Connecting Canada to Better Health

This spring, Canada made history when astronaut Jeremy Hansen became the first Canadian to fly around the moon in NASA’s Artemis II mission. It took nearly a decade of training, engineering and preparation to get there. It took only 10 days to complete the mission itself.

There’s a quiet crisis unfolding behind closed doors. Canadians have the longest wait times in the G7 for public access to new and innovative medicines — the patented, breakthrough kind that treat cancer, autoimmune disorders, and rare and infectious diseases. In addition, only 18 per cent of new drugs launched globally are available through Canadian public drug plans. Now, global drug policy changes, triggered by a new U.S. policy, threaten to widen this gap further. 

Some­where in Canada today, a patient is sit­ting in a doc­tor’s office, receiv­ing news that will change everything for them and their fam­ily. They’re hear­ing those ter­ri­fy­ing words—stage-four can­cer—and feel­ing the walls close in. They’re think­ing about their chil­dren, their part­ner, and their par­ents. They’re think­ing about how much time they have and what they’d do with it. Then, they learn that the treat­ment most likely to save their life exists—but it’s not avail­able in Canada, and no one can say when it will be.