Justin Trudeau sits idly by while Conservative premiers promote for-profit clinics
NDP Health critic Don Davies issued the following statement:
Media Release: Justin Trudeau sits idly by while Conservative premiers promote for-profit clinics
Media Release: Justin Trudeau sits idly by while Conservative premiers promote for-profit clinics
July 25th, 2023
“On Monday, the media reported that the Marda Loop Medical Clinic in Calgary began requesting yearly payments from patients ranging from $2,200 to $4,800 after moving to a private membership-based health care model. This goes completely against the essence of Canada’s free, universal public health care. In fact, this private membership scheme is designed to create two-tiered access for patients who pay out of pocket to skip the line to receive care.
This isn’t just limited to Calgary—according to a 2022 Dalhousie University study, at least 83 clinics across six Canadian provinces use this for-profit model.
This increased reliance on for-profit clinics is due to Justin Trudeau’s failure to defend and rebuild our public health care system. Instead of leadership, we have a prime minister allowing Conservative premiers to starve a public service and use that as an excuse to hand it off to the private sector, so corporations, shareholders and CEOs make money on patients’ vulnerability.
This is wrong. Canadians need real leadership that will defend and enhance our public services—not allow provinces to treat health care like a subscription to Netflix. Canadians deserve the care they need, when they need it, with their health card, and never their credit card.
The federal government could fix this by funding more health care workers in public hospitals and clinics. They could make transfer payments conditional on public delivery. And they could vigorously strengthen and enforce the Canada Health Act.
Instead, we have a prime minister who welcomed Doug Ford’s scheme for American-style, for-profit services — which would increase costs, lengthen wait times and poach doctors and nurses from our already under-resourced system — calling it ‘innovative.’
New Democrats are calling on the Liberals to stop for-profit care from eating up Canadians’ public, universal health care and rebuild this essential service so no one has to pay out of pocket to receive the care they need.”
Latest posts
How your data determines what you pay!
What if the price you pay at the store is different than the person standing next to you?
Corporations can use personal data such as location, device type, browsing history, purchase behavior, login status, and loyalty cards/programs to profile consumers and determine what different people are charged for the same goods and services.
How can we stop this from happening in Canada?
Join MP Jenny Kwan, Patrick Johnson - President of UFCW 1518, Jim Stanford - Economist and Director of Centre for Future Work, Avi Lewis - NDP Leader and Benjamin Fung - Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity and other experts, for a public forum and community conversation about what surveillance pricing means for consumers and workers, how technology and personal data are changing the way prices are set, and what everyday people can do to fight back.
*Scan QR code, click the image or this link to register your attendance - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/your-data-their-price-a-town-hall-on-surveillance-pricing-tickets-1998495899032
IRCC taking 33 months to process applications in wake of 'lost Canadians' law
When Pascal Sud and Meisha Smith prepared in January for the arrival of their first child, the choice seemed simple.
Smith would give birth in her home country of Jamaica where she had family support, and then they would together return to Montreal three months later.
At the time, the wait time for the citizenship certificate that their daughter, Sofianne, needed to fly back to Canada was between four and six weeks.
But more than eight months later, they're still waiting.
Sud is back at work in Montreal while Smith and Sofianne are still in Jamaica.
"It's been very frustrating," said Sud. "I was lucky to be there for three months … but I've been missing every step since, and it's been very difficult to be apart from them."
He's not alone.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is struggling to handle a flood of citizenship applications — many of them from a change to federal law late last year that allows anyone who can prove they have a Canadian ancestor to apply.
That backlog is preventing Canadians born abroad like Sofianne from coming home.
According to the department's most recent update on Sept. 3, there are 136,000 applications waiting to be processed. Those applying for a citizenship certificate now face a wait of 33 months.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan called on the government to restore staffing and resources that were cut at IRCC, calling the processing delays "simply unreasonable and unacceptable."
*Click image or link to read the full news story - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-citizenship-lost-canadians-c3-backlog-9.7366981