An international firm that the New Brunswick government recently signed a contract with to replace the popular virtual healthcare platform eVisitNB suffered a credit rating downgrade late last year because of financial problems.
Ottawa increased its development and humanitarian spending during the pandemic, in part to restore stalled progress on fighting major illnesses such as AIDS and tuberculosis as governments turned their attention to COVID-19. The United States radically cut back its aid spending this year.
Procuring lifesaving drugs is a daunting challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Essential treatments are often neither available nor affordable in these nations, even decades after the drugs entered the market.
Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association president Jim Keon says there’s a risk that Canada will get caught in the crossfire as Trump pushes to reduce Americans’ reliance on drugs imported from places like China and India.
About 55% of Canadians are covered by employer-sponsored drug plans, which means that when these workers get laid off, they also lose their health benefits, including prescription drug insurance tied to their jobs.
American-owned Quest Diagnostics purchased LifeLabs in August 2024 from OMERS, a jointly owned pension fund company, for CDN $1.35 billion. LifeLabs’ B.C. workers, who have been without a contract since last April, have been on strike since Feb. 16.
Dealing with a bully—especially one as duplicitous and manipulative as U.S. President Donald Trump—requires a strong foundation of mental resilience, strategic thinking and collective action.
Medical researchers and lawyers say our rocky relationship with the U.S. creates an urgent need to protect a critical Canadian resource: patient health information that can be used to train artificial intelligence.
