Discussions

As a member of the Equity in Medicine team, I volunteered to discuss the gender pay gap in Canada for an online hour-long session on a weekday evening in early July. I thought the attendance in the summer would be around a dozen people if we were lucky. The response was incredible, enough to make me hope (faintly) that women physicians in this country may finally have had enough of being treated so unfairly when it comes to remuneration and angry enough to push hard for justified change.

I am now the only octogenarian left, but at one point there were several of us

This past weekend marked the fourth anniversary of the defeat of the 2016 tPSA (tentative Physician Services Agreement) at the Ontario Medical Association (OMA). It marked the culmination of the efforts to mobilize almost two-thirds of the membership to vote against the deal, despite heavy pressure from the then board to approve it. In the aftermath of that agreement, there have been some significant and rather seismic changes at the OMA, and it’s worthwhile looking back to see what’s different, and what still needs to be done.

Yet again, the federal government looks like it is about to transfer tens of billions of dollars to the provinces with essentially no strings attached. We’ve seen this before. The 2004 First Ministers’ Health Accord transferred $40 billion to the provinces with homecare as one of the priorities. In the 2017 Health Accord, $11 billion was transferred with money earmarked for homecare and for mental health and addictions. We have no evidence of any significant progress in the provision of home care.

Five keys to addressing frailty in seniors

The Canadian response to the COVID-19 pandemic is widely seen as standing in sharp contrast to the situation in the United States. We would be remiss, however, to overlook the resemblance between the recent protest in Montréal against mandatory mask usage and anti-mask protests taking place across the United States.