In a landmark event for Canada’s resource sector, the first critical minerals load in two decades shipped out from Port of Churchill, Manitoba.
Hudbay Minerals sourced the zinc at their Snow Lake operation and the transport was managed by the Arctic Gateway Group, a Manitoba First Nations-owned entity. Both companies started working together in 2020.
AGG, which is in charge of the Port of Churchill and the Hudson Bay Railway, has been at the forefront of efforts to restore and enhance these crucial transportation links. The Hudson Bay Railway is a historic over 1,000-kilometre-long Canadian National track that is now owned by AGG. The shipment took place before the current rail stoppage.
The Aug. 16 shipment is a step towards the revitalization of the Hudson Bay Railway and the expansion of trade in the Arctic corridor.
The two organizations have partnered to facilitate the export of critical minerals through the Port of Churchill. The port currently stands as Canada’s only Arctic sea trade post equipped with rail service.
AGG has been actively working on improvements to the Hudson Bay Railway this past year. These efforts include sweeping rail tie repairs, crossing fixes, and enhancing bridges to ensure the railway’s reliability and efficiency. These upgrades are vital for the continued operation and future expansion of the port, which plays a key role in Canada’s northern supply chain.
Over the summer, rail cars loaded with zinc were delivered to Port of Churchill, where they were stored in a new warehouse.
Dan Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs, hailed the successful shipment as a testament to the power of collaboration between government entities and Indigenous leadership.
“With a revitalized Hudson Bay Railway and Port of Churchill, jobs will be created, mining and forestry opportunities will open, and Bayline communities will have the opportunity to position themselves as a true gateway to the Arctic and the world,” said Vandal.
As reported by True North in June, TD Analysts predicted that Canada could boost its GDP by over half a trillion dollars if it harnesses its abundant critical minerals reserves.
In recognition of the strategic importance of the Port of Churchill and the Hudson Bay Railway, federal and provincial partners announced in February 2024 $60 million in funding to support AGG’s projects.
This funding is intended to expedite the Hudson Bay Railway’s completion and the port’s retrofit, both of which project managers expect to be fully operational by 2028.
The economic impact of these projects is projected to be substantial. By 2028, the revitalized rail and port is estimated to contribute $1 billion per year to the Canadian economy, and sustain 5,500 jobs.
While the vast majority of Gen Z Canadians and young millennials believe that homeownership is a worthwhile investment, only around half believe it is a goal they can achieve in their lifetimes, according to a new survey from Royal LePage.
The 84% of Canadians aged 18 to 38 that believe homeownership is a good investment are led by respondents in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, 94%, and Atlantic Canada, 93%.
Among those who do not currently own a home, 74% consider homeownership a priority, with 54% believing it is an achievable goal.
While those in Quebec are below the national average of believing home ownership is a worthwhile investment, residents of that province are the most likely to believe that owning a home in their lifetime is achievable, with 64% of Quebecers feeling that way. Conversely, fewer than half of Ontarians, 47%, believe they will one day own a home.
Phil Soper, President and CEO of Royal LePage, said that the findings show that young Canadians are finding practical ways to tackle affordability barriers.
“It’s not surprising that young buyer hopefuls see immense benefits in home ownership,” said Soper. “They are hyper-focused on saving for a down payment, which is often the biggest hurdle buyers face. And, they are open to creative solutions, such as shared ownership with friends and family, or buying a property with the express intention of renting a portion of the home to a tenant.”
The research noted that the average home price in Canada was $824,300 halfway through 2024, making saving for a down payment take longer than it did for previous generations.
Housing affordability in Canada previously reached an all-time low in Apr. 2024.
Among those who don’t own a home, 75% of young Canadians are planning to purchase a property within their lifetimes.
Those who said they won’t own homes have various reasons. 58% of those who said they won’t or are unsure whether they’ll own a home say it’s because their household income cannot support the costs of homeownership.
