Drugs have become an increasingly critical part of healthcare services in Canada over the last few decades – with nearly $30 billion spent on prescription drugs nationwide in 2013. But it’s not clear that the current design of most provincial drug plans can withstand the financial pressures...

Control over public money is fundamental to democratic government, and presents huge challenges to legislators and taxpayers. Getting the information needed to answer simple questions such as how planned spending in the upcoming year compares to actual results in the prior year can be hard, and...

Recent outbreaks of measles in many parts of Canada draw attention to the importance of vaccination policy design, especially for children. Most Canadian provinces fail to meet national immunization targets for key diseases, and coverage ratios among children in a few provinces, where data are...

Roughly 30 percent of all Canadian healthcare is privately paid for, about the same proportion as the average for the 34 industrialized countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). However, two things make Canada’s public-private mix unique....

As Canada’s society ages, more personal care and health support will be needed for people who, either as a consequence of disability or aging, require assistance to function independently. As this happens, policymakers face the daunting challenge of balancing the fiscal burden on taxpayers...

The adoption of new health technologies brings potential improvements to quality of life as well as new costs for provincial healthcare systems. An appropriate evidence-based framework for adoption decisions therefore can go a long way to improving value for money in our health systems. While...

Each spring, Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial legislatures vote budgets that set out their spending and revenue goals for the fiscal year. Budget votes are critical for holding governments accountable to legislators, and in turn to voters and taxpayers. Over the last decade,...

The challenges that come with an abundant supply of resource wealth present difficult fiscal decisions for the Alberta government. One highly publicized concern is the need for the province to devise a long-run plan for resource revenue savings.

Modern health systems, like Canada’s, face similar pressures. Populations are aging, government revenues are dwindling, and the scope for new services is increasing as new technologies develop. However, each country is responding to these pressures in unique ways. Arguably, Canadians pay too...