, one of SecondStreet.org’s core objectives is to help train and cultivate the next generation of public policy leaders in Canada.
We do this by speaking at youth events, helping to mentor future leaders and through our internship program for university students.
Our internship program is a partnership with the Institute for Liberal Studies, a non-partisan educational charity that explores classical liberal ideas – democracy, the rule of law, and economic and personal freedoms (it has nothing to do with the Liberal Party of Canada). Each year, the intern we hire works on research or video products with us and participates in a weekly webinar with the ILS. At the end of the summer internship program, the intern then participates in “Freedom Week” in Montreal, hosted by the ILS.
If you’re interested in interning with SecondStreet.org, please visit the ILS website as they handle the application process each year – click here.

Past Interns/Projects

At the beginning of each internship, we ask our interns – what would you like to get out of this program?
Some interns have been keen to work on research projects while others have been more interested in communication tasks like writing or creating informative videos on public policy matters.

We make sure they have an opportunity to work on those skills during their time with us and can point to concrete deliverables when they’re done – a policy brief they co-authored, a video they helped direct, etc.

Below are details on some of our past interns and examples of the projects they worked on:

Natalie Pennisi

Natalie worked with SecondStreet.org during the summer of 2024. She helped research and co-wrote our policy brief on cardiac waiting list deaths in Ontario.
She went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from McGill University in Montreal.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Victoria Sampson

Victoria worked with SecondStreet.org during the summer of 2023. She helped research and co-author our policy brief on preventative health care. Victoria also wrote a column summarizing the report for True North. She helped SecondStreet.org with research on electric cars and the implications of mass adoption of that technology for electricity grids.
Victoria is a student at Queen’s University and is hoping to pursue her law degree in the near future.

“The hands-on experience I gained as a summer research intern at SecondStreet.org surpassed my expectations in so many ways. I worked on important and meaningful projects that I was interested in and was able to see them through from start to finish – through the constructive feedback I received and an interactive team environment, I acquired skills that I know will be valuable in any future career”

– Victoria Sampson

Selena Mercuri

Selena worked with SecondStreet.org in 2022 and helped with a number of research projects, including this policy brief on the European Union’s Cross Border Directive and this blog post on exciting new carbon tech examples.
 



 

Caitlin Morgante

Catlin served as SecondStreet.org’s research intern in the summer of 2021.
She assisted us with many different research projects, most notably, working on research for our first “Survivors of Socialism” policy brief.
This brief examined policies in Canada that most concern Canadians who previously lived in socialist and communist countries. This research was then complemented by numerous interviews with Canadians who came from such regimes.
 
 
 
 

Gage Haubrich

As a research intern, Gage helped SecondStreet.org with a number of important projects, including the organization’s first groundbreaking “Died on a Waiting List” report.
He also worked with fellow intern Catherine Shvets to research and write a report on the millions of dollars that government-run hospital cafeterias and restaurants lose each year selling doughnuts and coffee to the public. These losses resulted in fewer dollars for important health services, such as surgery, diagnostic scans and appointments with specialists.
Gage went on to earn his Masters in Economics from the University of Saskatchewan and work for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation as their Prairie Director.

Catherine Shvets

Catherine helped SecondStreet.org with the aforementioned cafeteria research project. She also worked on natural resource development issues in Canada.
This work included helping SecondStreet.org with a short documentary – Quebec’s Green Opportunity – a brief video that examines the potential for natural gas development in Quebec.
 

Lucas Riccioni

Lucas played a big part in one of SecondStreet.org’s first reports – Putting Missed Natural Resource Projects in Perspective. This project involved researching and creating a list of stalled or cancelled natural resource projects in Canada – due at least in part to government policy – during the previous five years.

The nearly $200 billion figure Lucas helped crunch was roughly equivalent to building an NHL-sized arena each day for a year.

Azim Jiwani

Azim helped SecondStreet.org with a number of small projects during our first year of operations, including ground-breaking research into medical tourism.

Specifically, through data purchased from Statistics Canada, we were able to calculate that Canadian patients made at least 217,500 trips abroad in 2017 specifically for health care.
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Prevention – reduce demand in the first place

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. 

Partner with non-profits and for-profit clinics

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. 

Make cross border care more accessible

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. 

Legalize access to non-government providers

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. 

Shift to funding services for patients, not bureaucracies

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.