Almost a quarter century ago the former head of RBC-Dominion Securities, Tony Fell, delivered a grim assessment of Canada’s national health-care system under the Canada Health Act. In a speech at the Canadian Club in Toronto, titled “Healthcare at the Cossroads,” Fell ran through a long list of inadequacies, failures, challenges and funding problems. His 2002 speech could be delivered at any club meeting today.
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Among the crossroad issues — Fell resisted calling them crises — were doctor and nurse shortages, emergency room backups, shortages of medical equipment, cancer surgery wait times of up to two months, along with average national wait times for an MRI hitting 12 weeks.That was 2002. Nothing much has changed since then. The average national wait time for MRI in 2025 was 18 weeks. Canadian health care today has driven past the crossroads and entered crisis territory, a reality that has motivated Fell to take health care reform to a new front.
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Last month, in a full-page advertisement in The Globe and Mail, the now 87-year-old Fell described Canada’s health system as a crisis that requires more than random fiddling by central planners attempting section-by-section repair of the multitude of causes behind health care failures.
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The ad, attributed to “Anthony S. Fell, Citizen of Canada,” states that “Canadians deserve better healthcare. It’s time for solutions, not silence.” The system “was built on compassion. Now it needs renewal.”
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What makes Fell’s proposal different is the idea that the system needs an overall review that rises above the multitude of individual problems and the tendency to impose micro-solutions. Attempts to solve wait times in emergency rooms or the family doctor shortage may lead to local reforms, but they will not begin to deal with the larger issue: The Canada Health Act needs to be renewed.
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Fell calls for the establishment of an “independent, non-partisan Commission to study high-performing healthcare systems and recommend practical solutions.” Members of such a commission should include experts in health care, economics, law and patient experience. They should examine systems in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Singapore. The commission should also engage with Canadian professionals and patient groups.