An additional 52% said that they don’t have enough saved for a down payment and never will. Respondents were able to select various answers to the question.
Those who believe homeownership is a realistic part of their future also had various reasons for making the claim. For example, 45% said that they are saving diligently and will soon have enough savings to purchase a home. Additionally, 31% said that their income is high enough to set them on a path to soon purchase a home. 26% said that they were planning to combine incomes with their spouse to afford a home.
Young Canadians are willing to make sacrifices to reach their dream of homeownership.
Almost half, 45%, of those planning to purchase a home said they are considering buying a property with a rentable aspect to offset their mortgage costs.
While nearly half, 47%, of respondents said they will not receive financial assistance from a family member, 32% said they will receive financial support from family to purchase their first homes.
Young Canadians are also making cuts to fulfil their goals of homeownership.
Over one in five said they have eliminated travelling, and over one in five have decided not to make other meaningful purchases like cars. Another 21% of respondents said they have delayed moving out of their parents’ homes, and 17% have eliminated or delayed living on their own. A lesser 14% have delayed starting a family, and 11% have delayed or eliminated saving for their retirement to afford a home.
“In pursuit of home ownership, many young people are not only pausing small daily indulgences but also making compromises that impact their long-term financial stability,” said Soper. “If policy makers needed yet another example of the impact of our nation’s chronic housing supply crisis on the financial security and well-being of young people, this is it.”
A previous Statistics Canada report highlighted that Canadians were fleeing the country’s most expensive cities, like Vancouver and Toronto, for cheaper alternatives like cities found in Alberta.
The survey results aligned with a previous poll and survey that showed that 80% believed owning a home in Canada was only for the rich and that 76% of Canadians said the housing market felt out of reach.
Ontario’s hospitals are at a breaking point, driven by severe understaffing and escalating burnout among healthcare workers, according to a new study.
The study, titled “Running on Empty,” conducted in collaboration with the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions-Canadian Union of Public Employees, paints a grim picture of the province’s healthcare system.
The report interviewed 26 healthcare workers in the province and reviewed existing literature on the healthcare sector and the effectiveness of hospitals and their workers.
“You think it can’t get any worse — and it just got worse. I was going through increasing panic attacks before work, crying before I got out of the car. I loved going to work when I first started. Now I dread it,” said a trauma department nurse who participated in the in-depth interviews.
The study cited previous research that noted increased exhaustion, burnout, fear, anxiety, and frustration among healthcare workers following the pandemic. Since the onset of the pandemic, the study said that healthcare workers have faced unprecedented demands.
“One of the foundations of overwork is understaffing, which leads to heavier workloads, poorer care, and increased strain from health and safety risks. In turn, they are experiencing negative physical and mental effects, including stress and anxiety,” reads the study. “Burnout and negative coping strategies have also increased, and patient care is compromised.”
According to the study, Canada had seven hospital beds per 1,000 people in 1976. By 2024, the number had fallen to 2.6 beds per 1,000 people. Another sharp decrease experienced by Canada was its fall from fourth place of 11 high-income countries in terms of healthcare performance to 10th place, or second last, between 2004 and 2021.
“The depletion of hospital staffing in Ontario is worse than in most of the other provinces,” reads the study. It cited that Canadian provinces average 18% more staff per capita than Ontario.
A previous report found that Canada had the least amount of doctors per capita among OECD countries.
Running on Empty added that the shortages of nurses and personal support workers will “increase substantially over the next five years.”
A previous poll conducted by OCHU/CUPE in Oct. 2023 showed that 69% of healthcare workers disagree that there are enough staff to deliver high-quality patient care.
“The nurses were particularly affected by their work: 60.7% reported trouble sleeping; 36% suffer depression; 64.9% have anxiety; 75.4% experience high stress; and 55.9% dread going to work,” reads the study. “43.6% of the nurses said violence had increased or somewhat increased since the beginning of the pandemic.”
While healthcare workers are struggling to cope with the added demand, patients are struggling to even be seen by a healthcare professional.
