Enemies of Public Health Care Roost in Toronto

Canadian medicare is under attack. Nefarious legislation, insufficient funding and weak leadership are causing this country's once-cherished public health-care system increasingly to buckle. This week, U.S. dark money-funded think tanks are holding a conference on how to break it permanently.

Jointly organized by SecondStreet.org, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Montreal Economic Institute, the two-day event set to begin today at the exclusive Albany Club in Toronto is rather innocuously titled "The Future of Health-Care Reform."

In reality, the event is both a showcase for privatization and a strategy discussion for importing U.S.-style, two-tier health care into Canada. For these special interests the intent is clear: "reform" means ruin.

The conference agenda features a mix of speeches and panel discussions including presentations from Dr. Brian Day, former president of the Canadian Medical Association and president of Cambie Surgery Centre, which was at the centre of a failed constitutional challenge to medicare.

Also participating are past and present politicians from both the Conservative and Liberal parties: former Conservative federal health minister Tony Clement, former Liberal Nova Scotia premier Stephen McNeil and current federal Conservative health critic Raquel Dancho. Having both a senior Liberal with governing experience and a high-profile current Conservative member of Parliament speaking at the conference — not just attending — is a coup for organizers, and a concern for medicare supporters.

Notably, prominent Globe and Mail health columnist André Picard will deliver the conference's closing keynote address, titled "André Picard’s Realistic Vision for a Better Health-Care System." Picard was named Canada’s first Public Health Hero by the Canadian Public Health Association.

Talks will also be given by journalist Matt Gurney, co-editor of the Line; Walter Robinson, former lobbyist for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and current advocate for AI in health care; and Andrew Enns, executive vice-president of Leger, who will discuss results from "exclusive" polling now available on SecondStreet’s website. Other presenters will include representatives of the think tanks organizing the conference, as well as from the Fraser Institute.

The conference is the latest initiative being carried out by Canadian think tanks in service of the shadowy yet powerful Atlas Network, a U.S.-based organization championed by billionaire libertarians who seek to meddle in the policy debates of other countries, bending them to their favour. These debates range from measures to address climate change to fair taxation policies to restrictions on disinformation and hate speech.

The network's funders — which include many of the United States’ corporate elite — also evidently want Canadians to abandon medicare. The reason is clear: privatization of a $400-billion annual public expenditure presents tremendous opportunity for profit.

As part of its global network of partner think tanks, the Atlas Network supports 11 Canadian organizations, including SecondStreet, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Montreal Economic Institute. Atlas has tapped all three groups to be its agents in the campaign for health-care privatization in Canada.

SecondStreet.org is the newest and most focused organization on health-care policy among the three. SecondStreet was an Atlas Network “Smart Bet” in 2022. In an announcement accompanying the designation, the network promised to “contribute significantly to SecondStreet.org’s budget” for a project called “Health Care Choice.”

A larger grant pledged to “move the needle one province at a time toward giving patients the right to access the care of their choosing — public or private.” There is no mention of this funding anywhere on SecondStreet’s website or in its annual reports.

Since 2022, SecondStreet has campaigned for two-tier health care, releasing reports, conducting polls and becoming a regular presence in media, including via its own show on Forum TV. The group also maintains a rather ghoulish online tracker, “Died on a Waiting List.” SecondStreet has taken credit for recent provincial conservative government health policies and also notes that the Ontario Liberal Party adopted its messaging on waiting lists in the party's ultimately unsuccessful 2025 election campaign.

The Canadian Constitution Foundation is referred to as a partner by the Atlas Network, and its advocacy and legal work on health-care choice is profiled by the organization. Specific reference is made to Atlas Network funding for health care-related court challenges.

The Canadian Constitution Foundation also supported the plaintiffs in the previously noted long-running but ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit by Cambie Surgery Centre in B.C. to challenge the constitutionality of Canada's public health-care system. The foundation’s interim executive director, Christine Van Geyn, also hosts a show on Forum TV, called Canadian Justice.

