Our latest documentary on education is here! In this video, follow our Outreach Director Paula Iturri to London, England, where the introduction of academies, or "free schools" has helped raise student achievement levels and been of particular benefit to underprivileged kids. As two of the politicians interviewed in our documentary will testify, the bi-partisan nature of these reforms were crucial to their success. Could these positive changes be replicated in Canada? Watch below to find out ⬇️

Canadians have noticed the bills going up and the waits staying long. An Ipsos poll commissioned by the Montreal Economic Institute found only 34% of Canadians believe higher spending has improved their province's health care system. Three in four (76%) said the system is too bureaucratic, and 60% said spending in their province is growing at a rate that can't last. Ipsos surveyed 1,159 Canadians online in late March 2026. What people want is a system that turns the money into appointments and operations. Countries that pay hospitals for each patient they treat give them a reason to do exactly that. But in Canada, governments just send a big cheque to hospitals each year and hope they help lots of patients. There's no accountability. This is one reason why tax dollars get wasted on bureaucracy, rather than helping patients. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: iedm.org/healthcare-in-canad…

Staggering number. Just imagine if even half those dollars went to expenses that help patients on the front lines (doctors, nurses, equipment).

Valley Medical has looked after families in Strathmore since 1985. At the end of this year, it closes. CTV News reports that all four of the clinic's doctors are retiring. The clinic says it hopes to find replacements, but if it can't, every one of its patients will need a new family doctor. The newest clinic in town, which opened in March with two doctors, already had a waiting list for regular patients. It's a familiar story across the province. According to the Alberta Medical Association, 16% of Albertans have no family doctor, and nearly 3 in 10 people still looking say no one where they live is taking new patients. Without a family doctor, there's nobody to renew a prescription or send you to a specialist. People end up in walk-in clinics or the emergency room instead. Other countries with universal coverage let more kinds of clinics and providers take on publicly funded patients, so one retirement doesn't leave a whole town scrambling. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/s…

Germans are covered no matter who runs the hospital. In Canada, almost every hospital is run by government. SecondStreet.org looked at eight universal health care systems that outperform Canada. Non-government hospitals, both non-profit and for-profit, make up 75% of hospitals in Germany, 55% in France, 85% in Switzerland and all of them in the Netherlands. In Canada, the figure is 1%. The waits look different too. In Germany, 20% of patients waited more than two months for planned surgery. In Canada, it was 58%. In those countries, public coverage follows the patient and hospitals are paid for each patient they treat. Canada could adopt the same approach and nobody would lose their coverage. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: secondstreet.org/2025/10/02/…

Showing up is part of the grade again. As of this school year, attendance and participation count for 15% of a final mark in Grades 9 and 10 and 10% in Grades 11 and 12, The Canadian Press reports. The rule covers unexcused absences only. Some parents and students say the details are still unclear. Parents have been asking for this kind of standard for a while. In a Leger poll for SecondStreet.org, 74% of Canadians supported docking marks for late work. Parents also expressed high support for stronger discipline in classrooms. Clear expectations are something every province can set without waiting for anyone, and parents with a real choice of school can pick the standards that fit their child. Learn more about how to fix Canada's education system at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: cp24.com/news/canada/2026/10…

Every hour spent on forms is an hour a patient can't book. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, family doctors in Canada spend a median of 20% of their week on administrative work, a bit more than their peers in other countries. A Canadian Medical Association and Canadian Federation of Independent Business report puts it at the equivalent of one full day a week. The same CIHI survey found 22% of family doctors plan to stop seeing patients regularly within three years, and 38% reported burnout. This is a structure problem. When clinics are set up and paid so that support staff and other professionals handle the routine work, the doctors we already have can spend more of their day on patients. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: cihi.ca/en/news/canadas-fami…

