Arming Canada with health security and capacity can’t be an afterthought

Ottawa must commit to concrete federal health-care transfers that prioritize health security, including permanent surge capacity and other measures, as an integral part of defence spending.
Then-health minister Jean-Yves Duclos at the Ottawa Hospital General Campus in October 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limits of our health systems’ surge capacity, write Senator Rebecca Patterson and Lt.-Col. Andrew Beckett.

Global instability is finally driving new and long-overdue defence spending to bolster the Canadian Armed Forces and meet our NATO commitments. Yet one of our most important national security pillars has been largely absent from this conversation: Canada’s health security....

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