The Atlas Network's affiliation with the Montreal Economic Institute goes back many years. The institute’s founding president, Michel Kelly-Gagnon, remains a fellow with the Atlas Network. In 2021, the institute’s work on health policy reform in Quebec was highlighted along with published arguments made against universal health care by Montreal Economic Institute senior economist Peter St. Onge. In those comments, St. Onge claimed that “Canada serves as a warning of the unintended consequences of socialized medicine: high taxes, long waits, staff shortages and substandard drugs and equipment.”

In 2025, the Montreal Economic Institute was a “Smart Bets” winner in support of “training and inspiring the next generation of civil society and political leaders with the ideas of liberty.”

All three groups also work with other Atlas Network-supported right-wing Canadian think tanks, including the Fraser Institute, which has its own role at the conference.

This week's conference arrives as political momentum is with the organizers. A growing number of provinces are unabashedly incorporating more private care delivery into their health systems, in spite of outcomes such as longer wait times and higher costs.

Alberta's United Conservative Party government moved aggressively with its Bill 11 taking effect last month. The legislation creates a system of “dual practice” that allows physicians to both operate within the public system and charge patients privately for the same medical services.

Meanwhile, last week's British Columbia election result and the campaign promises of the winning Conservative Party of BC suggest the province is likely to soon make its own foray into privatized health care.

In June, SecondStreet, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Montreal Economic Institute, along with a number of other think tanks in favour of private health care, released a public letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, which also appeared as a digital ad in the Hill Times newspaper. It applauded the government "for recognizing the importance of provincial flexibility and for taking a more open approach to provincial health-care innovation and reform."

The letter was prompted by an underwhelming defence of the Canada Health Act by Liberal Health Minister Marjorie Michel, with whom medicare advocates had pleaded to intervene on Alberta's Bill 11. Michel rebuffed those pleas, claiming her government was taking a "collaborative approach" with the provinces, one that "respects their jurisdiction to explore innovative ways to improve access to care."

Michel has since used more forceful language to describe Alberta's legislation, but her initial comments are consistent with a pattern of the Carney-led federal Liberal government showing little interest in defending or strengthening medicare.

Over the last year, the government has reduced spending on health care, stalled the expansion of pharmacare and reduced access to health care for refugees. It has also declined to commit to maintaining the present level of funding for the Canada Health Transfer that is set to expire in 2028.

Fortunately, grassroots supporters of medicare are standing up and speaking out.

The need is urgent. Canadians do not just care about medicare; they are calling for it to be robustly defended, including the five principles of the Canada Health Act that have come to define medicare: universality, portability, public administration, comprehensiveness and accessibility.

Moreover, evidence is on the side of the defenders. Study after study after study demonstrates that Canadian medicare delivers better patient outcomes and more efficient and affordable care than private models.

In a time of “elbows up” civic nationalism to counter Donald Trump's United States, there may be no better representation of the Canadian values we are fighting to defend than medicare.

The principles of fairness and equality inherent in a health system that precludes two-tier care — one system for the rich and another for everyone else — is nation-defining. It is why public opinion polling continues to deem medicare central to the Canadian identity and how a Prairie preacher and long-ago politician, Tommy Douglas, could win a contest to be named Greatest Canadian.

Further, a recent opinion poll from Abacus Data that was commissioned by the Canadian Health Coalition brings encouraging news — and results that contrast sharply with the Leger results prepared for SecondStreet.

In the Abacus poll, 80 per cent of Canadians agreed with the statement “Canada’s public health-care system can meet Canadians’ needs if governments invest more in it.” Additionally, just 11 per cent favoured allowing Canadians to privately purchase insurance to access medically necessary services outside the public system.

As Abacus CEO David Coletto declared in reference to medicare, Canadians "have lost confidence in how well the system is performing but have not lost faith in the basic model itself."

As with standing up to Trump, Canadians are seemingly more resolute than many of their politicians in defending medicare. Still, with relentless efforts by U.S.-funded Canadian think tanks to profit off private care, they are going to have to be.

The fight for medicare is not over yet.