Your family doctor writes the referral. Then the calendar takes over. Doctors of BC reports that the average wait to see a specialist in the province runs about four weeks for urgent cases, 10 weeks for semi-urgent cases, and roughly 10 months for non-urgent referrals. The association raised the numbers publicly again this February and warned the lists will keep growing without a change. "Non-urgent" is how the referral gets scheduled. For the patient, it can still mean ten months of pain, worry or missed work. Other countries with universal coverage let non-government clinics and hospitals see publicly funded patients, which adds appointment slots for everyone on the list. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: doctorsofbc.ca/advocacy/2026…

Interested in health reform? On Nov 6 we're co-hosting Prescriptions for Health Reform – our annual event with @CDNConstFound and @iedm_montreal . We have some great speakers lined up – policy experts, journalists, former politicians, pollsters, etc. Hope to see you there – prescriptions-for-health-ref…

Ontario decided what a reasonable wait looks like, then missed its own mark for almost 3 in 10 of these kids. Ontario Health's wait time reporting, covered by CP24 in January, shows 71% of paediatric ear, nose and throat surgeries were completed within the province's target. Hip replacements came in at 78% and knee replacements at 79%. Ear, nose and throat surgery, hips and knees are routine operations, the kind a health care system should be able to schedule on time. Other countries with better-performing universal coverage send routine surgeries to non-government clinics as well as hospitals, which frees up hospital operating rooms for more complex cases. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: cp24.com/local/toronto/2026/…

A new report on violence in Victoria-area schools is about staff getting hurt, but one parent leader says it tells families something even bigger. On September 16, the Greater Victoria Teachers' Association released a report counting 6,187 reports of violence against school staff at 46 schools between September 2024 and March 2026. That works out to about 21 incidents every school day. Canadian Press reports that 95 per cent of the 165 teachers who answered a union survey said they had faced violence in the past year. Union president Carolyn Howe says it is "very much an early education problem." The report calls for smaller groups, better student-to-staff ratios and more specialist staff. "We want inclusion, but we can't have inclusion without proper supports," one teacher said. CTV News reports the Greater Victoria School District has pushed back, saying the numbers should be read alongside the age and needs of the students involved. Saloumeh Pourmalek, who chairs the Victoria parents' council, put it simply: "If our staff are experiencing violence at schools then that means our children aren't getting the support they need." Does your child's classroom have enough help to support every student? Learn more at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: cp24.com/news/canada/2026/09…

Half a Grade 6 classroom in Ontario meeting the standard is not acceptable. Ontario's most recent results, for the 2024-25 school year, show 51% of Grade 6 students in English-language schools met the provincial standard in mathematics. In reading it was 86% and in writing 85%. Math is the outlier, and it is the subject that closes the most doors later on. It has sat at 50% or 51% for three years running. Provinces can act on this without waiting for anyone. Explicit, teacher-led instruction has better evidence behind it than the discovery-based approach most provinces moved toward, and parents having a real choice about where their child learns gives every school a reason to improve. Learn more about how to fix Canada's education system at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: eqao.com/about-eqao/news-rel…

Canadians have been told for years that the newer teaching methods are better. Most of them are not convinced. A Leger poll commissioned by SecondStreet.org found 56% of Canadians think schools should return to fundamentals and traditional methods for core subjects, against 25% who think schools should carry on with newer approaches. The rest were unsure. Leger surveyed 1,659 Canadians online at the end of February. A probability sample of that size would be accurate to within 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Provinces write the curriculum and choose the teaching methods, so this is a decision governments can make directly. Parents having a real choice about where their child learns gives every school a reason to listen. Learn more about how to fix Canada's education system at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: secondstreet.org/2026/04/06/…

There is a rule most people have never heard of that decides what a province is allowed to try. Health Canada's own Canada Health Act annual report shows $23.5 million was deducted from British Columbia's federal health transfer in March 2025 – the same amount patients decided to pay for services at non-government clinics. Of that, $17.1 million was for diagnostic services and $6.4 million was for surgery. The money does not go back to those patients. It comes out of a provincial health budget. Deductions across all provinces that year totalled $62.2 million. The Act was written in 1984 and the waiting lists have changed a great deal since then. Other countries with better-performing universal systems don't have such penalties. They consider it a good thing if a patient is willing to pay for private treatment. Why? Because then their public systems can concentrate on helping those who can't afford to pay for private treatment. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: canada.ca/en/health-canada/s…