The interviewees for the study conducted in collaboration with OCHU/CUPE cited emergency room wait times as “egregious due to insufficient system alternatives, such as family doctors, urgent care centers, and after-hours clinics.”
Canadians faced the longest wait time ever to see a healthcare specialist and receive treatment in 2023.
“We’re always working short-staffed. We have a backlog of over two years. We hardly have time to take breaks or go to the washroom… I don’t think patients are getting the care they need,” said an outpatient clinic nurse.
One clerical worker interviewed for the Running on Empty study said the Ontario healthcare system is in shambles.
“Seeing the system, the way it is, I’m getting scared to get sick myself. Do I really want to come to my own facility? The exterior looks fine, but on the inside… everything’s falling apart,” they said.
Wages have not kept up with inflation, according to the study. The average wage for healthcare workers compared to all-industry wages decreased from 102.4% to 93.9% between 2017 and 2023, it added.
The study on Ontario’s healthcare system concluded that the recent exodus of healthcare workers is unprecedented. Additionally, future population growth and an aging workforce will worsen the problems.
The research calls for urgent measures to moderate workloads across the hospital’s workforce, including increasing funding and, subsequently, nurse-to-patient ratios.
According to another study, 1,199 closures of healthcare departments occurred in Ontario in 2023. The temporary and permanent closures consisted of 868 emergency departments, 316 urgent care centres, two outpatient laboratories, 11 obstetric units, one ICU, and one labour and delivery unit.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board has legally mandated the return to work rail workers across the country, requiring binding arbitration in the dispute involving Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.
This intervention comes after a complete halt of Canada’s rail network due to CN’s employee lockout and a strike by CPKC workers following failed contract negotiations.
Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, who directed the CRIB to assist the parties in settling the outstanding terms of their collective agreements by imposing final binding arbitration, reacted to the decision and said he expects “operations to resume at the earliest opportunity.”
“The Canada Industrial Relations Board has issued a decision to impose final and binding arbitration in the negotiations between CN Rail, CPKC & the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference. I expect that railway companies and employees will resume operations at the earliest opportunity,” wrote MacKinnon on X.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board has issued a decision to impose final and binding arbitration in the negotiations between CN Rail, CPKC & the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.
I expect that railway companies and employees will resume operations at the earliest opportunity.
Rails affected by the shutdown carried $1 billion worth of goods throughout Canada each day.
The CIRB’s order stipulates that rail services and worker duties must recommence by Monday, with the existing collective agreement in place until the completion of arbitration.
CPKC and CN have agreed to comply with the CIRB’s directive, although CPKC has noted that returning to full operations could take weeks.
The Teamsters Union has agreed to abide by the CIRB decision but is preparing to appeal it in Federal Court, challenging whether the minister’s directive was constitutional. The union also called the CIRB decision “ a dangerous precedent.”
The core issues of contention between the union and rail companies include safety concerns, conditions at work and worker fatigue.
However, the rail companies assert that their offers are fair and prioritize safety, a claim disputed by the union.
The shutdown has significantly disrupted the supply chain, affecting the transport of grain, imports, chemicals, and commuter rail services, with considerable financial implications.
Two years ago, Eric Metaxas, the conservative Christian American author wrote a short, but important, book addressing the American Church. He was concerned the churches were forsaking their Christian principles in not speaking out against the anti-Christian ideologies and practices occurring throughout the U.S.
My letter is limited to admonishing the Canadian churches involved with Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. These churches have not spoken out in support of the missionaries they commissioned to work in these schools, people who poured their lives into their work, and who have been wrongly accused of abusing and murdering residential school children.
Obviously, those employees who are guilty should be condemned and punished, but those who are innocent should not be falsely accused of perpetrating horrific crimes.
Between 1883 and 1996, there were 143 Indian Residential Schools included in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a complex agreement between various Indigenous groups, the federal government, and the churches that managed residential schools.
