“Canadians have been clear that they still strongly support the core values on which our health care system is premised – equity, fairness and solidarity.

These values are tied to their understanding of citizenship. Canadians consider equal and timely access to medically necessary health care services on the basis of need as a right of citizenship, not a privilege of status or wealth”

Romanow Report, 2002

Tommy Douglas & Canada’s Identity

In 1947 the Saskatchewan government, led by Tommy Douglas, introduced Canada’s first provincial hospital insurance program. A decade later, after years of steady pressure from health advocates across the country, the federal government followed with a national hospital insurance program. Then, in 1962, Saskatchewan, still in the forefront, introduced a public health-care program. Again the federal government followed and in 1966 created our national Medicare program.

The fight for public health care in Canada was long and arduous and yet today it is recognized as one of Canada’s fundamentally defining institutions. But the struggle didn’t end with Medicare. Inequalities in health and well-being among Canadians—between women and men, poor and rich, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginals, new immigrants and the native-born—continue to exist. At the same time, the inequalities between Canadians and others around the world, in Latin America, Africa and Asia, are growing. Indeed, as Health Studies students learn and as is stated on the Health Canada web site “The healthiest populations are those in society which are prosperous and have an equitable distribution of wealth.”

Canadians have worked hard to establish, build and defend their health-care systems since Tommy Douglas’s government created public hospital insurance in Saskatchewan just after the Second World War, but there is still much to do. More than 60 years after that seminal achievement, public health-care is sometimes threatened and social inequalities continue to mean that the right to health has not been secured.

We remember, however, the underlying principles of social justice and fairness articulated by Tommy Douglas in his campaign slogan “Humanity First” still serve to guide Canadians to strive for a prosperous and equitable society. As stated in the Romanow Report on The Future of Health Care in Canada, “...the consensus view of Canadians on this is clear. No! Not now, not ever. Canadians view medicare as a moral enterprise, not a business venture.”