editor, Author at Monitor Telegram

Eight revenue agency workers fired for roles in privacy breaches: CRA

May 22, 2017

The Canada Revenue Agency says eight of its employees were fired in the last fiscal year after violating taxpayers’ privacy.

Previously, the agency has not always confirmed if an employee was fired or shuffled out of the CRA for being part of a privacy breach, often citing the employee’s privacy.

A spokesman for the agency says the employees in each case were found to have had unauthorized access to taxpayer information, including one incident that the CRA calls the largest such breach in the agency’s history.

Canadians know their healthcare isn’t perfect, but they would never trade their system for America’s

May 22, 2017

In my view, the major failure of President Obama and the Democrats in 2009 was that they did not frame or discuss health insurance reform as a human rights issue but rather got bogged down playing defense against Republican canards like socialism and death panels.

I’m a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. Canada’s single-payer system isn’t perfect, but I can say that the stress experienced by the cancer survivor in Lazarus’ column who had to file for bankruptcy would never have happened in Canada. While Canadians might complain from time to time, they would not trade their system for the one in the United States.

What Trump’s agenda means for Canadian health care

May 22, 2017

TORONTO, Ont./Troy Media/ – Americans face a growing threat to their health. And it could have a negative impact in Canada.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to pass the American Health Care Act (AHCA). If the bill becomes law, it could leave millions in the U.S. without care.

Just over a month ago, efforts to pass AHCA imploded before the bill could even be brought to a vote. Now there’s a real chance it could come to fruition, transforming American health care for the second time in a decade.

Why is the issue of health care in the U.S. so fraught? And is Canada immune to the social whiplash underway south of us?

Cash-strapped World Health Organization slammed for high travel costs

May 21, 2017

LONDON — Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, traveled to Guinea earlier this month to join the country’s president in celebrating the world’s first Ebola vaccine.

After praising health workers in West Africa for their triumph over the lethal virus, Chan spent the night in the presidential suite at the beach-side Palm Camayenne hotel. The suite, equipped with marble bathrooms and a dining room that seats eight, has an advertised price of 900 euros ($1,008) per night.

Some say such luxurious accommodations send the wrong message to the rest of WHO’s 7,000 staffers — and may hurt the cash-strapped health agency’s fundraising efforts to fight diseases worldwide.

It’s not a carbon tax, it’s a ‘behaviour-changing measure’: government officials

May 18, 2017

The Liberal government today released the carbon-pricing scheme it will impose on any province or territory that, by spring 2018, doesn’t have its own comparable scheme in place.

As of today, 97 per cent of Canadians live in provinces that either already have a price on carbon pollution, or are planning and working toward it, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said Thursday.

The three per cent of Canadians left out of that equation are in Saskatchewan – the one province that continues to hold out on signing on to the Trudeau government’s climate change plan.

Don’t be duped by Trudeau’s carbon pricing plan

May 18, 2017

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon pricing plan released Thursday by Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna is a political fraud.

It will not achieve the government’s promised industrial greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for 2020 or 2030.

It will increase the cost of living for Canadians, adding hundreds of dollars to their annual household bills, year after year.

The plan says that by 2022, we will be paying an estimated 11.6 cents more per litre of gas alone, solely due to carbon pricing.

Historically long health-care wait times cost Canadians $1.7 billion last year

May 18, 2017

VANCOUVER—Long waits for surgery and medical treatment cost Canadians $1.7 billion—or $1,759 per patient—in lost wages and time last year, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

“Long wait times have real consequences for many Canadians who, in addition to experiencing increased pain and suffering, may lose income from not working and may also be unable to fully enjoy time spent with family and friends,” said Bacchus Barua, senior economist in the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Health Policy Studies and co-author of The Private Cost of Public Queues for Medically Necessary Care, 2017.

Time for second opinion on health care

May 17, 2017

The health care debate has flooded the news as Congress attempts to repeal and craft a replacement for the Affordable Care Act — an increase of governmental involvement and regulation albeit considerably less than a single-payer system such as Canada’s. The costs of the law, it seems, have been the impetus for calls to replace it. In fact, enthusiasm for single-payer coverage plummets when people find out the coverage’s costs.

America’s health care system constitutes one-sixth of the nation’s economy. The Affordable Care Act has obvious problems: it is flawed in its conception and basic design, and is failing the American people. The public was not enthusiastic about the Affordable Care Act but got it anyway.

I recently received a letter from a constituent asking two questions: (1) Why is the United States the only advanced, industrialized country in the world without a single-payer health care system; and (2) Why does health care in the United States cost twice as much as that in other countries yet provides lesser results? I will approach these questions the way I do with every issue — with research. Remember, never substitute emotion for scholarship.

Health care system leaves Oshawa man in limbo five months after shoulder injury

May 17, 2017

OSHAWA — Oshawa MPP Jennifer French is highlighting the impact of surgical wait times by sharing the story of an Oshawa man who has been waiting five months and still hasn’t had a needed shoulder surgery scheduled.

With snow and ice on the ground, Steve Border went down after taking a bad step off a deck on Dec. 19.

“I landed on my elbow and immediately felt something in my shoulder,” he explains.

The next day he attended an urgent care clinic in Oshawa. He was sent for an X-ray and ultra sound in short order, although the X-ray found no broken bones, the ultrasound showed damage and he was referred for an MRI for which he waited a month.

More than 1.2 million adolescents die every year, nearly all preventable

May 16, 2017

16 MAY 2017 | GENEVA – More than 3000 adolescents die every day, totalling 1.2 million deaths a year, from largely preventable causes, according to a new report from WHO and partners. In 2015, more than two-thirds of these deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and South-East Asia. Road traffic injuries, lower respiratory infections, and suicide are the biggest causes of death among adolescents.

Most of these deaths can be prevented with good health services, education and social support. But in many cases, adolescents who suffer from mental health disorders, substance use, or poor nutrition cannot obtain critical prevention and care services – either because the services do not exist, or because they do not know about them.