The Roman Catholic Church managed 62 (43.4%) of the schools, the Church of England (Anglican) managed 35 (24.5%), the United Church (including the denominations that joined together in 1925) managed 19 (13.3%), the Mennonite Church managed 3 (2.1%), and the Baptist Church managed 1 (0.6%) residential school. The federal and territorial governments managed the remaining 23 (16.1%) schools.
There are four historical points to be reviewed.
First, in May 2021, Rosanne Casimer, Chief of the Kamloops Band, announced that ground penetrating radar (GPR) had found 215 unmarked graves of children in the residential schoolyard.
Surprisingly, this was the first public report suggesting that children buried in residential schoolyards had been murdered. There is, however, no credible evidence of murdered residential school children in the 3,500-page Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report which was published 6 years earlier.
Second, despite being absent from the TRC’s “Calls to Action,” the federal government has awarded almost $8 million to the Kamloops band to excavate part of the schoolyard, and set aside over $300 million for other bands to search for soil anomalies or presumed graves.
Third, as expected with such strong incentives, many other bands have claimed that they too have graves of missing and presumed murdered children buried in the schoolyards on their reserves.
Finally, in an impressive gesture of support, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knelt beside a grave in a well-known cemetery with a teddy bear in his hand decrying the genocide perpetrated by the churches. Later, he had the Canadian flags at government buildings around the world flown at half-mast for 6 months so that both Canadians and citizens of the world would mourn this Canadian tragedy.
Since the spring of 2021, almost 100 Christian churches have been vandalized, desecrated, or set on fire, supposedly because of the “genocide” that had taken place at the sites of Indian Residential Schools. Sadly, some of these churches, the Lutheran and Orthodox churches, for example, did not manage any of the schools.
No doubt, most Canadians are thankful there is no forensic evidence that children have been murdered and buried in schoolyards. Of course, there are children’s bodies in parish cemeteries that are often close to the schools, but most of them died of communicable diseases like influenza and TB, and they have been given proper funerals.
My concern is that over the last three years, the five churches that managed Indian Residential Schools have said little or nothing to defend themselves or the staff they commissioned to work in the schools.
In a time of need, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Christians stepped forward to care for children living in residential schools. But the churches have not stepped forward to defend their staff in their time of need. These people are getting old, and they need support now. Instead, the churches have abandoned, or worse, condemned their faithful employees for abusing children.
Equally surprising, no church leader has supported the fundamental principle of Canadian law: individuals (and churches) are considered innocent until they are proven guilty.
It grieves me, and the few other living residential school employees, that our churches have not publically supported their innocent employees. Surely, they have a moral obligation to ensure that truth and justice prevail.
Eric Metaxas has tried to awaken American churches by pointing out where they have gone wrong. Should we not try to awaken Canadian churches to defend their involvement in Indian residential schools?
Is it too much to suggest that the church leaders think back to lessons learned from Martin Luther King Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stood up for Christian principles against the evil practice of dehumanizing people—Blacks in the U.S. and Jews in Europe?
Not only will these churches be judged by the moral and ethical lessons they preach, but, more importantly, by the principles they live by. Canadians will see the true values of church leaders in their actions, especially concerning those they commissioned to work in their schools.
Rodney A. Clifton lived for 4 months in Old Sun, the Anglican residential school on the Siksika (Blackfoot) First Nation during the summer of 1966, and he was the Senior Boys’ Supervisor in Stringer Hall, the Anglican residential hostel in Inuvik during the 1966-67 school year. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. His most recent book, with Mark DeWolf, is From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. The book will be out on November 5, and it can be preordered from the publisher.
Alberta’s new elementary school social studies curriculum announced in spring will be piloted at schools across the province this fall.
The Alberta government announced on Friday that over 1,700 teachers have signed up to pilot the K-6 social studies curriculum released in Apr. 2024. The pilot will begin in the 2024-25 school year and occur across 429 schools.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides told True North that he is very pleased with the number of schools and teachers piloting the draft social studies curriculum.
