Medicare is an unofficial designation used to refer to the publicly funded single-payer healthcare system of Canada. Canada's health care system consists of 13 provincial and territorial health insurance plans, which provide universal healthcare coverage to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and depending on the province or territory, certain temporary residents. The systems are individually administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government. The formal terminology for the insurance system is provided by the Canada Health Act and the health insurance legislation of the individual provinces and territories.
Healthcare in Canada is delivered through the provincial and territorial systems of publicly funded health care, informally called Medicare. It is guided by the provisions of the Canada Health Act of 1984, and is universal. The 2002 Royal Commission, known as the Romanow Report, revealed that Canadians consider universal access to publicly funded health services as a "fundamental value that ensures national health care insurance for everyone wherever they live in the country".
Wilson Dwight Peter Parasiuk is a Canadian businessman and former politician. As founder and CEO of the Paralink Group of Companies, based in the Vancouver area, Parasiuk organizes private sector/public sector partnerships in the export of Canada's health care, education and governmental expertise. Paralink also provides advice on energy development matters within Canada and internationally. In his early career as a politician, he was an elected member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, Canada, from 1977 to 1988 and a cabinet minister in the New Democratic Party government of Howard Pawley from 1981 to 1988.
BC Transit is a provincial Crown corporation responsible for coordinating the delivery of public transportation within British Columbia, Canada, outside Greater Vancouver. BC Transit is headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 26,377,500, or about 102,300 per weekday as of the third quarter of 2024.
The British Columbia Ambulance Service (BCAS) is an ambulance service that provides emergency medical response for the province of British Columbia, Canada. BCAS is one of the largest providers of emergency medical services in North America. The fleet consists of 658 ground ambulances operating from 183 stations across the province along with 283 non-transport support vehicles. Additionally, BCAS provides inter-facility patient transfer services in circumstances where a patient needs to be moved between health care facilities for treatment. BCAS also operates a medical evacuation program that utilizes both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft.
Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre (VHHSC) is an acute care hospital affiliated with the University of British Columbia and located in Vancouver, British Columbia. The VHHSC is the second largest hospital in Canada, with 1,900 beds and nearly 116,000 patients each year. VHHSC employs 9500 staff and utilizes 1000 volunteers. As of 2005, the hospital's annual budget is $463 million. It is managed by Vancouver Coastal Health.
A public hospital, or government hospital, is a hospital which is government owned and is predominantly funded by the government and operates predominantly off the money that is collected from taxpayers to fund healthcare initiatives. In almost all the developed countries but the United States of America, and in most of the developing countries, this type of hospital provides medical care almost free of charge to patients, covering expenses and wages by government reimbursement.
Law enforcement in Canada is the responsibility of police services, special constabularies, and civil law enforcement agencies, which are operated by every level of government, some private and Crown corporations, and First Nations. In contrast to the United States or Mexico, and with the exception of the Unité permanente anticorruption in Quebec and the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, there are no organizations dedicated exclusively to the investigation of criminal activity in Canada. Criminal investigations are instead conducted by police services, which maintain specialized criminal investigation units in addition to their mandate for emergency response and general community safety.
Northern Health is the publicly funded healthcare provider for the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia. Northern Health serves over 300,000 people in an area of 600,000 square kilometres. It was established as one of five geographically based health authorities in 2001 by the Government of British Columbia.
The Fraser Health Authority (FHA) is one of five regional public health authorities in British Columbia. It is governed by the provincial Health Authorities Act.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is the governing body for healthcare regulation for the City of Winnipeg, the northern community of Churchill, and the Rural Municipalities of East and West St. Paul, in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The WRHA also provides health-care support and specialty referral services to those Manitobans who live out of these boundaries, as well as residents of northwestern Ontario and Nunavut.
Adrian Dix is a Canadian politician who is the current Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Vancouver-Kingsway in British Columbia. A member of the British Columbia New Democratic Party, he was the party's leader and Leader of the Opposition in British Columbia from 2011 to 2014, resigning after losing the 2013 provincial election in an upset. Since 2024, he is the Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions, and has been Minister responsible for Francophone Affairs since 2017. Previously, he was Minister of Health under premiers John Horgan and David Eby.
B.C. Women's Hospital & Health Centre, an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA), is a Canadian hospital located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in women's health programs. It is the only facility in Western Canada dedicated to the health of women, newborns and families, and is the largest maternity hospital in the country. It is a teaching hospital and major provincial health care resource, and is a key component in women's health research.
BC Cancer is part of the Provincial Health Services Authority in British Columbia, Canada.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) is the single health authority for the Canadian province of Alberta and the "largest integrated provincial health care system" in Canada. Headquartered in Edmonton, AHS delivers medical care on behalf of the Government of Alberta's Ministry of Health. It operates 850 facilities throughout the province, including hospitals, clinics, continuing care facilities, mental health facilities and community health sites, that provide a variety of programs and services. AHS is the largest employer in the province of Alberta. In 2019, AHS served 4.3 million Albertans with a staff of 125,000 staff and 10,000 physicians, and an annual budget of $15.365 billion. Sean Chilton is the Acting President and CEO of AHS and reports to Dr. John Cowell, the AHS Official Administrator. The Official Administrator is accountable to the Minister of Health and the Premier.
The Alberta Health Insurance Act was an act passed by the Alberta Legislature in February 1935. It was the first Canadian health insurance act to provide some public funding for medical services, and as such is considered to be an early step toward the provision of medicare in Canada.
Perry Kendall, is a Canadian Public health physician who was Provincial Health Officer (PHO) for the Canadian province of British Columbia's health ministry from 1999-2018 and was awarded the Order of British Columbia for contributions to Public health field and to harm reduction policy and practice.
The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) is the public health arm for British Columbia's Provincial Health Services Authority.
British Columbia (B.C.) is the third largest Canadian province by population and fourth largest provincial economy. Like other provinces in the Canadian federation, B.C. consists of both private and public institutions. However, as Canada's westernmost province, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, B.C. has unique economic characteristics that distinguish it from much of the rest of Canada.
The COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia formed part of an ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On January 28, 2020, British Columbia became the second province to confirm a case of COVID-19 in Canada. The first case of infection involved a patient who had recently returned from Wuhan, Hubei, China. The first case of community transmission in Canada was confirmed in British Columbia on March 5, 2020.
