A third-party review of the food affordability program for northern and remote communities was due on March 31. Over a month later, Ottawa is still waiting. Northern Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand says she has her own data to guide future action.
The national and Quebec groups representing obstetricians and gynaecologists say a bill naming coerced sterilization in the Criminal Code could lead to physicians hesitating to provide critical care during emergencies for fear of prosecution. But Senator Yvonne Boyer, the bill’s sponsor, and Justice Department officials say doctors have legal protections in these situations.
Reduced spending described in the 2026-27 departmental plan is attributed to the scaling back of COVID-19-related measures and the potential expiry of programs including the national suicide crisis helpline and the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy.
After her two daughters’ health issues were nearly misdiagnosed, Sen. Danièle Henkel decided to focus on women’s health in the Upper Chamber. The result is Bill S-243, the National Framework for Women’s Health in Canada Act, which is now at second reading in the Senate.
If the government does not act now, our First Nations communities will continue to be plagued with more critical infrastructure failures.
The risk of concurrent racism faced by Indigenous peoples in hospitals today is criminal. Regulatory colleges need to fix it immediately.
It’s a lot to ask of the populations of three territories to help protect an entire country through the use of their land if they don’t have reasonable access to electricity, housing, and publicly-funded health care in Canada.
The Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut premiers were recently in Ottawa to discuss the need for funding for housing, electricity, and transportation infrastructure as the federal government works to ramp up its security presence.
Long-time mental health advocates Conservative MP Todd Doherty and NDP MP Gord Johns say their passion for the subject is personal.
‘There’s an urgency that if we don’t go big, then we’re going to fall short,’ says Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada.
The Non-Insured Health Benefits program covers less than provincial and territorial health care, even though the Canada Health Act stipulates that Canadians will have roughly equivalent care across the country.
In the budget discussions, it might be worth remembering that reconciliation means fixing systems that are broken. This includes wildly huge administrative budgets.
If the federal government publishes tight service standards, merges duplicative forms, pays on time, and reports honestly, families and front-line clinicians will feel the difference within weeks.
The mental health of Indigenous Peoples is not only an Indigenous issue. It is a Canadian issue and a global issue as Indigenous knowledge is the knowledge of our world.
Tuberculosis rates remain high in Nunavik, despite a 2018 pledge to halve rates by 2025 and eradicate the disease by 2030. NDP MP Lori Idlout says eliminating the disease is ‘solely about political will’ and is urging the feds to fund housing and health care.
First Nations are in a legal bind with drugs coming into our communities. Under current federal legislation, Canada Post requires ‘reasonable grounds’ before they can screen or search a parcel.
CIRNAC and ISC must be forced to actually get the money out the door to Indigenous communities because this is the rare case in which federal spending done poorly actually leads to lost lives.