“As the piloting progresses, I am looking forward to hearing from school leaders and teachers as we continue our work to build a comprehensive curriculum that builds students’ critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills and inspires a passion for learning prior to implementation for the 2025-26 school year,” said Nicolaides.
The curriculum was developed after nine months of consultation with Albertans, education partners, teachers, and parents, said the Alberta government in its press release.
Alberta’s 2024 budget provided $34 million to support curriculum piloting and implementation in the upcoming school year.
The curriculum was adjusted to develop students’ critical thinking, research, and analytical skills. The curriculum also aims to build on the concept of active citizenship.
An example question for a Kindergarten class from the curriculum is, “How can people work together in groups?
Each question is accompanied with a learning outcome, broken down further into three sections: knowledge, understanding, and skills & procedure.
The same guiding question for Grade 6 students is, “In what ways does civic participation support democratic society?”
The Alberta government said the new curriculum aims to “address feedback on developmental appropriateness and load.”
Additionally, the new curriculum focuses on diversity across Canada by teaching students about First Nations, Métis, Inuit and Francophone histories.
“We look forward to piloting the new social studies curriculum that stays away from ideology and strengthens the opportunities for students to develop critical thinking skills, including research and analytical skills, throughout the curriculum,” said the superintendent of the Fort Vermilion School Division, Mike McMann.
The provincial government is providing teachers with various resources to pilot the new curriculum, such as teacher release days to support planning, resources, professional learning opportunities, and the opportunity to provide feedback.
After receiving feedback from the teachers participating in the piloting, the Alberta government plans to introduce the K-6 social studies curriculum in Sept. 2025.
The 62 school authorities participating in the pilot consist of 31 public schools, nine separate schools, three public charters, 16 independent schools, two francophones, and one First Nations school.
A group representing Canada’s mining industry is warning that rail strikes that caused major supply chain disruptions further harm Canada’s reputation of being a bad place to invest due to economic uncertainty.
The Mining Association of Canada expressed its “serious concern about the damaging impacts” the rail strike will have on investor’s perception of the country.
“The impacts of the latest disruption extend beyond the inability of mining companies to transport products to and from domestic and international customers and suppliers to Canada’s ambitions to supply minerals and metals to the world, particularly as the race for critical minerals intensifies,” said the MAC in a statement.
The associations’ members account for the majority of Canada’s production of “base and precious metals, uranium, diamonds, metallurgical coal and mined oil sands.”
The mining industry accounted for over half of the total freight volume transported by rail in Canada for over ten years and contributes $161 billion to the country’s GDP annually.
Additionally, it’s responsible for 21% of Canada’s total domestic exports, employing 694,000 people across the country.
“As the single largest industrial customer group of Canada’s railways, the mining sector has seen first-hand how detrimental unpredictable work stoppages are to Canada’s reputation as a reliable trading partner,” said MAC president and CEO Pierre Gratton.
“The urgent need for Canadian minerals and metals presents a generational opportunity, and we are in a race with our competitors to meet global demand.”
Gratton said that the CPKC and CN Rail strike “could not come at a worse time”as these companies must be able to rely on rail transport, both domestic and international, to competitively produce and process minerals on a global level.
“The mining industry is the Canadian rail system’s most significant customer, and the majority of our products are shipped to international customers. Work stoppages bring immense additional operational costs to businesses and reduce confidence in Canada as a destination for investment for supply-chain reliant businesses, such as mining,” added Gratton.
The MAC said Canada’s supply chain continues to lose reliability, negatively affecting industry investment.
“Canada can and must do better at creating a stable and predictable logistics supply chain that restores greater confidence in Canada’s reliability as a trading partner and the government should make every effort and use every tool at their disposal to address this unprecedented disruption. Failure to do so is an abdication of leadership and an abandonment of responsibility.”
