A year of stopping privatization, marking Medicare expansion and saying goodbye

The Canadian Health Coalition has published its Report of Activities and Campaigns for 2024-25 in time for our Annual General Meeting on June 18. What follows is the introduction to the report by Chairperson Jason MacLean.

CHAIRPERSON’S REPORT

Dear colleagues and friends –

The past year has brought unprecedented threats and challenges to our public health care system, but it has also been a time of notable Medicare expansion that would not have been possible without the work of the Canadian Health Coalition.

In 2024, I stepped into the role of the chair of the Canadian Health Coalition, replacing the irreplaceable Pauline Worsfold, R.N. She made the coalition what it is today. We can count on Pauline to continue championing the work of the Canadian Health Coalition.

WE WON PHARMACARE!

I hope you all took time to celebrate our pharmacare victory. Pharmacare has been a priority campaign for us for years. To get across the finish line, we organized press conferences for pharmacare on Parliament Hill with diabetes advocate Mike Bleskie, experts such as Dr. Jane Philpott, and allies such as Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights and Heart and Stroke Foundation. When the Pharmacare Act was finally passed in Parliament, we lobbied senators for its swift Royal Assent, which happened on October 10, 2024.

Three days after our SOS Medicare 3.0 Conference, on Feb. 27, the governments of Manitoba and Canada announced the first pharmacare agreement. The four-year $219 million deal will provide free diabetes medication, contraception and hormone therapy to Manitobans. This is huge! But our work is not done. We will not stop until all provinces and territories in Canada join Manitoba, B.C., PEI and Yukon in signing a pharmacare agreement with the feds. Everyone deserves access to medicine.

SOS MEDICARE 3.0

Early in 2025, on Feb. 24, we reached a momentous milestone by co-hosting this generation’s SOS Medicare Conference in Ottawa. About 300 people – health care workers, experts, patient advocates, students and retirees – from across the country came together to collectively learn and strategize to defend and expand public health care as we headed into a federal election. The threats to Canada’s universal public health care system are many but we are stronger today, energized and inspired to fight for better Medicare.

ANOTHER YEAR OF GROWTH

The Canadian Health Coalition has had another year of growth.

LOOKING AHEAD

With the new Carney government in power, the Canadian Health Coalition will continue to draw upon the incredible strength of our movement to fulfill our mission. In November 2024, we reaffirmed our priorities at a strategic planning session:

• Increase health care funding and enforce the Canada Health Act
• Implement pharmacare
• Legislate enforceable national standards for long-term care
• Stop privatization and remove for-profit from health care, including long-term care
• Eliminate systemic racism from health care

This generation’s SOS for Medicare has come from patients, frontline health care workers, as well as retirees, students, injured migrant workers and health equity activists.

This past year has also been a year of tremendous loss for the Canadian Health Coalition family. We mourn the deaths of Kathleen Connors, a longtime chair of the Canadian Health Coalition from 1991 to 2003, Frances Arbour, a former Canadian Health Coalition staffer, Danny Légère, President of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, and Aman Grewal, a former president of the B.C. Nurses’ Union. They will be forever with us in the fight for better public health care for all.

Thank you for everything you do for public health care.

Respectfully submitted,

Jason MacLean, Chair of the Canadian Health Coalition