JANUARY

CANADA
provides recommendations to governments, providers, and the public on reducing low-value care (Choosing
Wisely Canada, 2015).
What major innovations and reforms have been introduced?
At the annual meeting of Canada’s provincial premiers in July 2015, national health care priorities included
pharmaceuticals, appropriateness of care, senior care, and dementia. There has not been a meeting between
the first ministers of the federal and provincial governments on health care since 2009. In its 2015 election
platform, the Liberal Party committed to a CAD3 billion (USD2.4 billion) investment in home care services
and proposed a pan-Canadian collaboration to improve access to prescription medication (Liberal Party of
Canada, 2015).
In 2015, the Canadian government expanded the National Anti-Drug Strategy to include prescription drug
abuse. This strategy focuses on reducing the supply of and demand for illicit drugs (Government of Canada,
2015b). Also introduced in 2015 was the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa’s Law), which
strengthens regulation on therapeutic products to promote reporting of adverse reactions by health care
institutions (Government of Canada, 2014).
Provincial health system governance: Several provinces have reformed or are in the process of reforming their
health system governance structures, mostly in an attempt to achieve efficiencies and reduce costs. Quebec is
merging 182 Health and Social Centres, which include hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities, into just
28 (Assemblée Nationale Québec, 2015). In April 2015, Nova Scotia passed legislation to consolidate 10 district
health authorities into two: the Nova Scotia Health Authority and the IWK Health Centre. The two merged
authorities will work together to plan and deliver primary care, community health services, and acute care across
the province (Government of Nova Scotia, 2015). The 2015 Newfoundland and Labrador provincial budget
announced the consolidation of administrative service for the health care system into one shared services
organization. The regional health authorities will remain in place, while the shared services organization will
provide them with support for human resources, information technology, telecommunications, marketing,
communications, finance, and payroll (Government of Newfoundland Labrador, 2015). The government
appointed an implementation team in August 2015.
The authors would like to acknowledge Diane Watson as a contributing author to earlier versions
of this profile.
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The Commonwealth Fund