Canada’s innov­a­tion gap: why your access to medi­cines is at risk

By Dr. Bettina Hamelin

Article originally published on the Toronto Star, June 11, 2026.

There’s a quiet crisis unfold­ing behind closed doors, and Cana­dians deserve to know about it.

A growing access crisis

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.

For two in five Cana­dians who will be dia­gnosed with can­cer in their life­time—over 250,000 this year alone—this isn’t hypo­thet­ical. It could be their real­ity. That’s why what hap­pens next— in Ott­awa, in pro­vin­cial cap­it­als, and in board­rooms across the coun­try—mat­ters so pro­foundly to so many Cana­dians.

Here’s the hard truth people would be shocked to learn: Canada cur­rently ranks last in the G7 for timely pub­lic access to innov­at­ive medi­cines— the pat­en­ted, break­through ther­apies that treat can­cer, autoim­mune dis­orders, and rare and infec­tious dis­eases. Only 18 per cent of innov­at­ive medi­cines avail­able glob­ally reach Cana­dian patients through pub­lic drug plans, com­pared to the OECD aver­age of 28 per cent. Once they’re approved by Health Canada, it takes another two years on aver­age for new medi­cines to be added to pro­vin­cial plans, if they choose to cover them at all.

Now, that gap is about to widen even fur­ther. The new most-favoured nation (MFN) drug pri­cing policy in the U.S., which seeks to lower Amer­ican prices, has triggered a global chain reac­tion that threatens to dis­rupt our access to exist­ing medi­cines, delay or alto­gether halt our access to new medi­cines, and under­mine con­fid­ence in Canada’s phar­ma­ceut­ical mar­ket.

For dec­ades, Amer­ic­ans have paid sig­ni­fic­antly more for medi­cines than oth­ers, effect­ively sub­sid­iz­ing global phar­ma­ceut­ical innov­a­tion. Canada has benefited from U.s.-fun­ded innov­a­tion while keep­ing our own drug prices as low as pos­sible. MFN pri­cing is an attempt to cor­rect that imbal­ance. This will dir­ectly influ­ence where com­pan­ies choose to launch new medi­cines first, favour­ing mar­kets with stronger con­di­tions.

This moment has exposed a crit­ical vul­ner­ab­il­ity for Canada. Low drug prices are a point of Cana­dian pride, but the hid­den cost is lower avail­ab­il­ity of innov­at­ive medi­cines and a phar­ma­ceut­ical eco­sys­tem that’s been chron­ic­ally under­val­ued and under­in­ves­ted in. For con­text, devel­op­ing a single new medi­cine costs on aver­age $3.5 bil­lion and takes 10 to 15 years of research and test­ing, with no guar­an­tees of suc­cess.

The ques­tion now is: How will Canada respond? Will we wait and hope for the best, leav­ing us sus­cept­ible to forces bey­ond our con­trol? Or will we seize this oppor­tun­ity to build a more resi­li­ent, com­pet­it­ive, and secure health­care sys­tem—one where access to innov­at­ive medi­cines is part of the found­a­tion?

Canadians understand what’s at stake

Research by Hill & Know­lton in Janu­ary 2026 shows Cana­dians are clear-eyed about where they stand:

• 86 per cent believe the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should pri­or­it­ize access to medi­cines
• 84 per cent agree that a resi­li­ent health sys­tem, with reli­able access to medi­cines, is cru­cial to Canada’s strength and secur­ity
• 71 per cent believe Canada should con­trib­ute pro­por­tion­ately to global phar­ma­ceut­ical innov­a­tion

Any Cana­dian who has been affected by can­cer or a rare dis­ease knows the dia­gnosis isn’t the worst part. It’s the months, some­times years, of uncer­tainty about whether they’ll be able to access the life-sav­ing medi­cine they need. Yet evid­ence shows the bene­fits of innov­at­ive medi­cines far out­weigh the costs. A recent study by Dr. Frank Lichten­berg at Columbia Uni­versity found that sus­tained invest­ments in innov­at­ive medi­cines reduced hos­pital days in Canada by 55 per cent in 2022, sav­ing nearly $80 bil­lion in hos­pital costs.

A national response cannot wait

The good news is change is pos­sible when gov­ern­ment and industry choose to work together. In Ontario, Innov­at­ive Medi­cines Canada (IMC), an asso­ci­ation that rep­res­ents 45 innov­at­ive phar­ma­ceut­ical com­pan­ies, played a proud role in the devel­op­ment of the gov­ern­ment’s new FAST pro­gram—fund­ing Accel­er­ated for Spe­cific Treat­ments—which aims to deliver high-pri­or­ity can­cer ther­apies to patients up to one full year earlier. Since its announce­ment in fall 2025, eight new life-extend­ing can­cer treat­ments have been fast-tracked to patients who need them sooner.

Ontario is proof of concept, but one province isn’t enough. That’s why IMC is call­ing for a uni­fied, pan-cana­dian response that brings together gov­ern­ments and industry to co-cre­ate solu­tions that address imme­di­ate and long-term risks.

That means stream­lin­ing reg­u­lat­ory pro­cesses to bring more new medi­cines and R&D invest­ment to Canada, includ­ing for clin­ical tri­als that so many patients depend on for treat­ment. It means expand­ing accel­er­ated access path­ways for innov­at­ive medi­cines across the coun­try, so Cana­dians from St. John’s to Vic­toria can bene­fit equit­ably. It also means sus­tained increases in fed­eral invest­ment to provinces, spe­cific­ally for innov­at­ive medi­cines.

Other coun­tries are mov­ing decis­ively. It’s time for Canada to move with the same clar­ity and sense of pur­pose. What hap­pens next—how quickly new medi­cines arrive, and whether they arrive at all—depends on the choices gov­ern­ments make today.

For the patient sit­ting in a doc­tor’s office receiv­ing that dev­ast­at­ing can­cer dia­gnosis, or the par­ent who has spent years fight­ing to access med­ic­a­tion for a rare dis­ease, these aren’t abstract policy debates—they’re life-alter­ing decisions. Let’s make the right ones.