This opinion article was originally published in The Hill Times on February 11, 2026.
Health care is a human right
The federal government cannot let privatization erode access to the public system.
By Linda Silas, CFNU President
Canadians are rightly worried about access to health care. Long waits, delayed and cancelled surgeries, and difficulty finding primary health care are no longer isolated problems. They’re a daily reality.
As Canada’s population ages, and demand outpaces growth in the health workforce, access to care is becoming more fragile. Instead of strengthening the public system and investing in safe, public long-term care to meet the growing need, provincial governments are turning to private, for-profit delivery. This puts timely, equitable access at risk, and threatens the future of public health care in Canada.
It’s time the federal government acts to safeguard our health system.
Nurses and health-care workers point to chronic understaffing and unsafe workloads as the most urgent challenges in health care in our country. Policy choices that funnel public dollars towards privatization compound these pressures.
The consequences are already being felt at the bedside.
Public employers can’t compete with private nursing agency rates and conditions, leaving permanent positions unfilled. For-profit nursing agencies cost taxpayers billions annually. Yet this approach doesn’t add lasting capacity, and nurses in the public system still face overwhelming patient loads and moral distress.
Many nurses are leaving the profession entirely due to sustained strain. More than one in three nurses in Canada say they are considering leaving their job or the profession because conditions in the public system have become untenable.
As staffing deteriorates, we will see longer waits, reduced services, and widening inequities in access to care—particularly in rural, remote, and underserved communities.
At the same time, provinces are expanding private delivery of care. The Ontario government, for example, announced plans to outsource 50 per cent of surgeries and diagnostic tests to private clinics. Similar proposals are emerging elsewhere across the country, including in Alberta where the government has expressed interest in introducing a Health Care Savings Account that would require people to pay out of pocket for care.
Cataract surgeries take place in private clinics in Nova Scotia. Diagnostics are done in private clinics in Saskatchewan. This outsourcing still doesn’t address capacity issues. The MRI wait list in Saskatchewan doubled from 2015 to 2019 despite government efforts to extend hours and allow paid scans.
Across the country, patients increasingly must pay for upgraded products, block fees, tests, screenings, and more. Together, these changes signal a steady erosion of public health-care delivery and a growing threat of two-tier access.
The risks of privatization are especially stark in long-term care.
The pandemic exposed the deadly consequences of privatization in long-term care. During COVID-19, residents in for-profit long-term care homes were significantly more likely to contract the virus and die from it than residents in non-profit homes. Yet little has been done to address the risks in private long-term care.
Staffing levels are a key driver of patient outcomes. For-profit long-term care homes have 17-per-cent fewer staff than non-profit homes. Nurses are calling for safe staffing levels and for funds to go towards care, not profit.
The federal government should advance promised legislation on safe long-term care that would mandate adherence to national standards as a condition for receiving federal funding.
Transparency is also at risk. Private clinics often operate behind confidentiality agreements that obscure how much public money is being spent and what Canadians are getting in return.
Ottawa should establish conditional health funding agreements that require provinces and territories to demonstrate how federal dollars are being used to recruit, retain, and support permanent nurses in the public system. They should also prohibit the use of federal health funding for private health-care initiatives, while funding provinces through the transition away from agency nursing.
The federal government must also assess whether provincial reliance on agencies is compatible with the Canada Health Act’s principles of public administration and accessibility. Stronger compliance reviews and consequences when provinces allow private delivery to take hold are urgently needed.
The stakes could not be higher. International evidence shows that countries with higher levels of for-profit care have worse health outcomes, including higher mortality rates. When profit plays a bigger role in care, people fall through the cracks.
Canada’s public health-care system was built on the promise that care should be available based on need, not ability to pay. That promise is now under threat.
Canada’s public health-care system is worth protecting. The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars in health care each year, representing roughly 12 per cent of Canada’s GDP. That investment must strengthen public care. If public investment is not prioritized now, Canadians risk losing the timely, equitable access to care that they value most. Losing access is more than losing a prized public institution, it can mean losing a life.
Funding decisions made now will determine whether Canadians will continue to have access to public health care in practice, not just in theory. Policymakers must choose to strengthen public health care now, before access is lost.