One province licensed the doctor. The next province makes that doctor start the paperwork over. The Canadian Medical Association reports that each of the 13 provinces and territories runs its own physician licensing authority, and that 77% of physicians call the complexity of the process an impediment. Sixty-eight per cent point to how long it takes and 64% to what it costs. Four provinces already fixed it. Since May 2023, a doctor licensed in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island can practise in all four under the Atlantic Registry. Every other province could join or copy that arrangement, and the doctors it would help are already practising in Canada. Learn more about other ways to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: cma.ca/healthcare-for-real/w…

Canadians have lost a lot of faith in public schools since 2020, and a national poll shows what many would try instead. Leger surveyed 1,659 Canadian adults for SecondStreet.org from February 27 to March 1, 2026. The share who say K-12 schooling is headed the wrong way jumped from 32 per cent in 2020 to 53 per cent. Most people want some basics back. The poll found 77 per cent oppose "no-fail" policies that move students ahead no matter how they do, and 72 per cent support traditional discipline. Another 56 per cent back a return to basics in core subjects. The same share, 56 per cent, support public charter schools like Alberta's, which are non-profit and tuition-free, and whose students scored nearly a grade point higher across 22 tests. What's one change you'd make at your child's school? Learn more at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: secondstreet.org/wp-content/…

Two patients referred on the same day for the same surgery can end up with very different waits, depending on whose list they landed on. Researchers led by Dr. David Urbach modelled what would happen if Ontario pooled hip and knee referrals into one regional list and let teams of surgeons share the work. Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, they found the longest waits would fall from 536 days to 255 in western Ontario, and from 257 days to 146 in Toronto. In the model, almost nobody was left waiting past the province's target. The change is in how the line is organized. It needs no new hospital or operating room. What do you think? Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: cmaj.ca/content/197/19/E524

A bladder infection does not need an emergency room, and in Ontario it no longer needs a doctor's appointment either. Public Health Ontario reports that pharmacists in the province submitted more than 1.47 million minor ailment claims between 2023 and 2024. More than a third were for uncomplicated urinary tract infections. For the people who cannot get a family doctor, those used to be walk-in visits, or emergency room visits when the walk-in was full. Nothing here required a new hospital or a bigger budget. The province changed who is allowed to do the work, which is what a structure fix looks like. Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: publichealthontario.ca/en/Ab…

Dutch parents pick a school. The money goes wherever they pick. Nearly two-thirds of Dutch elementary school children attend a privately run school, according to the National Center on Education and the Economy. Every school, whether it is run by government or by an independent board, is funded equally by the state, and families pay no tuition. The system has been in the Dutch constitution for more than a century. As funding follows the child, a school that families are leaving has an immediate reason to fix what is wrong, and no family is priced out of moving. Considering 53% of Canadians believe our school system has gone in the wrong direction, could the Dutch approach improve options for Canadian parents? Learn more about how to fix Canada's education system at SecondStreet.org Read more from the source: ncee.org/international-spotl…

If your mom gets admitted from the ER, the longest wait may start after the doctor says she's staying. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released its latest national report in June, covering 2024-25. It found that 1 in 10 patients admitted from an ER waited more than 48 hours for an inpatient bed. Older adults and people with conditions like diabetes waited the longest. CIHI says the pressure mostly comes from outside the ER. There aren't enough hospital beds, and patients waiting for long-term care stay in hospital beds for weeks. When those beds are full, new patients stay in the ER until one opens up. That's how about 180,000 Canadians ended up waiting two days or more in the ER for a hospital bed. Has someone you love ever waited in the ER for a bed? Learn more about how to fix Canada's health care system at HealthReformNow.ca Read more from the source: cihi.ca/en/wait-times-in-can…