Health Care Reform and the Law in Canada: Meeting the Challenge

K.V. Nagarajan is a professor in the Department of Economics at
Laurentian University.

In this fabulous collection of essays, most of the authors focus on the
legal implications of recent health-care reform initiatives in the areas
of malpractice, home care, mental health, and human rights. The chapter
by Gold looks at the implications of NAFTA, WTO, and such international
agreements for health-care reform in Canada. Gold’s less than
reassuring conclusion is that it’s not clear whether the policymakers
holding the rudder know what they are doing. As he points out, once the
privatization route is taken, there’s no turning back the clock
without paying a huge financial penalty. Choudhry addresses the fact
that the federal government—the same government that allowed Alberta
to pass the controversial Bill 11—has no established mechanism to
verify whether the provinces are complying with the Canada Health Act.
The authors not only identify problems but also suggest imaginative ways
of solving them; it is high time that our leaders absorbed some of these
lessons.