Even as the rail strike begins to wrap up, the MAC’s sentiment is shared by other economists as well, who feel poor governance has led to this economic instability.
“It’s better late than never as they say, but Ottawa has finally realized the crucial role our railways play in Canada’s supply chains,” Renaud Brossard, vice-president of Communications at the Montreal Economic Institute told True North.
“Unfortunately, by banning the use of replacement workers starting in June of next year, the Trudeau government has ensured that future strikes are longer and more disruptive.”
The Waterloo Regional Police Service is investigating after Jewish community groups raised concerns about a Nazi Germany military flag hanging from a Kitchener, Ont. residence’s door.
In a news release Thursday, the Waterloo Regional Police Service’s Neighbourhood Policing Patrol said the unit was investigating after receiving reports that a National Socialist Wehrmacht flag emblazoned with a Nazi Swastika was hanging by the doorway of a home in the area of Stirling Avenue South and Cherry Street in Kitchener Ont.
🚩 TODAY – Wehrmacht flag spotted flying up the street from the largest synagogue in Ontario.
A Nazi flag has been seen flying from a home on Sterling Avenue in Kitchener, Ontario.
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) August 22, 2024
“While individuals have the right to freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, offensive expression, rooted in hate, have no place in Waterloo Region,” police said in the release.
The Wehrmacht was Nazi Germany’s principal military organization, co-existing alongside the Nazi Party’s paramilitary SS organization. The Wehrmacht led Germany’s war campaigns and often collaborated with the SS. Several high-ranking military officers belonging to the Wehrmacht were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In a separate news bulletin, WRPS reported a 91% increase in hate crimes in 2023 from the previous year. The report did not say what amount of those reported crimes were antisemitic. Still, for June 2023, before the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, 17%, or nine of the 52 reported hate incidents targeted the Jewish community.
“Our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Unit continues to keep ongoing communication with members of the community who this incident may have impacted,” a spokesperson for the police told True North in an email. “EDI is being utilized for this situation for their connections in the community.”
The Equity Diversity and Inclusion Unit was founded in 2017 and consists of members from “Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, the 2SLGBTQ+ community and the South Asian community.” The unit aims to “actively pursue a diverse and inclusive workforce” and create “equitable outcomes for our members and the community we serve.”
When asked what crime police suspected the individual displaying the Wehrmacht flag of committing, they did not answer directly.
“The reason for the investigation was to determine if a criminal act had been committed due to the reports received,” police said.
Police did, however, rule out Public Incitement of Hatred section 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada as a potential crime as the flag is not considered to be flown in a public place at a private residence.
Rich Robertson, the research and advocacy manager at B’nai Brith Canada, feels it’s high time that the Canadian parliament re-examine what is and is not considered public incitement and wilful promotion of hate.
“This is disgusting. It is offensive to the Jewish community, but it’s also an insult to the victims of Nazi persecution and to Canadian veterans who sacrificed their lives fighting fascism and Nazi tyranny,” Robertson told True North in an interview. “This is a perfect example of the need for us to revisit the criminal code provisions around the willful promotion of hatred.”
Earlier this month, B’nai Brith Canada called on the Canadian government to reexamine the criminal code provisions criminalizing the use of symbols and flags that promote terrorist groups. A representative for the Canadian Constitution Foundation argued that the use of such symbols already fell under the purview of existing incitement laws.
“I would leave it to Parliament, to the legislature, to determine which symbols could potentially be considered to be captured under a modified version of Section 319 of the Criminal Code if such revisions did take place,” he said. “However, I think it’s safe to say that symbols that are representative of listed terror groups, which include neo-Nazi groups in Canada that regularly use the swastika as an emblem, would certainly be a good starting point.”
Robertson believes displaying a symbol such as a Nazi Swastika crosses the line beyond free speech.
“(The Nazi Swastika) has the propensity to galvanize support and to encourage those who harbour neo-Nazi, white supremacist, ultra-nationalist views, and views that are not aligned with the values of contemporary Canadian society,” he said. “It is promoting an idealogy that thousands of Canadians sacrificed their lives confronting, which led to the genocide of millions of innocent Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.”
