Tales of healthcare collapse, Canadian Edition

What a shit show. Coming to a healthcare system near you.

Feb 04, 2024

white and gray hallway — Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Welcome to a special bonus edition of the Covid-Is-Not-Over newsletter.

This issue is about healthcare system collapse. My particular case study is the country where I live, Canada. The time frame is January 2024, but with some coverage starting in early fall 2023. The focus is how the Covid-19 driven surge in hospitals, coupled with the normal winter respiratory illness season, has caused all the various provincial healthcare systems here in Canada to teeter on the brink of total collapse. With Covid peaking in early January, we’ve seen some easing of the crisis, at least in how the media is reporting the situation.

What’s the cause?

Of course, the Covid pandemic is the main cause, what with the way it’s strained systems with both the acute effects driving hospital admissions as well as how Long Covid and other long term effects of Covid’s cardiovascular and cognitive (and other!) impact on our bodies.

Covid isn’t the only villain here. Long term austerity and rampant cost cutting in all the healthcare systems in Canada left those systems woefully unprepared for the effects of the Covid pandemic. Not to mention how many of the provincial governments in Canada have been stealthily (and not so stealthily) pushing a privatisation agenda for the systems. They’ve been deliberately starving healthcare funding to “make the case” that the system obviously needs new sources of funding. In other words, we should all have to pay out of pocket for private sector care.

This is the tip of the iceberg. There are no shortages of villains in this tale of collapse.

The format of this issue is a bit different from normal. I have a couple of articles linked below that provide a bit of context. Following those, I’ve basically got a fairly extensive chronological list of media articles about healthcare collapse in Canada. I have a few from 2022, then a bunch covering the few months leading up to January 2024 to give a sense of the progression.

Finally, there’s a big list from January 2024 of most everything I could find. The idea here is to show in as much detail as possible that, yes, indeed, the Canadian healthcare system was on the verge of collapse. My assumptions is that the articles I’ve found here truly are the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s really happening on the ground in the various Canadian healthcare systems.

Think of this as a cautionary tale. It’s happening here. Beware: the same forces that are pushing our system to the brink are coming for your system too, no matter where you are.

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Our health-care system is crashing by Max Faucet / Canada's National Observer

The COVID-19 pandemic has already killed more than 50,000 Canadians and crippled our sense of national unity and cohesion. But its biggest casualty may be yet to come: Canada’s health-care system.
If you’ve spent even a moment trying to access critical care over the last few years, you know just how bad things have gotten. Wait times at emergency rooms often stretch into days rather than hours, surgeries and other necessary procedures are being delayed, and finding a family doctor just keeps getting more difficult. Doctors and nurses, many of whom are suffering from pandemic-related burnout and some low-grade PTSD, are retiring early. As a result, a system that’s supposed to provide universal coverage is becoming decidedly less equitable. As Dr. Tara Kiran noted in a new study published in the CMAJ, “What we have is a haves-and-have-nots situation. [There are] people who do have access to a family doctor and a health team, and then those who have nothing.”

Loblaws' long game to take over healthcare by Jordan Roberts / Corruptario

When Loblaws purchased Shoppers Drug Mart in 2013, it was the largest Canadian retailer acquisition in history, and it transformed the Canadian landscape for retail (food, medicine, personal items) and real estate. Lexpert, Canada’s trade magazine for lawyers, wrote: “The acquisition brings Loblaw and Shoppers within close reach of more Canadians, with more than 2,300 stores (corporate, franchised and associate-owned) and nearly 1,800 pharmacies totalling 65 million square feet of selling space.”
Given the incredible scope, influence and position of Loblaws and Shoppers together in Canada, the deal was covered rather uncritically as a “win” in Canadian media. Many columnists positioned the acquisition as “protecting” Shoppers from other buyers and “fending off” foreign retailers such as Walmart and Target. A review of coverage indicates the acquisition was covered pretty much as the company positioned the move itself in their own media materials:
“The acquisition brings together two iconic Canadian brands and harnesses the complementary strengths of the nation's number-one grocery retailer and number-one pharmacy and beauty retailer. It strengthens both companies' competitiveness in an evolving retail landscape, creating new growth opportunities for shareholders.”
There was little coverage or debate, at the time, about how the acquisition would impact Canadian consumers, in terms of competition and data protection. In fact, articles on that topic seem to have been subsequently removed from the internet, such as this dead link to 2013 story, promoted in a CBC article about the acquisition.

Machado: We can't let stories of overcrowded ERs, burned out staff and doctor shortages lose their sting by Lisa Machado / Healthing.ca

This is the “so what” that we need to be adding to all of these stories about ER deaths and bed shortages and delayed screening that is robbing people of their loved ones. The very same things that decision-makers can’t seem to take a stand on. So what if there aren’t enough beds in our hospitals? Well, you won’t have a bed when you need urgent life-saving surgery; you will be using your retirement and tropical holiday funds to pay for home care for your aging parents (who will be living with you, by the way); and when your child or their child develops a rare disease, not only will they not have access to the medicine that’s available everywhere else in the world, there won’t be a bed in which to treat the complications of their illness and ensure they have a decent quality of life. So what? You will likely be financially insecure, under incredible mental and emotional stress and have to take time off from work.
Certainly, this is only one hypothetical healthcare journey out of hundreds of dire possibilities. But it’s also just one answer to “so what?” that reminds us how desperate health care will be in this country if we — patients, caregivers, industry, everyone — don’t begin to hold those who should be accountable, accountable. Now.

As most have probably noticed, there is no paid subscription option for this newsletter. However, Substack does have an option where subscribers can pledge to subscribe “just in case” and a few kind subscribers have made that pledge. I very much appreciated the vote of confidence in what I’m doing here. What I’ve decided to do on a trial basis is to set up a “tip jar” on the Ko-fi platform. I’m not anticipating a huge surge of income from using Ko-fi but whatever revenue I do end up with, I plan to spend on supporting artists on Bandcamp. Sadly, who knows how long that will seem like a good idea.

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June 2022

Canada's health-care system is 'collapsing around us,' warns CMA president | CTV News (Canada)

September 2022

'This is a crisis': Head of medical association warns that the health-care system faces 'collapse' | CBC News (Canada)

The Covid-Is-Not-Over Newsletter

Discussion about this post

The Covid-Is-Not-Over Newsletter

Tales of healthcare collapse, Canadian Edition

What a shit show. Coming to a healthcare system near you.

Our health-care system is crashing by Max Faucet / Canada's National Observer

Loblaws' long game to take over healthcare by Jordan Roberts / Corruptario

Machado: We can't let stories of overcrowded ERs, burned out staff and doctor shortages lose their sting by Lisa Machado / Healthing.ca

June 2022

September 2022

July 2023

August 2023

September 2023

October 2023

November 2023

December 2023

January 2024 (Roughly Chronological)

Discussion about this post