Canadians are desperate for primary care. Former health minister Jane Philpott has a plan to help.
Tommy Douglas wouldn’t be too pleased if he could see the state of Canadian health care today: warlike wound-dressing in ER hallways, creeping privatization, scattershot definitions of “medically necessary” and more than six million Canadians without a family doctor. Like Douglas, Jane Philpott, Canada’s former health minister—and a trained family doctor herself—is big on radical reforms. Philpott outlined her plan to bust through the system’s discombobulation in last year’s bestselling book, Health for All. One proposal is the creation of primary-care “homes,” teeming with nurse practitioners, therapists, housing workers, dieticians, tax experts (!) and, of course, family physicians—the kind we can actually get appointments to see. In December, Philpott will leave her role as dean of health sciences at Queen’s University to lead Ontario’s brand-new primary care “action team,” with the goal of hooking up every single person in Ontario to care by 2029. A few weeks ago, I sat down with Philpott to ask her how she plans to achieve her ambitious goal and what the rest of Canada might learn from her experiment. Visit macleans.ca for more coverage of everything that matters in Canada, and subscribe to the magazine here. –Katie Underwood, managing editor, Maclean’s |
In early September, school boards across the country announced that kids would no longer be allowed to use their smartphones in class. A few months later, not much has changed. Kids still sneak their phones onto their desks, hide them behind books and look down at them in their laps. How did the lofty smartphone ban fall apart? From our December issue, read Luc Rinaldi’s story, “Schools vs. Screens.” It’s a vivid portrait of the state of education in Canada and the challenge of trying to go tech-free. |
On the Poutine Trail With My Dad |
In 2013, Justin Giovanetti Lamothe was preparing to pack up his Montreal apartment to start a new job in Toronto. When his francophone dad came to visit him in the big city for a final hurrah, Lamothe mentioned that he was interested in tracing the invention of poutine. “I was a journalist, after all, and it was a good story,” he writes in this essay for Maclean’s. Where had poutine come from? How did the dish become a culinary symbol of Quebec? As it turned out, his dad was from the area where the dish was invented and so the two decided to explore its origins. How a road trip in search of Canada’s first poutine revealed a new side of Quebec—and brought a family together. |
For a while, bringing hundreds of thousands of international students into Canada seemed like a great idea. It was a windfall for universities and colleges, and the students helped fill Canada’s labour gaps. In exchange, they were promised post-graduation work permits and what seemed to be a straight line to citizenship. But recently, the government has begun slamming doors shut. For many students and recent graduates, the changes are devastating: they’ll be forced to leave the country, when they had every reason to think they’d be able to stay. At Maclean’s, we wondered how these could’ve-been Canadians were coping. Here, four of them share their stories. |
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