Most Canadian families don’t realize a large chunk of their salaries is going towards paying for public healthcare due to the hidden costs and complicated bureaucracy that handles transfer payments.
According to a new study by the Fraser Institute, the average Canadian family of all types will pay 240% more for public health care insurance this year than in 1997, outpacing the 141.1% cash income increase the average family received in the same period. Healthcare costs are rising 1.7 times faster than the average income.
By examining the amount of money each family pays to all levels of government for healthcare, the study’s authors identified that for six common family types, Canadians would pay an estimated $4,908 to $17,713 in healthcare costs, depending on the type of family.
According to a survey by the US health policy research organization KFF, the average annual cost of health insurance for the average American family was USD $23,968. For those with employment benefits, $6,575 of the cost was paid by the workers themselves. The average American family paid around CAD $9000 for health insurance in 2024.
According to the report a family of four in Canada with an average household income of $175,266 will pay an estimated $17,713 for public healthcare insurance this year. On the low end, the average single parent with two children will pay $4,908 for healthcare in 2024.
This year, 23.3% of tax revenues will be spent on Canadian healthcare.
According to the study, $225.1 billion was spent on healthcare in 2023, which would mean $5,614 per Canadian in that year. However, due to the progressive tax system, that number doesn’t account for the difference between Canadians with different incomes and living situations.
Canadian families with the lowest 10% income brackets will pay an average of about $639 for public health care insurance in 2024. The 10% of Canadian families who earn a mid-range household income of $81,825 will pay an average of $7,758 for public health care insurance, and the families among the top 10% of income earners in Canada will pay $47,071.
Healthcare costs have increased 2.2 times as fast as the cost of food and 1.6 times as fast as the cost of shelter.
Spending on shelter increased by 150.5%, spending on food increased by 111.1 percent, and spending on clothing rose by 18.5%, a decline in clothing expenditures compared to previous years. In contrast, health care insurance for the average Canadian family increased by 239.6%.
“There are some very important questions Canadians should be asking about what sort of healthcare system we’re paying for,” Nadeem Esmail, a study co-author, told True North in an interview. “When we look at the cost-benefit equation in Canada, Canadians are getting a raw deal.”
He noted that Canadians faced an average of 27.7 weeks of healthcare waiting time in 2023, the longest ever recorded. In one case, True North reported, a patient was told there was a three-year waiting list for a specialist.
Canada ranked low among 30 high-income countries with universal access to healthcare systems in 2023 despite spending the most out of those countries. It ranked 28th in access to doctors, 23rd in hospital beds, and 25th in MRI machines and has the longest wait lists for any of those nations with the available data.
“We’re paying an awful lot of money for healthcare, one of the highest price tags internationally on an age-adjusted basis, and we have some of the worst access to healthcare in the developed world in exchange for that,” Esmail said.
He said that the cost of healthcare rose considerably in 2020, as expected from the global COVID-19 pandemic, but then fell in 2022 for “a number of family types” on an inflation-adjusted basis. He noted that in 2024, Canada will have the highest healthcare costs than in prepandemic years.
“The general trend of a healthcare system delivering remarkably poor access for a high price tag has continued and has been consistent with wait times now, having grown well past what they were in the pre-pandemic period and continuing to grow,” he said.
He believes that Canada ought to follow the lead of countries such as Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands, which rank better in terms of rapid access to universal healthcare, shorter wait times, lower levels of spending and “some of the best outcomes for the healthcare process in the developed world.”
“These nations have all embraced private competition in the delivery of universally accessible services, allowing a private alternative to the universal system for those times when the public system is unwilling or unable to meet a patient’s needs and requires patients to share the cost of the care they consume through user fees or co-payments,” he said. “For some of the worst access to healthcare in the developed world, there are better ways to do healthcare out there.”
