Should genetic testing for cancer be available to all Canadians?

The revelation that Hollywood celebrity Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy as a preventative measure against cancer stoked heated discussion this week, but one prominent cancer researcher says it demonstrates the need to make genetic testing available to all Canadians.

The actor and humanitarian wrote an opinion column in the New York Times on Tuesday in which she revealed that she had had a preventative double mastectomy in February.

U of T students call for renewal of Canada Health Accord in 2014

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, five University of Toronto students in conjunction with the Ontario Health Coalition released their report on the future of public medicare in Canada.

Janice Chan, Richard Jeysman, Linda Lu, Jacquie Lu and Jutara Thangamornrart are students in the University of Toronto Health Studies program.

“In reality, federal spending power and the Act enable Canada’s government to effectively set national standards for health care across Canada,” said the report.

How do you talk to a government that hates advice?

It was almost like an ambush in a John Wayne movie. No public announcement, no explanation, no accountability. Just a single shot ringing out from the sagebrush, a puff of smoke, and a body going backwards off its horse. Another one.

The shooter was one Stephen Harper, former top hombre at the National Citizens Coalition, now prime minister. On page 260 of Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, author William Johnson notes that the NCC was founded by insurance millionaire Colin Brown as a personal advertising campaign against medicare.

Without Universal Health Care, Who Are We?

If Canadians were being honest with themselves, they'd admit that socialized health care in this country is a myth. Our system is not a national one, it is governed by each province separately - the only "national" thing about Canadian health care is the financial assistance provided by the federal government ("assistance" being the operative word here - the feds only assist in the funding, they don't pay the whole thing). Even the terminology of Canadian health care -- "transfers" -- implies a decentralization of power from the centre to the edges. And, increasingly, private health care is creeping toward acceptance.

Tommy Douglas isn't the father of socialized medicare in Canada, he's the father of public health care in Saskatchewan, an idea that the other provinces, over time, appropriated, resulting in a web of provincial health plans that covers the entire country, but varies, often widely, from province to province.

A national health care plan, in theory, would offer the same level and quality of health care to every Canadian, via a central body. Our system isn't designed to do that: the Canada Health Act doesn't govern the ways in which health care is distributed, it only sets out broad guideline under which provinces qualify for funding of their individual health care mandates.

The problem, then, with the Harper government's announcement in December that it would tie health care funding to economic growth starting in 2018 isn't that doing so may destroy national medicare, it's that it will increase the inequity among provincial health plans.