Canadian Health Coalition’s report on activities and campaigns for 2023-24
The Canadian Health Coalition has published its Report of Activities and Campaigns for 2023-24. What follows is the introduction to the health coalition’s successful year of campaigns and activities by Chairperson Pauline Worsfold, RN.
CHAIRPERSON’S REPORT
Dear colleagues and friends –
The past year has seen unprecedented challenges to our public health system, and the need for public advocacy organizations like the Canadian Health Coalition has never been greater.
People are struggling to find family doctors, pay for their medications, and access essential health care services such as safe long-term care.
Conservative governments are using public dollars to privatize health care to private, for-profit health care companies, draining our hospitals of urgently needed staff and putting patients at the mercy of profit-hungry corporations.
As a result, today in early 2024, pollsters tell us that health care has moved up as a first-tier national issue of concern, overtaking economic worries that dominated last year.
The Canadian Health Coalition has met this challenge head-on with local organizing, community engagement, and tough face-to-face lobbying with decision-makers in Ottawa.
It is my pleasure to present to you the 2023/24 annual report for the Canadian Health Coalition.
Founded in 1979, our organization’s members work to defend and improve our public health care system. We comprise citizens, frontline health care workers’ unions, community groups, students, and public health experts.
Our Health and Hope 2025 campaign was established to achieve the full delivery of health care commitments made in the 2022 Liberal-NDP Confidence and Supply Agreement before its conclusion in 2025: public dental care, universal pharmacare, frontline health care investments, and safe long-term care.
Last year we celebrated major federal health care investment and the Canadian Dental Care Plan. This year we attended the press conference on Parliament Hill announcing the historic introduction of the Government Bill C-64, the Pharmacare Act.
Together our members released a hard-hitting joint statement celebrating the introduction of the Pharmacare Act, and pledged to continue the fight for full pharmacare as envisioned in the 2019 Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare, led by Dr. Eric Hoskins.
Our small organization with its handful of experienced and skilled staff members has accomplished so much using our members’ generous financial contributions.
In 2023/24 we spent more money than ever before defending and expanding Medicare, and we reached an unprecedented 2 million people through our new digital campaigns promoting public health care and opposing privatization.
Our annual lobby in Ottawa topped all expectations, too.
We worked with allies and provincial health coalitions to make the movement stronger, and we welcomed the Canadian Association of University Teachers and Citizens for Public Justice as new coalition members.
Like you, I am concerned about the future political direction of Canada with an election on the horizon.
I hope that you will continue to support the Canadian Health Coalition. This is our moment to put protecting and expanding Medicare squarely on the political agenda before voters go to the polls in 2025.
I am grateful to the incredible members of the coalition and our devoted Board members – because it will take all of us working together to successfully confront the voices of privatization and profit, and to champion the needs of everyone in Canada for accessible health care.
Thank you for everything you do for public health care.
Respectfully submitted,
Pauline Worsfold, RN,
Chairperson
